I am delighted to have been given the opportunity to introduce a debate on such a crucial issue, but let there be no doubt that the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) has taken a clear lead in this area. He is undoubtedly responsible for bringing social care policies and euthanasia to the forefront of our debate, and I pay warm tribute to his work and action. I very much hope, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that he is able to catch your eye.

All Members of Parliament are sent here to legislate in a way that affects people's lives, so there can be no doubt that Members of Parliament believe that life is the most important matter that we have to consider. That said, for as long as I have been a Member there has been argument about the difficult subject of life itself. I particularly wanted to have the debate because there is an opportunity for Parliament to reclaim its power in this area. There is no doubt that, by stealth, decisions that affect all our lives are increasingly being taken outside Parliament, and I much regret that.

All Members of Parliament will have constituency cases involving loved ones who are injured in some way and then kept alive through food and fluid, but to start referring to food and fluid as medical treatment is absolutely crazy. Unless one eats and drinks, no matter what brain injury or illness one is suffering from, one cannot live. That is why I am concerned about the General Medical Council document, "Withholding and Withdrawing Life-Prolonging Treatment: Good Practice in Decision Making".

That publication is not good for patients or doctors. It contains a contradiction between the premise that it is unlawful and unethical intentionally to end a patient's life and the practice of deliberately withholding or withdrawing food and fluid from the non-dying when nursing or medical assistance is required. Such withdrawal could follow if the doctor judged the continuance of food and fluid to be of no benefit. However, as it would lead directly to a slow and painful death, it is hard to see how it might benefit the patient. Is someone to make the judgment that the patient's continuing life is of no benefit to them?

Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate that in these days of medical advances, eating might sometimes be hard to describe as the same activity as being fed through a tube in the stomach? What is his view of someone in such a situation who has made a living will and has made it clear throughout their life that they would not want food and fluid to be given to them should they get into

such a situation? Does he believe that the medical establishment should override that patient's wishes, and possibly those of their family?

I certainly understand the first point. Later, I shall mention a constituency case in which a child goes to school normally and is fed through the stomach, without which the child would die. I am not dodging the issue of living wills; I shall come to it shortly.

I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to hon. Members because other parliamentary duties mean that I am unable to stay for the whole debate.

I have a particular interest in this issue as chairman of the all-party parliamentary hospice group. Other hon. Members will share my great sympathy for Diane Pretty, who recently died, and for her family. It has been claimed that she experienced all of which she was most frightened—pain, breathlessness and choking—as she was dying. Does my hon. Friend agree that those claims have been contradicted by the Luton hospice, where she died and which I recently visited? Its announcement made it clear that her death was peaceful and painless, but the BBC in particular gave prominence to the former claims and said little about the hospice's statement.

I understand my hon. Friend's point, and I have been fully briefed by the Motor Neurone Disease Association. I do not wish to seem churlish, but I have made it clear to the association that the debate is not about the awful, tragic circumstances of Diane Pretty's death, and that I want to concentrate on general matters. That said, I know of my hon. Friend's work in support of the hospice movement. Dame Cicely Saunders is a marvellous woman whose work is experienced throughout the country. It allows people to die with dignity, and to be treated to the best standards.

I want to dwell on the withdrawal of food and fluids. The advice in the GMC document is that withdrawal should happen only if agreed to by a second doctor, but that puts doctors in an awful, invidious position. Doctors who do not go along with their team's decisions are told—the Minister will understand this—to report to their employers. Doctors already face challenges in the national health service, and this puts them in an even more difficult position.

To return to the issue that my hon. Friend perhaps wants me to discuss, the GMC document sits uncomfortably with article 2 of the European convention on human rights, which states:

"Everyone's right to life shall be protected by law."

The fact that that means what it says has been reaffirmed by Mrs. Pretty's case. No one should be intentionally deprived of their life, least of all by doctors and by means of slow dehydration.

There is always pressure on the House, and it is clear from Hansard that we have not spent a huge amount of time discussing euthanasia. My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Mrs. Winterton) introduced a Bill in 2000, but there have been few big debates otherwise.

I am totally opposed to euthanasia, although some people might smile because they can think of a few individuals whom they would like to see off. The lead given since 1999 by the British Medical Association, and now by the GMC, means that judgments are being made for those who are not always in a position to make them for themselves.

As a result of the guidelines and the subsequent judgments, the treatment of some vulnerable patients has subtly changed. Organisations and individuals have inundated me with examples of what goes on in hospitals, and the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East will be familiar with them. I do not want the Minister to think, "My goodness, he's trying to undermine the national health service." I am simply saying that the debate has prompted umpteen relatives of loved ones to give me chapter and verse on what has happened in particular wards, although I am in no position to judge such things.

I pay tribute to Alert, which presents its argument peacefully, forcefully and constructively. In this week edition of The House Magazine, there is an advertisement for SOS-NHS Patients in Danger. The organisation claims that attempts to deprive

"elderly and vulnerable patients of food and water with the sole intention of causing their death is supported"

by a 2001 Government directive to doctors. The Minister may throw some light on how she regards that matter.

To describe food and fluid as medical treatment is to change the vocabulary, and it is beginning to affect attitudes among health care workers and to change the viewpoint from which important matters are handled. Total nursing care includes the administration of food and fluids by feeding through tubes, if necessary. I gave the hon. Member for South Swindon (Ms Drown) the example of a little boy being fed through a tube, and there are many more examples of that practice, which we all regard as wonderful, in fact.

Use of the naso-gastric tube has routinely involved nurses, although some patients have learned to use it by themselves. Stroke patients with swallowing difficulties have often left hospital with feeding tubes in situ until they can swallow again. Premature babies have been routinely fed through tubes until they can suckle. Other children, as I say, go to school wearing tubes.

As a result of what I consider to be an improper use of words, such methods are referred to in guidance documents as medical treatment or artificial hydration and nutrition. That is absolute nonsense. Where is the authority for that change of language? Parliament has never been given a real opportunity to consider the matter. If I have not simply been inundated with spoof calls, the practice seems to be occurring throughout the country. I often receive calls from relatives who have seen something happen that they think is wrong. The Minister has had a tough year, but will she consider giving us an opportunity to debate the repercussions of the directive, perhaps in the new Session when we have more time?

The change of language is already encompassed in an established framework of medical decision making. Thus, the necessities of life can be denied to dependent and vulnerable people on the basis that they are non-beneficial, unduly invasive or contrary to their supposed best interests. Who is going to make the decision? Will it be the two doctors or the relatives? The person is often unable to make the decision for himself or herself. That is a profound issue, which Parliament is entitled to debate, and Parliament can sometimes debate such subjects well. We need to hear the arguments for and against the practice.

The reasoning usually advanced for such fatal or lethal decisions is often based on the so-called quality of life considerations, as judged not by the patient, but by the health care team or relatives. Unfortunately, such people may not always have the best interests of the patient at heart. The quiet acceptance of futile case policies will put on a more formal basis decisions that are, in effect, about whether a person's life is worth continuing. What the goodness are we doing, coming to Parliament and making laws, if we cannot spend time considering such an important matter? We should debate the point at which relatives and doctors say, "We can't do that any more—that's it. Finito" Such decisions have been made without Parliament being given a proper opportunity to discuss the issue.

Those decisions would necessarily be subject to arbitrary and changing criteria, such as resource availability and burdens on others. Ultimately, with the pressures that the national health service is under, they would depend on utilitarian considerations. In view of those pressures, the Minister will understand what I am alluding to. We could end the sanctity of life principle under which, hitherto, all lives have been judged to be of equal value, and equal before the law. Many would add that they are equal in the eyes of God.

I am glad to see my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton in her place, because she introduced a Bill on the subject in 2000. I am sharing with the House my view that Parliament has not been allowed enough time to debate such an important and serious issue.

How can it ever be right to deprive a person who is not dying of the necessities of life? It is not acceptable that food and fluid should be described as medical treatment; that is absolute nonsense. Who has given people the authority to say that food and fluid is medical treatment? That is ridiculous. A further practice that occurs too often is the inappropriate and excessive use of sedatives, which render patients dependent and, often, unable to swallow.

We all know of the case of Tony Bland, the poor gentleman who was in a persistent vegetative state. I have dear friends whose son was knocked off a bike. He ended up in a vegetative state at the British Home and Hospital for Incurables, and I spent a great deal of time visiting him. I lived through that traumatic time with his loved ones and they wanted their son to be kept alive—that was their decision. At the risk of becoming boring, I must repeat that it is not acceptable to allow such decisions to be taken through a directive; it is wrong. Perhaps the Minister can provide clarification.

It was said that Mr. Bland's brain was dead. I have no expertise in such matters, but I am advised that at his autopsy it weighed 1,000 g and the normal weight of a brain is 1,400 g. It was certainly not a watery mass, as was stated at the time. The late Cardinal Hume, for whom I had the highest regard, tried to raise the matter

with the president of the family division, but he did not receive a satisfactory response. It is too late to argue about it, but the Bland judgment was desperately important.

I am waiting for the hon. Gentleman to come to living wills. Perhaps Tony Bland should have made a living will, but he was too young to have thought about it. At the time of the case, all his relatives wanted to finish his life, although they had not done so initially. Does the hon. Gentleman believe that the wish of those relatives should have been overridden?

The hon. Lady is very sharp in not letting me get away with missing her point. Until Parliament has been given a proper opportunity to debate what is involved, I shall not be satisfied with living wills as I understand them. I have grave concerns.

I end with a plea to the Minister. She has a huge work load, and every issue that she is confronted with is the most important of that day, but we are talking about life. In hospitals throughout the country, people are lying in beds and the medical teams around them are faced with such decisions. It is not good enough that Parliament has not had the opportunity to debate who should be given the onerous task of deciding who should live and who should die. Giving a patient food and fluid is not medical treatment; it is what every human being is entitled to. I am totally opposed to euthanasia and I totally respect the sanctity of life. I hope that all hon. Members do so.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) for introducing this important debate. Many hon. Members are concerned that policy decisions in this area are being made outside the House. Although euthanasia, with all its ramifications, is a difficult subject, we should be debating it in both Houses of Parliament to try to reach a consensus.

Voluntary euthanasia—a third person ending the life of another with consent—has been legalised in some parts of the world, including the Netherlands and, last week, Belgium, as well as the state of Oregon in the United States. We are in danger of euthanasia creeping up on us without parliamentary decisions being made. I shall set out the legal background to the debate to show that the legal profession, aided by the medical profession, is driving policy in this area.

The hon. Gentleman is a member of the Science and Technology Committee. As I am sure he remembers, we took evidence from the former chairman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority only a few weeks ago. We discussed difficult issues of the beginning and end of life, and she informed the Committee that she thinks it right for decisions on such issues to be kept away from Parliament. She also said that, as emotive, complex and sensitive issues are involved, they are best decided by people other than politicians. She showed total contempt for the House and felt that we should be protected from having to make those difficult decisions, but people outside the House are in favour of the democratic process and they want those who are accountable to them to take the decisions. Does the hon. Gentleman recall that event?

I do, and I agree with the hon. Gentleman that those decisions should be made by Parliament and that the debate should be held here.

Had I been an MP at the time, I would have supported the Suicide Act 1961, but there have been several landmark judgments since then. Reference has already been made to the 1993 Law Lords judgment in the Airedale NHS Trust v. Bland case. That was a critical moment in the history of the debate because, for the first time, doctors were given the legal ability to remove artificial feeding and hydration from patients.

Many doctors were worried about that judgment, and they lobbied the GMC and the BMA. The Government published several reports, and the Law Commission published a report in 1995. In October 1999, the Government's consultation resulted in the publication of "Making Decisions", and recent press reports emanating from the Lord Chancellor's office suggest that legislation is likely to be included in the Queen's Speech in November. In April, a consultation document on "Making Decisions"—it is extremely difficult to get hold of—was published. I should point out that euthanasia is a devolved issue, and legislation has been passed in Scotland, so the law in Scotland is already different from that in England and Wales.

Yesterday, the GMC put its draft document to the council for agreement. The BMA has been publishing guidelines, which are used in hospitals, without any reference to Parliament, or at least to the elected body of Parliament. It may have consulted the Government, but the rest of us certainly have not been consulted. As the hon. Member for Southend, West said, the important difference in the medical profession now—we cannot underline it enough—is that doctors regard artificial hydration and feeding as medical treatment. When that announcement was made, it really got up my nose. That is why I strongly supported the Winterton Bill in Parliament, which was unfortunately lost.

Following the Government's implementation of the Human Rights Act 1998 in October 2000 for use in the British courts, the BMA guidelines were revised, but they have not changed greatly. The Winterton Bill accepted the right of a patient with mental capacity not to accept treatment, particularly if it was burdensome, and we should underline that fact, too. Members of Parliament were divided on the issue then, just as they will be today. When the Bill was debated, I was rather surprised to find that Age Concern had lobbied against it, despite being worried about the appearance of terms such as "DNR" and "Do not ring 555" on patient notes. Hon. Members will remember the great publicity that that gained in the press.

Following the Bland judgment, a second landmark decision was made on 25 October 2000 by Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, president of the family division of the High Court. It was about the lives of two women, Mrs. M, aged 49, and Mrs. H, aged 36, both said to have been in a permanent vegetative state, the former for more than three years and the latter for about nine months. The case of Mrs. M was non-urgent, as it was estimated that she could have lived for another 10 to 20 years. Those cases were brought to court to test whether the Human Rights Act had any bearing on the decision made in the Tony Bland case. Article 2 of the European convention on human rights, of course, refers to the right to life.

Amazingly, Dame Butler-Sloss ruled that the Human Rights Act had no effect on verdicts of that kind. That was an extremely important decision. I object not only to the decision, but to the fact that it was made by one person. I accept that she must have consulted, but she made the judgment in the name of only one person. Even the Pinochet case went first to three Law Lords and eventually to five, so why do we let one person in the family division make landmark judgments of that kind?

Dame Butler-Sloss has said some remarkable things since. For example, she believes that permanent vegetative state patients are insensate. Doctors are divided on that issue, but many believe that even patients in deep comas have sensations, so we would dispute her opinion. On 20 July 2000, she told the GMC:

"Hospitals may also need to consider the issue of resources, however distasteful that may seem, and consider whether resources should be directed to patients who have no hope of receiving any benefit from that treatment".

That is an astonishing statement from someone who makes such landmark decisions.

This year, Dame Butler-Sloss handed down another landmark judgment in the case of a single middle-aged woman patient who has become known as Miss B and who had been kept alive for some time by ventilation. That judgment allowed a medical team to sedate the patient and turn off the ventilator. The patient has since died in another hospital, because the people in the first hospital, who saved Miss B's life, could not find it in themselves to turn off the ventilator. I think that Miss B had the right to ask for that ventilator to be turned off, and I have no objection to that landmark decision. Miss B was a thinking person; she was not in a coma and she had thought about the decision. To her, the ventilator had become burdensome. That was the point that I made about the Winterton Bill.

The Dutch Parliament legalised physician-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia in April 2000, and Belgium has followed suit. Since 1984, when voluntary euthanasia was decriminalised, there have been 50,000 such deaths in the Netherlands. Significantly, in one study, 85 per cent, of Dutch patients withdrew their request for euthanasia after receiving better symptom control.

I support the hospice movement, which does a great job. No matter how seriously ill a patient is, hospices have learned to cope and to relieve pain in some terrible circumstances. In Holland, some people carry passports to live, and the organisation Right to Life in Britain has proposed allowing people here to carry human rights cards, so that if they find themselves in such circumstances doctors will be aware of the patient's wishes.

The debate should be entitled "Futile care policies and euthanasia". 1 would like to discuss futile care policies—a euphemism for involuntary euthanasia. Futile care policies are implemented so quietly that no one knows their extent. Although a patient may want

life-sustaining treatment, if the doctor believes that their quality of life does not justify the cost of care in the health care system, he may refuse further treatment, other than comfort care.

Many hospitals in the United States of America have developed futile care policies designed to thwart legal action by the patient or their relatives. The Cambridge Review surveyed 26 Californian hospitals, 24 of which were found to have futile care policies. Only seven permitted patients or their representatives to make submissions before a decision is made to implement those policies.

Futile care policies are a descent from a health care system based on the Hippocratic oath and the Geneva declaration. They discriminate against the elderly, the chronically sick—dying or otherwise—and the disabled, who are expensive to care for. Do we want that sort of health care rationing in Britain? It has arrived.

A programme transmitted on 14 February 2002 by Channel 4 as part of its "Trust" series was filmed at Queen's hospital, Nottingham. It showed medical staff making subjective decisions about their elderly patients' quality of life that led to death by starvation and dehydration. Futile care policies now operate in the national health service in Britain. Who gave doctors the right to carry out futile care policies in this country? Doctors first sedate the patient so that they are unable to communicate or, usually, to swallow, as the swallowing reflex disappears. Opiates are usually used to sedate the patient, and they are left to starve to death or to dehydrate.

One method by which such policies are implemented in geriatric wards in our national health hospitals is for someone to enter a ward of elderly and frail people who are lying in bed and unable to sit up unaided and to place food, such as bowls of soup, on tables over the bed. The patients are incapable of accessing that soup on their own, but 10 minutes later a different member of staff comes through the ward and says, "Oh, don't you want that?" and removes it. That is an insidious way to cut off food. Food is ostensibly provided, but it never—

Order. Interventions must be brief.

I have some sympathy with that point of view, and I have seen that in action. However, I do not accuse national health service staff—auxiliaries and nurses—of carrying it out as a futile care policy. There are simply not enough people on the wards to sit with patients who need feeding one to one. Will the Minister comment on the view expressed by the hon. Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson)?

We urgently need a full debate in the House, not merely a 90-minute debate in Westminster Hall. Although people take notice of such debates, they do not have the same impact as those in the main Chamber. I hope that the Minister agrees and that the Government enable us to have a much longer discussion. The subject was chosen by Mr. Speaker, and I am grateful to him for allowing us to discuss it.

rose—

Order. Four hon. Members wish to speak and we have 24 minutes left, so I would be grateful if Members show self-discipline and speak for only six minutes. I intend to call the winding-up speeches at 10.30.

I must preface my remarks by saying that I am not a relative of anyone involved in unfortunate cases, such as those of Tony Bland and Diane Pretty. If I were, no doubt I would have other things to say. It is difficult to extrapolate from specific cases. I just want to submit a general argument against legislative or regulative change. We seem to fear that the law will be changed to allow medical practitioners or other people to assist a person to die—in other words, effectively to kill another individual under the remit of the national health service.

The matter raises the huge moral minefields of consent and intent. There will still be the issue of whether moral or social pressure has been brought to bear to secure consent. There will always be an argument about the state of mind of the person giving consent—both at the time that he agrees and when he is asked to reiterate that choice. At the point when euthanasia may be implemented or foreseen, the person may not be in a position to reiterate his initial choice or living will.

The issue of intent concerns whether the state should allow certain people, as a deliberate act of intent, to end a person's life. If those people are doctors, there will be conflict with the Hippocratic oath and the possible fear that such activity may be extended beyond cases when consent is given to other cases in which the person's condition is judged to be futile.

There are two arguments for change. First, there is a general argument that euthanasia would alleviate suffering. Secondly, euthanasia would allow the patient to choose the moment of his death. I shall deal with the second argument first. We all have the right to end our life. If the state tries to forbid us from so doing, it will be futile. However, that is not what we are discussing; the issue is whether someone else should assist in that process. That raises a nest of issues concerning who that person would be; with what authority he would act; how he would act and at what moment he would act. The state or medical practitioners do want to trespass in such a minefield without being aware of the dangers that they face.

I accept that the stronger argument in favour of euthanasia is based on the alleviation of suffering. The general view is that an easeful death is a good death, and I am sure that everyone in the Chamber agrees with that. We would all wish our loved ones to die an easeful death. There is a moral imperative to secure that, and few people deserve anything different. It is a known fact that methods of alleviating suffering can bring forward the moment of death and, by that, I do not mean the withdrawal of food and water. If engaged in seriously, the alleviation of suffering can shorten the period in which a person suffers and bring forward the moment of death.

There is a mediaeval principle called the double effect. If a medical practitioner engages in a form of medication that eases suffering and coincidentally brings forward the moment of death, that is a radically different choice from his deciding to terminate a person's life. In the

past, the Catholic Church supported therapeutic abortion, the object of which was to save a mother's life by removing the baby from her womb. The clear difference between that and abortion was that the object was not to end the baby's life. Were the baby to survive at the end of the process, everyone would be much happier.

If the possibility of an easeful death exists for individuals, why is there a need to change the medical role? Why is there a need to confront medical practitioners with awful medical dilemmas? My argument would fall absolutely if someone could prove that it is impossible to ease a death and forfend suffering—that medical science, even in its current advanced state, necessarily cannot avail dying people who are suffering intensely. I do not believe that. It is certainly untrue with regard to a few cases; I am thinking of a friend of mine who died of motor neurone disease.

If my argument is true with regard to a few cases, medical science can address them. Therefore, there is no need radically to change medical practice, the authority of medical practitioners and the nature of their task.

First, I declare an interest. I was appointed to the General Medical Council in October 1999, one of three Members of Parliament to be nominated lay members of that body. Therefore, I have been involved in the council's debate on the guidance. Indeed, the council discussed it again yesterday.

The document "Withholding and Withdrawing Life-Prolonging Treatment" is a good practice guide for decision makers in the clinical field. It is not about euthanasia. The guidance begins with a statement that euthanasia is against the law and the ethics of medicine. It is about making decisions when providing care at the end of people's lives. It does not provide answers; that is impossible, as every patient is an individual and their circumstances vary. It sets out a framework for decision making to guide clinicians in the field.

The GMC has consulted widely. A broad range of views were expressed to it, and it has carefully considered them. I first attended a GMC meeting in November 1999. It discussed the issue for the first time then, and one matter that it debated was whether guidelines should be sought, because it is clear that care for people in this state varies between hospitals. That cannot be denied, and the GMC, as the regulatory body for doctors, believed that it was its right and responsibility to provide guidelines, if at all possible.

Therefore, a working group of the standards committee was set up, and people from outside the GMC who have legal and other expertise were co-opted as members. The first draft of a report was produced 12 months later, in November 2000. In 2001, a written consultation was conducted for 10 weeks, between May and July. More than 730 responses were received from a wide range of organisations, and from many doctors and members of public. The process culminated in a consultation conference in London on 20 July 2001, and everyone with an interest in the issue was invited to attend.

It sends shivers of fear down my spine when I am told that the great and the good consult and come forward with decisions, such as that made by the GMC. Does the right hon. Gentleman believe in the supremacy of Parliament? He is an experienced Member. Is he concerned that such decisions are being made outside the parliamentary and democratic system by people who ought not to be making them?

The GMC is a statutory body that was set up by Parliament to give advice to doctors. In part, it is self-regulating. However, I am a lay member, and there are 23 others. Parliament gives it the right to issue guidelines in this field. The people who have been leading in it, and those in the GMC who have been involved in drawing the guidelines up, are not members of the great and the good. The hon. Lady laughs, but those people deal with the matter almost daily in hospitals throughout the country. That is not being done by the great and the good sitting in London. The consultation process took place on the basis of trying to get advice from, and guidelines to, practitioners in the field who have to handle the situation.

We have obtained extensive legal advice from the Official Solicitor. When the guidance was discussed yesterday, several amendments from the Official Solicitor were made. The guidance states the principles established in the core guidance of good medical practice, which is effectively the clinician's bible, but it considers the primacy of patients' interests, respect for patients' autonomy and the duty to provide a good standard of practical care. It applies those principles in this difficult area of practice.

I do not think that anyone in this Room would disagree for one minute that the area in question is a difficult one for people to work in. The guidance cannot accord with all points of view, and I am sure that everyone in this Room accepts that. The GMC believes that the draft guidance reflects broad agreement so far established with the profession and the public on what can be regarded as good practice in decision making in this area.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) issued a press release on Monday, inviting the council to consider aspects of the issue. The council looked at those aspects. I want to go into one or two areas mentioned in Monday's press release that were also discussed. The first is whether artificial nutrition and hydration can be non-beneficial. In fact, the words "no benefit" were removed yesterday in drafting changes, and they will be replaced. I do not know exactly whether the phrase "net benefit" or other words were used at that time. Also, and it is right, fair and proper that people commented on it, the council said that it would reiterate the general guidance, in paragraph 55, on consulting the health care team, families and others. Our broader consultation will take place before decisions are taken on that.

Another part of Monday's press release was covered by Dr. Anthony Cole of the Medical Ethics Alliance. He was concerned about junior doctors, and said that those

"who could not in conscience agree to the withdrawal or withholding of food and fluid, should not have to take responsibility for finding another doctor to do what they could not do themselves."

Should junior doctors have to find someone to cover for them if they withdraw from the care of a patient because of a conscientious objection? That is, I assume, what was alluded to on Monday. The council has agreed to introduce amendments to make it clear that it is the junior doctor's responsibility to inform the senior clinician responsible for the patient's care. The senior clinician must then make arrangements to find a replacement.

I shall briefly discuss advance directives, which were mentioned in my hon. Friend's press release by Dr. Jacqueline Laing. The issue is covered by the guidance in paragraphs 10, 28 and 39, as well as in the glossary that deals with advance directives and advance refusals of treatment. The council makes it clear that advance refusals are valid if they are clearly applicable to the patient's current circumstances and when there is no reason to believe that the patient has changed his or her mind. Paragraph 39 gives further guidance on taking into account advances in treatment made since the directive was issued.

After yesterday's debate, I took the issue up with Sir Cyril Chantler and Professor David Hatch, who have been leading on the guidance document in the GMC. To paraphrase what I believe to be the outcome of that, it is clear that someone who gave an advance directive years ago and who may have changed their mind should assume that they could and perhaps would have to go through that process again. That was not written on tablets of stone, but the gist of the discussion was that the GMC intends to issue guidelines to doctors working in the field.

The point made by Dr. Jacqueline Laing at the Alert meeting on Monday, from which the press release emanated, is that people who make advance directives should be aware that they may put themselves in an even more difficult position by refusing treatment as a patient. In other words, they could become disabled by refusing treatment.

It is believed that the guidance that has been drawn up and that will, at some stage, be sent to all doctors—certainly those working in the field—takes everything into account. The advance directives, which I read yesterday, go into great detail, but I shall not bore the Chamber with that now. Doctors must have confidence that decisions made a long time ago still stand in all circumstances, however, although a decision made 10 years ago would not be ignored in a current situation. That is my understanding, although 10 years refers to my timetable, not that of others.

I shall finish, because we are pressed for time. I do not disagree that the House should discuss such matters, as it is for us to regulate doctors up and down the land who work in hospitals, primary care and so on. The House has given responsibility to the GMC, however, and in my view, based on the years that I have been a lay GMC member, it takes its responsibility seriously. It is clear that there are no guidelines in this sensitive area for people who work in our hospitals and other places, but we need guidance and a debate about it.

Let me emphasise that the GMC recognises that euthanasia is wrong and that it is against the law and medical ethics of this country. No one is saying that it should happen. At some stage, we in Parliament may be called on to pass laws on it, but that is not related to the guidance.

We all agree that euthanasia is illegal in this country, but is not it disingenuous for that organisation to say that? It advocates the withdrawal of food and fluids from certain patients. Is not that promoting euthanasia by stealth?

I trust that the right hon. Gentleman is bringing his comments to a close.

The answer to the hon. Lady's question, in all circumstances, is certainly not. I do not think that that is euthanasia by stealth. In some rare cancers, nutrition and hydration speed up the patient's metabolism, hastening death and increasing suffering. It is best that clinicians make the decisions in those cases, not us sitting here this morning.

I am fairly certain that everyone in the Chamber is, to say the least, well motivated, interested in the subject—it is an appropriate subject for the House to deal with—and eager to take decisions and come to conclusions that the freedom that allows us to gather here makes possible.

When I was very small, I went to the local cinema with my parents and we saw on the flickering black-and-white screen the smiling faces of children who were being carefully led off to be dispatched by a Nazi regime. They were people whom the doctors thought a waste of the state's resources. I remember my parents saying to me, "You must never forget this." I did not understand why, but they said that I would.

I began to understand what it meant. Culturally and racially, I am part Irish, part Catholic, part Church of England, mixed Methodist, part Jewish Russian immigrant. Any of those things could make one likely to be a target of someone who disapproves of one part or another of one's history or culture, and one can easily become the victim. People do not set out with malice aforethought; it is the way the machine rolls, and we should be careful that it does not become irresistible.

It is important that we in Parliament understand our role. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) made a good argument, but I do not share his certainty in the GMC's capacity to make judgments— or in its right to make those judgments. Parliament is for ever changing, as are its ideological constructs, and whatever decisions Parliament took to empower the GMC to take decisions—decisions that are now being used to justify my right hon. Friend's observations—we may later wish to say that we were not right and that we should reconsider the matter. I believe that now is the time to do so.

The idea that the state should take on the role of moral guardian is interesting. In our lifetimes—at least, in mine—we have experienced not only Nazism but Stalinism, when the state did only what was in its own interests. I and others decided that we could not support that. Indeed, as a socialist it seemed to be an obscenity; it was nothing to do with the struggle of the people in whom I was interested. In my view, the state is not always benign.

We should acknowledge that individuals and families, too, are not always benign; for all kinds of reasons, they can be interested in the outcome of an illness, although for most, the outcome is a matter for sincere, deep regret. We are all familiar with our family doctors, but when they become involved in the care of someone who is terminally ill they will want to relieve pain and suffering. As the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) said, it is generally accepted that the relief of pain can speed up the process of death, but there is a duty on all of us to ensure that suffering is minimised. The line that we draw between the relief of pain being appropriate and morally right and the fact that it may bring about a speedier death will therefore always be very narrow. The decision will always be burdensome, and it always involves the careful balancing of responsibilities.

The state and the judicial system together can make the ending of suffering lawful, and we might eventually want to subscribe to that case if it means simply a gentle release from pain. My fear is that if we empower people to take such decisions without their being constantly checked through the people's democratic involvement, we shall be leading ourselves into serious danger. We should bear in mind Churchill's observation. He said that when one first starts on the slippery slope, the downward descent is not too difficult or precipitous; when one begins to accelerate, however, one finds oneself on the way to this pit of hell—he was referring to the Nazi regime. We should be mindful of what steps we take, and we should be ever mindful of the need to review what we have done.

We must never repeat the horrors of the late 1930s and early 1940s, no matter how well motivated people say they are. If we reopen that door—if we revisit that period of horror—we shall have no one to blame but ourselves. Generations to come may well look back on us and ask, "Did they learn nothing from that period that they lived through? Are there no lessons that we can be sure of, ever? Does it have to be repeated over and over again?" I think that the idea of relief of suffering meets with the approval of everyone in this Chamber and in the House. However, we must be very mindful of what that could lead us to, and I am absolutely opposed to euthanasia.

I call Jim Dobbin. Two minutes.

Thank you, Mr. O'Brien, for allowing me to speak. It is an important time for this debate, because the House of Lords report on making decisions is out for consultation. I wanted to speak for more than two minutes on that, but it looks as though I am to be cut short. I do not want to spend so little time on that report—it is far too important for that—so I shall wait to hear what the Minister has to say. I hope that there will be an opportunity at a later date, if she would be so kind, for Parliament to debate this important issue properly.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Jim Dobbin) for giving us those two minutes back, because

the debate is important. I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) for securing it. I understand that it has been sought for some time, and the luck of the draw led him rather than the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) to introduce it. The debate is timely, not least because the GMC considered these matters only yesterday.

The hon. Members for Southend, West and for Bolton, South-East are right to assert Parliament's right to debate and set the framework in which decisions on the care of people who lack the capacity to decide for themselves are made. That is very important, but I do not accept the criticism that is being laid at the door of the GMC for coming forward with guidance. The blame for that lies with the House and those who manage our business and set time aside for us to deliberate on such matters. We have not been given time to consider them, but we should be. That is the clearest and most powerful message that should come from the debate.

For Liberal Democrats, the moral, legal and ethical issues surrounding euthanasia are matters of conscience and therefore would be subject to a free vote, if there were ever such a vote in the House. I oppose the intentional taking of life, whether at the request of the individual or out of some sense of mercy. When the House considered the Medical Treatment (Prevention of Euthanasia) Bill in 2000, I voted for it on Second Reading to reaffirm my opposition to euthanasia. Several other Members voted for the principle of the Bill on that basis.

In preparing for the debate, I examined the report of the House of Lords Select Committee on Medical Ethics, which considered the issues carefully in 1994. It offers a clear view and I was particularly struck by paragraph 237 in part III, which sums up the Committee's recommendations:

"Ultimately, however, we do not believe that these arguments are sufficient reason to weaken society's prohibition of intentional killing. That prohibition is the cornerstone of law and social relationships. It protects each one of us impartially, embodying the belief that all are equal. We do not wish that protection to be diminished and we therefore recommend that there should be no change in the law to permit euthanasia."

I support that view.

Policy and practice should rest on the foundation of respect for human rights—the right to autonomy, the right to be oneself—but as things stand, we are not all equal. The law denies legal rights to people who are judged by others to lack the mental capacity to make decisions for themselves. They are not only denied proper legal status as autonomous individuals in their own right, but many of them, in some areas of law, are simply ignored. There, they do not exist; they are non-people.

Who has the authority? How is capacity defined? How can people with mental or physical impairments be enabled to participate in decisions that affect their lives? The current all-or-nothing approach, whereby authority is passed to those claiming power of attorney or professionals giving medical or legal advice will not do. Common law recognises that third parties must act with a person's best interest in mind, but an incapacitated person's best interest is about more than managing money or rationing services to meet their care needs. It is about ensuring that they have a decent quality of life, can express their needs and emotions and are treated with respect.

I therefore regret that the publication of "Making Decisions" a few years ago has not led to a legislative debate or to decisions in the House. The Government have shied away from reform, despite promising legislation year after year. I am interested in the reading by the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East of the signals emanating from the Lord Chancellor's Department, because it contradicts what I have gleaned from Ministers in that Department. There seems to be a fear that reform of the law on mental incapacity will be hijacked and portrayed as a move down the road toward euthanasia. That fear is misplaced, but it is becoming an obstacle to legislating. It is appropriate for the House to make such legislation a candidate for pre-legislative scrutiny so that we can reach a broad consensus. We should take evidence and opinions from outside the House, and introduce an agreed Bill. I hope that the Minister discusses with her colleagues in the Lord Chancellor's Department the issues that have been raised today. In a way, a Minister from that Department should respond to the debate, because the issues are broader than health care.

Living wills, or advance directives, are one area of law that would benefit from being placed on a clear statutory footing. Although the courts have developed a body of case law that recognises the standing of such directives, I strongly believe that Parliament should provide a clear legal framework, with safeguards, in which people can exercise their right to give informed consent or to refuse treatment. Patients have the right to refuse treatment beforehand or at the time, if they have capacity, but no one has the right to require another person to assist with or to hasten their death.

When the House of Lords Select Committee on Medical Ethics considered euthanasia in 1994, it compared the UK and the Netherlands and found that there was almost no hospice movement in the Netherlands. Several Members have mentioned the movement, which plays an important part in our health care system. The development of the science of pain relief has made a real difference to the quality of life of thousands of terminally ill people. Quite simply, a hospice and good palliative care can make all the difference between a good death and a bad one, but what priority do the Government attach to the work of hospices? The independent charitable sector provides seven out of 10 in-patient hospice places. Over the past five years, state funding of hospice care has fallen from 35 to 28 per cent. What funding will be available in future? Hospices are already scaling back their activities and cutting the number of beds that they provide.

Extra Government funding to implement the cancer plan and to develop palliative care has not got to hospices, where it matters. They welcome the fact that the Government have made at least some concessions on NHS charges for ambulances, drugs, and laboratory and imaging services. Such charges are only the tip of the iceberg, however, and the payroll is the major cost for hospices. They must also compete with the NHS, and it would be useful if the Minister told us how the Government will help the hospice movement to bridge the ?60 million gap that confronts it.

The guiding principle for care policies must be the individual's best interests. Their right to decide should be paramount, but that does not confer a right to ask someone else to help them to die. I am concerned that the issue of incapacity remains unresolved in England and Wales. Legislation has been passed in Scotland, and it is for the Scottish Parliament to decide whether it is the right legislation. People in this country are left in limbo and denied the right to be treated as individuals. Law reform on capacity is an essential bulwark against any back-door moves towards euthanasia.

I hope that the Minister has heard loud and clear the message that Parliament should debate and decide on such matters. Time should be made available to allow us to do so thoughtfully, deliberatively and without taking the scaremongering tone that sometimes enters such debates. Today's, however, has been thoughtful, rather than scaremongering.

We have had a good debate, but it has been a debate about a debate. We all agree that we need further discussion, and we have only scratched the surface. None the less, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) on securing the debate and the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) on putting him up to it. The subject is difficult to deal with. It is topical because of the cases of Diane Pretty and Miss B and because of the judgment by Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, although this is the first time that I have heard her judgment compared to the General Pinochet case.

We have been debating problems of science and advances in medicine compared with matters of ethics and public conscience, in which Parliament has a vital role to play. However, as many Members said, the agenda seems to be moving ahead without proper parliamentary scrutiny. A theme common to all the contributions made this morning is that policy on euthanasia is moving ahead by stealth and that we in Parliament must reclaim that territory, because this is where the decisions should be made.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Mrs. Winterton) on her attempts, whether one agrees with them or not, to bring the issue before Parliament in a private Member's Bill. Although that Bill failed, it was a good start to the process. She is sorry that she cannot be present for the winding-up speeches, but she has a dental appointment, which I hope will not be terminal.

As the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East said, the debate on euthanasia is taking place around the world. Holland became the first country to legalise euthanasia, the practice of giving terminally ill patients the right to end their lives. Doctors in Holland will no longer face prosecution under strict conditions, and regional review committees of legal, medical and ethical experts will carefully judge each patient's request.

As the hon. Gentleman said, Belgium has become the second country to allow euthanasia. There, patients who wish to end their lives must be conscious when the demand is made and must repeat their requests for euthanasia. They must be under constant and unbearable physical or psychological pain. There have been similar moves in South Korea, and the hon.

Gentleman mentioned Oregon and the changes made by the Scottish Parliament. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has taken a close interest in the moves in the Netherlands, criticising that country for its controversial new law. The committee rapporteur, Eckart Klein, said that

"the growing number of assisted suicides could lead to them becoming routine. The main worry is not only the actual practice, but also the fact that this new law could create precedents that dilute the importance and trivialise this act…The practitioner could become practically insensitive and the act trivialised."

The committee is worried by figures supplied by that Government, which show that more than 2,000 cases of euthanasia were carried out last year. It is also concerned about reports that medical personnel have ended the lives of newborn handicapped babies.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the human rights aspect and referred to the fact that many human rights tests did not apply or were found wanting in the case of Diane Pretty, and had other implications in the case of Miss B. He also mentioned futile care policies, and I remember the programme about the Queen's medical centre in Nottingham and the subjective judgments that were made. We must be aware of all that to have a say in what happens and to formulate a proper approach.

Dame Butler-Sloss's judgment has implications for hospital resources, which is a worrying aspect of the decisions that are being taken. The hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Mr. Best) raised a similar point in his thoughtful contribution when he mentioned his lifelong memory of a film about children in Nazi Germany. The state has the power of life and death over its citizens, and as the hon. Gentleman said, it is not always used in a benign way. It certainly was not then.

There is great concern around the world about the developments that are taking place. The Conservative party remains opposed to euthanasia, as we said in our manifesto, although we recognise the right of patients to withdraw from treatment if they choose. Then the debate becomes complicated and fraught with problems of definition. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West rightly said, there are concerns about the medicalisation of the vocabulary in this area, which is beginning to affect attitudes among health care workers.

Feeding is now referred to in guidance documents as medical treatment or artificial hydration and nutrition. The BMA guidance on withdrawing and withholding treatment in certain cases raises many questions. In June 2001, the BMA produced guidelines. Dr. Wilks of the BMA said:

"Our guidance on withdrawing and withholding treatment is intended to help doctors make compassionate decisions about treatment at the end of life for patients with no prospect of recovery. It is emphatically not about euthanasia, to which the BMA remains firmly opposed."

He continued:

"The primary goal of medicine is to benefit the patient. If a medical treatment can no longer benefit the patient, then ethically, the doctor must start to consider whether it should be withdrawn. This must be done carefully and thoughtfully, in consultation with relatives, in close discussion with the whole team of people involved in the care of the patient".

However, he added:

"We share the view of the courts that artificial nutrition and hydration is a part of medical treatment and could therefore potentially be withdrawn if it is not benefiting a patient. However

we also recognise that not everyone shares this view and that special safeguards need to be taken in this difficult area of decision making."

Absolutely right. That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West. We have heard about the experience of the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron). The GMC plans to introduce guidelines outlining when it believes it right to withhold life-prolonging treatment. That will raise complex issues. The meeting yesterday to take legal advice was important in that process, but most people do not know about that. The GMC has, effectively, a licence from Parliament to get on with its duty. However, that does not mean that Parliament can abrogate its responsibility to be actively involved in making decisions and recommendations.

rose—

I shall carry on, if I may, because we are short of time.

It is right that medical professionals should tackle the issue, but Parliament needs to engage fully in the process, and, for the sake of clarity and consistency, to give strong guidance and validation to whatever position is agreed. We must then consider the huge moral minefield, which is how the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) described definitions of stages of voluntary euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, life-prolonging treatments and active and passive euthanasia. What is the difference between performing one act—for example, giving a lethal injection—with a particular outcome and failing to perform another, perhaps life-saving treatment, with an identical outcome?

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned the problems of social pressures being brought to bear on families to secure consent. People are made to feel that they are too much of a burden on their families. We dealt briefly—I shall not go into it in detail—with the difficult issue of advance directives or living wills. I agree that we need guidance from the Lord Chancellor's Department, but only after we have had a debate in Parliament. The Lord Chancellor must give a lead, but he should not issue contradictory or slightly insidious directives behind the scenes that nobody knows about.

The problem is increasing with the ageing of the population. In 1951, there were 300 people over the age of 100, most of them probably in Worthing. In 2031, it is expected that the monarch will send 36,000 telegrams. There are 1,162,000 people over the age of 85.1 conclude by looking on the bright side. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mrs. Roe) referred to her work with the all-party hospice group, there have been interesting developments in Holland on passports to live, which have been introduced as a reaction to some innovations there, and a number of people have changed their minds, as people do.

Advances in palliative care could eventually rule out one of the arguments made in favour of euthanasia— that it should be an option for patients whose quality of life is negligible. Whereas euthanasia aims to end suffering, palliative care aims to alleviate it. Specialists

working in the field say that modern palliative care is changing the face of medicine as it seeks to relieve the effects of illness rather than to cure the disease. If doctors could guarantee a high quality of life up to the moment of natural death, euthanasia campaigners would lose their central argument. The case of Diane Pretty was interesting, and I declare an interest as a patron of St. Barnabas Hospice (Worthing) Limited, which does fantastic work, as, I am sure, do the local hospices of many hon. Members.

I reiterate the questions to the Minister on the Government's commitment to increased funding for hospices, which have been particularly badly hit by national insurance increases. However, I appreciate that she has made some announcements about the standardisation of provision of free national health services to hospices. The subject is very difficult, but we should not duck it. Parliament must keep up with the scientists and medical professionals and must engage in a proper debate, otherwise we shall continue to have high-profile cases that cause enormous pain, anguish and confusion for individuals and their families and that leave doctors in difficult positions.

I hope that today's debate leads to a wider discussion of the more substantial basis of the subject, as the role of Parliament is to foster debate, make difficult decisions and give a lead. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West said, Parliament has an opportunity to reclaim its power and to take the initiative on the matter. I hope that it does so.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) on securing a debate on such an important subject, on which many in the House and throughout the country have strong views. The debate has been well-informed and expert, with speeches from my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon), who has extensive interest in the subject and has studied it in great detail, and from my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron), who has participated in many discussions with the General Medical Council and has considered the extensive consultation that it undertook.

Let us be clear from the beginning; euthanasia is illegal. The intentional taking of life, whether at the patient's request or from a merciful motive, is illegal in this country. The Government support that position and do not plan to change the law.

The legal position has been reinforced by the difficult case of Diane Pretty, which went to the European Court of Human Rights. United Kingdom court law was clear that there are no circumstances in which active intervention can be legitimately undertaken to bring about someone's death, even at that person's request. In 1993, the House of Lords Select Committee considered the matter in detail and decided against support for legalising euthanasia, for fear that vulnerable people might feel pressure, whether real or imagined, to request an early death.

None of that should detract from the real moral and ethical difficulties raised by the case of Diane Pretty. I am sure that all hon. Members would want to offer sympathies to her family and pay tribute to its bravery in

difficult circumstances. We should recognise that while many in this House and throughout the country consider the law too relaxed, others support the views of Diane Pretty, and other people who think like her, that the law should change in the other direction. The Government do not support changing the law, other than in particular areas of decision-making.

Hon. Members have raised a series of concerns, and I shall address as many as I can in the available time. The possibility that elderly people are receiving inadequate care is unacceptable in the national health service. We have drawn up a national service framework for older people to raise the quality of care, and made it clear that age discrimination is unacceptable in the NHS, but we should recognise the hard work of staff in the NHS who strive to provide the highest quality of care to elderly people in hospitals, the community and in nursing homes. It is also unacceptable to exclude from decisions on treatment those who are able to consent.

We strongly support, too, the work of hospices, which are world leaders in the provision of palliative care. Hospices are showing increases in their resources from the NHS and fund-raising, which is a good thing. We are increasing resources for hospices, and need to continue to do so.

Concerns were raised about the possibility of "euthanasia by stealth"—to quote some hon. Members. We should be clear that people have a right to refuse treatment; they may choose to have treatment withdrawn. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East raised the case of Miss B, whose wish it was that her treatment, including being maintained on a ventilator, be withdrawn. The medical team considered that other options, such as rehabilitative treatment, should be pursued. Eventually, the case came to court. The court made it clear that under the law people have the right to consent to the giving or withholding of treatment, except in particular circumstances such as those set out in the Mental Health Act 1983. The law requires consent to be obtained from adults who are able to give that before the provision of medical treatment.

A health professional who gives treatment without consent could be guilty of both battery and negligence. If a patient has validly withdrawn consent to treatment, provision of such treatment against the patient's wishes constitutes a battery or, in more everyday terms, an assault. In the case of Miss B, the court decided that she was capable of making a fully informed decision on that issue. The underlying principle is that a competent adult has the right to consent to, or to decline, medical treatment, and can decline such treatment even if the decision would result in death.

More difficult questions arise if people are unable to consent or choose themselves. English law distinguishes between those who made their views clear when they had the capacity to do so and those who did not. The law provides that if an advance refusal is valid and applicable to the circumstances, it must be respected.

If people have not set out their views in an advance directive, the law provides that they must be treated in their best interests. Best interest should not be confused with purely medical interest because it represents a holistic view that takes account of people's wishes and preferences when they were competent, including their psychological health, their well-being, their quality of

life, and their medical condition. It should not be assumed that treatment is always in a person's best interest. Treatment itself can impose burdens through either the means of delivery, such as drips and tubes, or side effects.

Hon. Members mentioned the Tony Bland case, and in the judgment on the case in the House of Lords, Lord Goff stated:

"To presume that the incompetent person must always be subjected to what many rational and intelligent persons may decline is to downgrade the status of the incompetent person by placing a lesser value on his intrinsic worth and vitality."

If treatment is not in the best interest of a person— perhaps because the burdens that it would impose outweigh the benefits that it could bring—it cannot be lawfully continued. Continuing such treatment would be an assault on the person. That is true even if the person would die from his or her underlying condition.

Hon. Members raised points about artificial nutrition and hydration. In the Tony Bland case, the court set out that artificial systems for delivering nutrition form part of the medical treatment or care of the patient. That reflects the fact that artificial systems can place burdens on patients and, as a result, patients in hospital sometimes try to pull such tubes out. Under current case law, if artificial nutrition and hydration is agreed to be not in the best interest of a patient, continuing that is unlawful. If any patient is capable of taking nutrition, withdrawal of fluids and food is illegal. However, it is important to understand the law on the subject.

I understand the concern that Parliament should discuss that matter, and I agree that it is important to have full discussions in debates such as this. Our unwritten constitution includes traditions of both case law and parliamentary sovereignty, and nothing is new about this issue compared with any other. Decisions on the best interest of a patient should be taken on an individual, rather than a parliamentary, basis. It would be wrong for Parliament to try to pronounce on the basis of individual cases. We should ask what is the right legal framework within which such individual decisions may be taken, whether they are taken by the patients themselves or, if patients are not capable of doing that, by health professionals in discussion with relatives or, if necessary, even by the courts.

Will the Minister give way?

Time is extremely tight, and I am trying to respond to final points. If I can give way, I shall.

The Government do not believe that there is a case for changing the law. The Lord Chancellor's Department set out points on "Making Decisions", and we shall legislate when parliamentary time permits. However, we do not think that it is necessary for Parliament to change the law on best interests, decision making and euthanasia. Clearly, there will be debate on the subject, but we should recognise that there is no consensus on an alternative to current law. There is no simple alternative that we can roll out to which Parliament will sign up. We need to follow the debate, which will continue. When necessary, the Government will consider issues raised, but this is a difficult subject, about which people will inevitably have very strong, conflicting views. I think that our legal framework strikes the right balance.

I am grateful that Mr. Speaker has again shown excellent judgment by allowing this brief debate on renewable energy.

On 10 January 2000,1 was lucky enough to secure an Adjournment debate on renewable energy. At that time, the mood in the renewables community was one of considerable frustration. Planning difficulties were immense, and despite words of encouragement from Energy Ministers, funding and even sustained cross-Government commitment was lacking, insufficient or beset with difficulties. Being a renewables developer then was a little like knowing that there was a party that one was supposed to attend, but not having the invitation to get across the threshold.

The real dinosaurs in the energy world still viewed the advocate for renewables with suspicion, and thought, "He might be wearing a suit and tie, but at weekends he probably gets out the kaftan and the open-toed sandals before looking for his tin of lentils." Serious energy people, it seemed, were into gas, nuclear power, or even coal. The mood music in the renewables industry is now very different. There is an extra ?200 million plus in capital grants, the renewables obligation is now in force and the community renewables initiative and new solar, biomass and wave programmes have been launched. Offshore wind sites are earmarked, too.

There is genuine cross-governmental interest. There has been an energy review, which prioritised renewables, and some serious Select Committee investigations into renewable energy. New trade associations such as the Business Council for Sustainable Energy have emerged, blinking, into the light to champion renewables. There has been much progress since 2000, and genuine tribute should be paid to Ministers in the Department of Trade and Industry and other Departments. Thanks are particularly due to those in the business world who stayed the distance and stuck to the task.

However, an awful lot more could still be done. An even stronger policy environment for renewable energy would offer a series of massive prizes: serious cuts in carbon dioxide emissions; much greater domestic energy security, and significant new income streams and employment opportunities for the rural economy and the manufacturing and marine technology industries, to give just a few examples. Although long-term signals are important—I shall touch on targets beyond 2010—the more immediate question is how we can deliver our 2010 target of obtaining 10 per cent, of electricity from renewables. There is also the immediate task of trying to produce 5 per cent, of our electricity from renewables by 2005.

According to the Library, in 1997just 1.9 percent, of all electricity generated came from renewables—a dismal performance of which the Conservative party should be suitably ashamed. By 2000, that figure had risen to 2.5 per cent. I am told that there was a slight drop in 2001 to 2.2 per cent, because of a reduction in the amount of electricity generated by hydro. Despite having far and away the best potential for wind power in Europe, just 0.38 per cent, of electricity is produced from wind in this country. A new framework, the renewables obligation, has been in place for only two months.

I regret that there is still timidity about renewables policy, a sense that we are dipping our toes into the water and that the dead hand of the renewables sceptics—the Bernard Inghams, for example—is holding back development. Why, for example, is there any doubt about the 20 per cent, target that was recommended for 2020 in the energy review? The consultation document that was launched just 10 days ago in advance of the energy White Paper seems to backtrack from that target. The document asks what contribution we can realistically expect renewables to make by that date, and—worse than that—it questions whether the Government should set a target for 2020 at this stage. A decision not to endorse that 20 per cent, target would send a powerful signal that Britain is not serious about renewables beyond 2010, and that would damage the fragile momentum that is beginning to build behind the development of a British renewables industry. Instead of pondering a subject on which the performance and innovation unit spent many hours, we should address the institutional and financial barriers that still hold back the development and deployment of renewables in the United Kingdom.

Funding remains a key barrier. The PIU report rightly highlighted a tenfold decline in UK public sector research and development over the past 15 years, and a much lower spend on energy research in Britain than in the countries that are our main trading partners. The chief scientific advisor flagged up the need for new research on bringing down the cost of renewables. Additional funding is also needed for a solar roof programme, to help us catch up with Germany and Japan. That was stated as an aim by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, in a speech she gave at the Institute for Public Policy Research's low carbon economy conference in December. The solar roof programme that has been announced is welcome, but it will help us to have only 5,000 roofs with solar panels by 2005, whereas Germany is likely to have 140,000, and Japan will have 370,000. Should we not seriously consider offering premium tariffs for solar energy, low interest loans, enhanced capital allowances and solar net metering?

With regard to the bulk of the extra ?200 million in capital grants that was made available, the wind industry is the most likely immediate beneficiary, not least because of the huge potential of offshore wind. However, there are significant grid connection and transmission issues. If we are to take advantage of sites in especially deep waters, Government money will be needed to lever in private sector investment, so that such issues can be sorted out.

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and I congratulate him on securing this important debate at such a significant time for the development of energy policy.

My hon. Friend rightly referred to transmission. Does he agree that it is particularly important to address transmission capacity along the west coast of Scotland? If the full benefits of Scotland's geographical position with regard to wind and wave energy are to be fully utilised, those potential sources of energy must be

connected to the national grid. Does he agree that that should be a priority for the Scottish Executive and the UK Government?

I agree with my hon. Friend. He has made an excellent point, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry will inform us how that matter, and the other funding issues that I have raised, will be tackled as part of her Department's bid in the comprehensive spending review.

There is a series of institutional problems, not least, the planning system. According to the Renewable Power Association, less than 25 per cent, of non-fossil fuel obligation wind power projects that were contracted for had been commissioned by September 2001; for biomass, that figure is 28 per cent., which is only slightly better.

Does my hon. Friend agree that planning has been the biggest obstacle to the development of renewable energy? In the UK, the pattern of planning applications is patchy. For some reason, planning applications are 10 times more likely to be given assent in Scotland than in England and Wales. England has by far the worst record. Does not something need to be done about that, especially as it would not necessarily cost anything?

I do not entirely agree with my hon. Friend, but I accept his broad point that the planning system has been the biggest single factor in delaying renewable energy projects. A more than sevenfold acceleration is needed if we are to meet our 2010 target for sorting out the planning system in England and Wales and making sure that it does not become worse in Scotland. When can we expect clear planning policy guidance to be issued to local planning authorities to help to resolve the issue?

The hon. Gentleman is a powerful advocate for wind energy, with which we have much sympathy. While advocating guidance on wind energy, presumably he is a strong advocate for allowing local residents a large say in it. I do not suppose that the good burghers of Harrow on the Hill would be chuffed at the prospect of having a wind farm on top of the hill.

The good burghers of Harrow on the Hill and of Harrow, West have a sophisticated understanding of such issues. Planning difficulties would not be a factor in Harrow. The hon. Gentleman made a fair point that local residents need to be consulted. However, we must speed up the process and still make sure that people have their say. As for offshore wind sites, only 18 have been identified despite the considerable potential for more. Business interest in offshore wind has been much higher than expected— higher even than the excellent British Wind Energy Association predicted.

Even though the consents process has been compressed for offshore wind, each site is still likely to take more than 12 months to secure full planning consent. The process needs speeding up further. It

assumes that the Ministry of Defence has not objected to those particular wind farm sites. A key feature of our approach to sites for turbines has been to leave developers to find suitable sites themselves. The Ministry is understandably worried about the impact on radar and, if a technical solution cannot be found, surely the Government need to be more active in earmarking suitable offshore and onshore sites for wind farms.

Given the number of wind farm sites to which the MOD objects, the renewable industry's most paranoid minds have been wondering whether Don Quixote has not been reincarnated as Colonel Blimp, and whether the planning system has replaced Sancho Panza as the new modern weapon of war against windmills.

Does the hon. Gentleman share my worry about the sites that the MOD is now opposing? Its recent decision to oppose offshore as well as onshore wind farms and the fact that they cannot be constructed in areas of outstanding natural beauty or in national parks leaves little suitable wind-speed areas left. That means an overdevelopment of sites in areas such as mid-Wales, which is disproportionate to the amount of sites that should be placed there.

The potential disruption of radar is a serious issue. It is not a problem that can be taken lightly. Will my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary say what progress has been made in finding a technical solution? Either way, is it not time that the MOD had much better engagement with developers of renewables, so that we can stop the significant costs and wasted effort that an MOD objection late in the day to a wind farm proposal can cause?

I have been lucky enough to chair the parliamentary renewables group for several years. In March, some of us visited Germany to examine the reasons for the success of its renewables programme. In Schleswig-Holstein, where wind turbines are an accepted feature of the landscape, 1 per cent, of the state area has been specifically prioritised as wind farm sites. Only wind farms can be erected on them. Early identification of sites has stopped the planning blight that we have come to expect in Britain

Another reason for a less hands-off approach to site selection for offshore wind is that substantial wind farms will need to be located in much deeper waters, require more complex technology and, possibly, legislative time, and will certainly cost more initially. As I mentioned earlier, there will also be significant grid connection issues. In the light of our experience with onshore wind, a much more proactive approach to offshore wind farm sites is now needed. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Undersecretary can tell us when we might expect a strategy for

offshore wind farm sites.

I also was on the trip to Germany. I remind my hon. Friend that we were told in Schleswig-Holstein that the wind farms were a major tourism industry. There have been concerns about the effect on the landscape of both onshore and offshore wind farms, but people in Germany said that they provide clean energy and chime well with environmental concerns, and that tourism has increased.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is interesting that she makes that point. To allude to the intervention made by the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall), the people of Swaffham initially objected strongly to a very large turbine that was put up there. It is now an accepted and popular feature of the landscape and has helped to stimulate tourism in the area.

On that point, I do not know whether my hon. Friend is aware of the report produced by the central research unit of the Scottish Executive in August 2000 on public attitudes to wind farms in Scotland. The research found that respondents were generally positive about wind farms. Indeed, those who lived nearest to wind farms were actually more positive about them than those who lived farther away. Most interesting, although 40 per cent, of respondents anticipated problems prior to the development, only 9 per cent, remained concerned after the wind farms were put in place. In other words, the fears were not proven.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That survey offers genuine hope that the Bernard Inghams and others in the flat-earth brigade who oppose wind farms are losing the battle.

Another key institutional barrier for many smaller and medium-sized renewables developers has been the new electricity trading arrangements. I believe that it is now accepted that NETA has had a positive effect in reducing electricity prices overall, but its effect on intermittent generators such as wind power has been very serious, reducing significantly the income to those generators, stalling new development and increasing the risk identified by bankers for those wanting to invest in renewable energy.

To the DTI's credit, the former Energy Minister recognised the damage that NETA was about to do prior to its launch and asked Ofgem to carry out a review, which was published in September last year. It showed that there had been a huge drop in output of renewables plant. Carbon emissions were on the increase, as coal plant had replaced more environmentally benign plant, and not even the skilled operators of companies such as BP have been able to find a way through the new risk that Ofgem has unleashed in the energy market. In hindsight, it seems that NETA has been designed in glorious isolation from the Government's environmental goals—a classic case of unsustainable development and progress.

The PIU energy review recommended a series of transitional arrangements over and above those already under way to help small generators. They are to be implemented by January 2003. A concern that I flagged up in last week's debate on the preparations for Johannesburg is that, according to the Combined Heat and Power Association, which met with Mr. McCarthy and his officials a few days ago, Ofgem still does not seem to have any clear idea on the way forward. I hope that Ministers will give Ofgem a very clear steer that it has to sort out the problem.

My hon. Friend the Minister for Industry and Energy announced that the new electricity trading arrangements are to be extended to Scotland at the same time as the Scottish Executive is rolling out major plans :or wind turbines in Scotland. We need assurances that META's problems in England and Wales are not going to hamper the Scottish Executive's efforts to roll out its programme for wind. Given that there is a vacancy on :he Ofgem board, it and the Government can help by making sure that someone who understands renewable energy, rather than the traditional lawyer, accountant or dry economist, is appointed.

The final institutional barrier that needs urgently to t>e addressed is the way in which local distribution networks are organised and financed, because embedded generation has traditionally had difficulties in securing access to the grid without incurring huge additional costs. I hope that my hon. Friend the Undersecretary will be able to say something about how the recommendations of the embedded generation working group have been taken forward. That working group was an example of joined-up, cross-governmental work in which officials from the DTI and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs worked alongside industry representatives.

The PIU recommended an extension of such cross-departmental working through the creation of a sustainable energy unit. That would not be as good as a sustainable energy agency, but is, nevertheless, a significant step forward. I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will be able to say how progress is being made in establishing such a body.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas) on securing the debate, and agree with the case that he is making. Does he agree, however, that the Government should seek to support those who are promoting hydro-generation and that we should maximise all renewable sources of energy?

The hon. Gentleman is right. As I mentioned in my comments about funding, perhaps hydro sources will be included in a possible bid to the comprehensive spending review? I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister can enlighten us about that.

Lastly, I welcome the creation of Renewables UK, which is based in Aberdeen, to promote the British renewables industry. I hope that its brief can be extended to include other sustainable energy technologies such as combined heat and power. I hope that we will continue to see high-profile ministerial effort to encourage both national and international energy businesses to locate renewable energy plant, and in particular manufacturing plant, in the UK. At the moment, we have only one small wind turbine manufacturing plant, which has just been set up. Clearly there is massive potential for more plants of that sort.

In summary, renewable energy has massive potential in both our country and internationally to help tackle the problems of climate change, to increase the diversity and security of our domestic energy supply and to be the engine for new green business opportunities. We need to

be more ambitious if we are to seize the opportunities available to us. Although Ministers have taken a series of important steps, much more needs to be done.

Members should note that we intend to start the winding-up speeches at 12 o'clock.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas) on securing this important debate. I apologise to him for missing the first minute of his speech; that was because I was with Mr. Speaker. At school, the best excuse for missing the start of a lesson was to say that one was with the headmaster.

I want to draw Members" attention to my entry in the Register of Members' Interests. I recently attended the fourth inter-parliamentary meeting of the European Forum for Renewable Energy Sources at Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. I want to take this opportunity to learn one or two lessons from the expansion of renewable energy in Galicia. Those lessons will be apposite to another small, wet, green, hilly country on the west coast of Europe, namely Wales. What we saw in Galicia applies to the difficulties in expanding renewable energy in Wales, which, as the hon. Member for Harrow, West said, relate to planning and wind energy.

One of the first things to say in this regard is that 70 per cent, of wind energy expansion in Galicia has been funded, manufactured and maintained by local Galician businesses. That contrasts strongly with what the hon. Member for Harrow, West said about the very small manufacturing and maintenance industry for wind energy in the United Kingdom at the moment. There is a huge gap between the potential for an area such as Wales in expanding wind energy and biomass, which I will touch on later, and the manufacturing capability and the ability of our local businesses to benefit directly from that. If there were a better fit between the two, some of the public objections to the expansion of renewable energy, and wind energy in particular, could be overcome.

There were three main problems facing the expansion of wind energy in Galicia. The first was the question of interconnectivity and the reliability of the grid. That is a problem that we undoubtedly face in this country. Galicia overcame that by working hard with distribution companies. We still have to overcome that in the United Kingdom because there is a problem with NETA. I am concerned that we have not yet seen the environmental guidelines that were supposed to be issued to Ofgem, which would perhaps give them a better steer around some of those issues.

When we took evidence from the director general of Ofgem in the Environmental Audit Committee, it was clear that its view on the needs of future customers was a very narrow, commercial and market-led view that did not take into account the future needs of the customer base as a whole. One of the problems is that Ofgem has no environmental guidelines. The DTI has been preparing such guidelines, and I hope that the Undersecretary will tell us when they are issued.

The second issue that Galicia faced was that of environmental impact assessments for wind farms. It was particularly necessary to work out how they would

be applied to local communities. That has been worked out, and the people there now have a model for environmental impact assessments. I think that it would be useful if we could learn from places such as Galicia and Germany—I also visited Germany during the Environmental Audit Committee investigation into renewables—which also faced up to planning issues.

In my constituency, where the DTI has just approved the application for the largest wind farm in England and Wales, one of the complaints that I receive is that wind turbines are noisy. I was interested in that, and we visited a test site in Galicia for a new set of wind turbines, including one of similar size to those that will be constructed at Cefn Croes in Ceredigion. I took a quick film with a digital camera of the wind turbine turning so I could know how noisy it was. I could then put the film on the website and invite people in my constituency to log on and see how noisy the turbine was. However, that was not possible; the coach in which we had come up to the top of the mountain to view the turbine still had its engine running, and all I could hear was the engine of the coach. I could not hear the wind turbine, and I had to ask the driver to turn the engine off. Even after that, it was not noisy enough to register on a digital camera. There is a lot of misinformation about what a modern wind turbine is like. The more people who see them, visit them and have experience of them, the less some of the opposition will be.

The third issue faced in Galicia was that of local planning difficulties. That had been a very real problem, which was only overcome—as it was in Germany—by joint planning work by the local xunta in Galicia and the national Government in identifying upfront sites that would be suitable for wind farms. That is so different from the approach that we take in this country where we just open up the field and decide on a hit-and-miss basis whether a wind farm can go here or cannot go there. In the case of the Kielder forest development, we were waiting for more than eight years, until the Ministry of Defence objections on tactical training areas suddenly overturned the largest wind farm application in England. That brings into disrepute the Government's central strategy of meeting renewable targets.

In their review of the planning process, the Government have to consider how planning processes can be meshed at a local level so that local people have their say in the choosing of the site, but once those sites have been identified the process should flow more freely and openly. The success in Galicia means not only that 70 per cent, of their wind energy is funded and maintained by local businesses, but that they have 30 per cent, of Spain's complete, installed renewable energy wind capacity. As a region, Galicia itself ranks third or fourth in the world. The potential for Wales is along those lines.

Was the hon. Gentleman's experience in Galicia that the local political parties supported renewable energy and wind farms, or that they supported them only in principle—in a wider national sense—while opposing local developments for electoral advantage?

That is the hon. Gentleman's tangential way of asking whether I talked to Liberal Democrats in Galicia. The political parties that I spoke to were united in agreeing with the process that was

being undertaken. I could contrast that with the behaviour of political parties in Wales, where, with regard to Cefn Croes, they have tried to jump on the party political bandwagon, even though they espouse renewable energy policies nationally.

Wales clearly has the potential to contribute as a nation in the UK set-up. Galicia expects that, by 2010, 89 per cent, of its energy will be produced from renewables, together with biomass and solar energy. That would meet Spain's 12 per cent, renewable target, and Galicia is keen to meet the Spanish EU obligations by itself. It knows the benefit that that would bring to Galician business and to the region's economy.

It is worth noting that Galicia also has an expanding tourist economy, and the point made by the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) is relevant. I hope that the Under-Secretary will say what work the Government will undertake to ensure that the expansion of wind energy and renewables does not affect tourism. I hope that the Government are considering the issue, so that they can disprove the myths that are around.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that renewable energy is not an end in itself? The purpose of pursuing renewable strategies and initiatives is to moderate or eliminate climate change, and thereby protect wildlife diversity and landscapes. It is important that we ensure that renewable projects to do not destroy the features that we are keen to preserve.

I agree, with the major caveat that I would not put landscape in the same category as biodiversity. A wind turbine can be easily dismantled so that it does not greatly affect the landscape. The hon. Gentleman may be aware of a big project to build on the mountains between Tregaron and Abergwesyn, and I was concerned about one of the landscape considerations. There is a Neolithic cairn in the area, and some landscape experts said that we should preserve the landscape as Neolithic man would have seen it. That is absolute nonsense, because we need the landscape to work for the benefit of local people. People in Tregaron remember the living, working landscape, on which there were many small farms and sheep, before the conifers came. The hon. Gentleman will know what I mean from his own experience in Powys. We must therefore be careful not to put landscape considerations above climate change considerations.

I agree that biodiversity is important, but I have seen no significant effect on biodiversity from renewables projects. I specifically asked about bird strikes at the wind test site in Galicia, and I was told that there had not been one verifiable bird strike on the whole test range. There are many myths about the effect of wind energy and wind farm development on biodiversity.

I shall conclude with a few words on biofuels. On 21 May, I, and other members of European Standing Committee A, discussed two draft directives on biofuels. The targets directive dealt with the promotion of biofuels for transport, and the second directive dealt with the possibility of a reduced rate of excise duty on

certain biofuels. I hope that the Under-Secretary will have something to say about them. The targets directive is important, and I support it.

However, we need mandatory targets rather than indicative ones; the second directive, on the rate of biofuel tax, is potentially very damaging to biofuels in this country. It would link the rate that the member state was allowed to levy on biofuels to the duty rates for mineral fuels, mainly oil. That would be damaging. We have a high diesel levy. If we linked our biodiesel levy to that, it could damage expansion of biofuels in the UK.

I visited a bioethanol plant that was about to open in Galicia. There, when it was decided to make such a major investment, it was also decided to have a 0 per cent, rate on biofuels. The directive would make a 0 per cent, levy on biofuels illegal in European law; it would have to be a minimum of 50 per cent, of the conventional rate on fuels, and that would be destructive to biofuels in the UK.

I hope that the Under-Secretary will say something about the recent announcement of new money for biomass power stations for the United Kingdom. I declare an interest, as a chair of the working group on biomass in Ceredigion. A small CHP has opened for the Llandysul leisure centre, but I would welcome the ability to open a real power station, perhaps in the Aberystwyth area, powered by crops grown by local fanners and giving electricity and light to the people of the district. I hope that the Under-Secretary will say something about the opportunities opened up by recent announcements.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas) on securing the debate, who is so actively interested in renewables. In contributing to this debate, I want to refer to something different because he has, as I knew that he would, given a comprehensive review of renewables and of what is required.

I want to concentrate on people who suffer a great energy deficit; those in developing countries. I recommend to everybody the consultation document "Energy for the Poor", issued by the Department for International Development, from which I am going to quote. The countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, according to the most recent survey, consumed 54 per cent, of commercial primary energy, compared with 12 per cent, in transitional countries, 11 per cent, in China and 23 per cent, in other developing countries. Slightly more than 1 billion people in industrialised countries consumed about 54 per cent, of total conventional energy supply, whereas 5 billion others consumed the remaining 46 per cent. To meet the basic cooking needs of the 2 million people who are not served by modern fuels would take no more than 1 per cent, of global conventional energy consumption.

The fact that poor people have to spend a substantial part of their income to meet any energy needs at all means that even small changes in the price of fuel can put people into or out of poverty. Particularly in remote areas, switching to local energy supplies can reduce costs for the poor. They could also benefit from lower energy costs if new, clean energy technologies were to be

encouraged worldwide. If we were to move to the larger volumes of manufacture that we, in the developed world, also need, we could bring down the cost of that technology. That would be of enormous advantage to people in developing countries.

In order to warrant increased volume of manufacture, the demand for such technologies needs to be increased here, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West has indicated. The G8 renewable energy task force recognises that the fastest way in which to increase demand and deployment of the renewable energy technologies is to increase their use in developed countries, thus bringing down the cost and making them more affordable. However, other mechanisms are equally important, particularly so as we prepare for the summit on sustainable development in Johannesburg.

In my brief speech, I want to focus on the role of export credit agencies, which are the main public financiers of energy projects that contribute to climate change. Such projects often result in environmental devastation and destruction of local communities worldwide. ECAs remain a clear case of lack of coherence between trade and environmental policies throughout the European Union. EU export credits benefit but a few large multinational companies while fostering unsustainable development outside EU borders. The United Kingdom Export Credits Guarantee Department is, I am sorry to say, no exception.

I refer hon. Members to early-day motion 1299, which calls for action for clean energy at the world summit on sustainable development. It

"supports the Choose Positive Energy Campaign spearheaded by The Body Shop International and Greenpeace, which aims to secure a commitment"—

from world leaders at the Johannesburg summit—

"to deliver clean, renewable energy to two billion people in the world without access to electricity services, within 10 years".

The early-day motion

"further notes that the Export Credit Guarantee Department has facilitated the construction of fossil fuel projects in the developing world that cumulatively contribute 13.3 million tonnes of carbon to the earth's atmosphere every year."

Clearly, change is necessary. It is also a duty. I refer to a briefing from the international co-ordinator of Friends of the Earth's climate change campaign, which says:

"As part of the Marrakech accords, adopted at the 7th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change last November, governments agreed that export credit agencies specifically should support the global transfer of climate-friendly technologies."

The ECGD should already be acting in accordance with that framework convention on climate change.

Energy modellers say that reducing emissions to a level that would avoid dangerous climate change without relying on the widespread use of nuclear power would require that energy efficiency be maximised and renewable energy account for at least 40 per cent, of global energy consumption by 2050, and 80 per cent, by 2100. The deployment of sustainable energy technologies such as renewable energy and energy efficiency is desperately needed to avoid further accumulation of the devastating environmental and social impacts already associated with fossil fuels, large dams and nuclear power.

However, this has not yet impacted on the strategy of our ECGD or other ECAs throughout Europe. Predictions by the International Energy Agency suggest that renewable energy will represent only 3 per cent, of global primary energy mix by 2020 if the business-as-usual investment trends continue. Again, it is obvious that change must come. In that context, organisations such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and WWF are all bringing pressure to bear on ECAs to change their means of operation. They have recently sent a letter requiring that ECAs should allocate 20 per cent, of their energy portfolios to the support of sustainable energy.

Globe UK, of which I am the chair, and Globe Europe have been more modest in demanding 10 per cent. Whether the target is 10 or 20 per cent.—I hope that we support the larger target—it is apparent that a strategy needs to be developed if we are to help developing countries out of their dire poverty, of which energy is an essential part, and devise sustainable means of energy use for them.

Friends of the Earth International, Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund have specifically called for the funding of fossil fuels, large dams and nuclear power to be phased out, starting with an immediate cessation of all funding for export-oriented fossil fuel extraction projects, nuclear power and dams that do not meet the standards of the World Commission on Dams, as well as any other projects that do not receive prior informed consent from local communities in developing countries.

It has been suggested that taking such a "dark green" attitude is a means of imposing western values on developing countries that are desperately poor in energy. However, I would suggest that we are trying to give the developing world the best of our technology to increase production of that technology and therefore lower its cost in such a way that people in developing countries will have real choice and be able to choose the sustainable energy sources and production that are most relevant to their own needs.

That view is echoed in the 2001 report of the G8 renewable energy taskforce. The report called upon export credit agencies to identify criteria to assess the local and global environmental impacts of energy projects and establish minimum standards of energy efficiency and carbon intensity. The report noted that simply supporting renewable energy is not enough; subsidies for conventional energy must be reduced simultaneously.

I appreciate that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary does not have a direct responsibility for this area. However, I would press on her the need for Government thinking, as we have so often said, to be joined-up. There is a real connection between our need in the developed world to tackle the most critical environmental question of climate change and the needs of developing countries to emerge from poverty and to have fuel sources appropriate to their needs. There are also the needs of our own manufacturing industry. All of those can be brought together in a win-win situation. I ask the Under-Secretary to discuss with her colleagues in DFID how overseas development money should be spent, and with the ECGD what support should be given to the export of energy sources.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas) on securing the debate. The subject is significant and will become even more so in the years to come. I acknowledge, too, that he has been a long-standing supporter of renewable energy, even when it was much less fashionable than it is today.

I like to think that the hon. Gentleman may have received some encouragement for his view when he was, in the previous Parliament, a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, of which I have the honour to be the Chairman. He would be interested to know, if I can give a short promo for the Committee's work, that we are about to produce a report on renewable energy, with all the trenchancy, realism and action-oriented values that I am sure Conservative Members would acknowledge are characteristic of that Committee. I am sure that he will support that report and ask for a debate on it when it is published.

He is right to say, as other hon. Members have said, that the prime driver for an interest in the expansion of renewable energy is climate change. A report brought out today by the United Nations and introduced by Mr. Klaus Topfer, the executive director of the United Nations environment programme, reinforces the point about climate change. It predicts a surge in the incidence of wars, famine and other catastrophes linked to humanity's over-exploitation of nature. The report is apparently rather apocalyptic in tone; I have not yet seen it, as it came out only this morning. It considers what has been achieved in the past 30 years—not very much—and offers a look at the 30 years ahead. It also includes the global environmental outlook that is produced every year, and clearly shows that we should be cautious about the way in which we are developing our economic policies.

Clearly, the second main driver is the run-down in our own sources of energy. For example, nuclear power produces 25 per cent, of our energy resources but is predicted to provide only 3 per cent, by 2020. That is a huge reduction in an emissions-free source of energy. As we know, production of oil and gas is beginning to decline, and the United Kingdom—having been a big exporter of those commodities—will become a major importer over the next 20 years. Coal is now a minor player. Whatever view one takes of the role of nuclear power, a huge gap is undoubtedly opening up in the energy market. Renewables will be an essential means of filling it.

Thirdly, we should sensibly exploit our own resources. As the hon. Member for Harrow, West and others said, we have the largest resources for renewables of any nation in western Europe; many times larger than those of other countries. It would be foolish to ignore that in a future energy scenario. I am not overly convinced by arguments about security of supply, because countries such as Japan, Germany and even the USA are heavily dependent on outside sources of energy. However, we have an opportunity to exploit our resources sensibly.

Finally, we should consider the question of technological advance. The Environmental Audit Committee recently had the opportunity to talk to the ecology committee of the Russian Duma. The Russians

are in a sensitive position because now that America has pulled out of Kyoto, they are a key element in getting worldwide ratification. If they do not ratify, the treaty will probably not be ratified by the world as a whole. They are in a lynchpin position.

The Russians find the question of climate change debatable; perhaps because they have a large country and can afford to take a more phlegmatic view than smaller countries such as Galicia or Wales. They asked us what point there was to the renewables proposals if no account was taken of climate change, and we suggested that renewables and the precautionary approach to climate change could create a good business situation. It could be a win-win situation from a technology point of view. A country such as Russia needs to take account of the obvious technological gains that countries such as Denmark and Germany are making because of their positive attitude to renewable energy.

Those are the four key reasons why it is right to take a strong approach to renewable energy. As the hon. Member for Harrow, West candidly admitted, the Government are taking a timid approach to the opportunity. They have not satisfactorily addressed the planning situation, which hon. Members acknowledge is crucial and could be a major stumbling block. As we discovered from the EAC visit to Germany, there is a possibility of a different approach, given careful Government analysis. There are parts of the United Kingdom that would welcome wind farms, whereas other parts would not. As a Member representing London, I know that it would be difficult to get planning permission for wind farms in my constituency, but in other parts of the country they might contribute to the economy without unnecessarily damaging the environment. Some Government steer would be in order to help the problem along.

There is also the problem of the new electricity trading arrangements—NETA—which the Government have not yet tackled. As the hon. Gentleman rightly said, NETA has had a favourable effect on price and eliminated inefficient producers, but it has also had a devastating effect on investment. That is a serious problem for small renewable producers. We do not want in this country a situation similar to that which occurred in California, whereby investment is so devastated that we are short of power and suffer blackouts as a consequence. NETA needs to be considered, after the short period in which it has run fully.

There is also the question of picking winners. The Government seem extraordinarily reluctant to take a view, but if they do not pick winners they may end up picking losers by default. Finally, the PIU report was disappointing. It was trumpeted as a major and significant review of this important matter, but it was bland, stated obvious facts that we all knew and was complacent. I fear that the Government may be reacting complacently and I urge them to look at the need for action during the next 12 months when many issues will come together, including the NETA review planning. They should look at their own plans in the light of the comprehensive spending review, and I echo the hon. Member for Harrow, West in wanting to see serious action-oriented policy during the next six months.

I am delighted to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam), who has great expertise—much greater than I have—in the matter. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas) on securing this important debate, which would have been the preserve of the beards and sandals brigade 10 or 15 years ago. I may have retained the beard, but I am now shod more appropriately. The fact that the subject is now discussed seriously shows its importance.

Our energy policy has been guided by various factors: initially economic, but increasingly environmental and social, including the alleviation of fuel poverty. My hon. Friend the Member for Orpington also referred to security of supply. We are more aware of climate change and global warming and we must address the problem seriously. With reference to the flat earth brigade, whenever there is a cold snap, someone says, "Global warming; what global warming? It's a load of rubbish. Winters are colder or wetter" and so on. That is a short-term view, and it is becoming increasingly well established that climate change is a serious problem, although some people still deny its existence.

One of the problems—if it can be called a problem—is that competition in the energy market has resulted in increased consumption, and I have noticed that even in my family. When I was a young lad, I was always being told to switch off lights and so on, but there seems to be less awareness of that now. That results from price rather than awareness of the need to use less energy. The Home Energy Conservation Bill, which is currently going through Parliament, now includes targets—I hope the Government will allow those targets to remain in the Billand will have a positive effect.

Another problem that has been mentioned, particularly by the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas), is that there are many urban myths, as well as rural myths, about renewable energy. It is not 100 per cent. environmentally friendly and it would be foolish to say that it is. I was pleased to hear about the experience of bird strikes in Galicia. Some hon. Members have a great interest in biodiversity, and particularly birds, although the matter is not clear cut.

I was also pleased to hear about Galicia, where the bull has been taken by the horns—that may be the wrong phrase to use in a Spanish context—and there have been some achievements. All political parties there have taken the matter on board. It is vital that all interest groups, including political parties, put aside ideological and short-term interests. My comments to my neighbour, the hon. Member for Harrow, West about Harrow on the Hill—I can see the spire from my home—may have been flippant, but, understandably, there will always be some nimbyism, of which we are all sometimes guilty. However, we must put those interests aside in a genuine effort to identify a strategy that is on balance likely to deliver the greatest benefits overall. That will be achieved only by political commitment at the highest levels sustained over a period of time. I believe that not only hon. Members but an increasing number of our constituents expect that from the Government.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas) on his work not only for the debate but over several years in promoting renewable energy and bringing it to the forefront of thinking in Parliament and elsewhere. He left some interesting and powerful challenges and questions for the Under-Secretary, and I want to leave enough time for her to respond. I hope that if she finds some of his questions too difficult to answer today, she will supply answers subsequently to hon. Members.

Energy policy is pivotal to the future prosperity of the UK economy and to the sustainability of the UK environment. That is why it is so important to develop a strong renewable energy industry to respond to our energy needs.

There are two key arguments. A successful modern economy needs access to reliable and affordable power in the long term. The hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) mentioned conservation and switching off lights. Although much work needs to be done to promote the efficient use of the energy that is available, the production of energy from a renewable source is extremely important.

We need to ensure that the power that we produce is sustainable not only economically, with the right price over the right interval of time, but environmentally. The hon. Member for Harrow, West and others pointed out the opportunities and difficulties that exist for the UK. Hon. Members will agree that he gave an informed and realistic critique of the issues that we face. The entire debate so far has been commendably free of motherhood and apple pie, even though it relates to a matter that was until a little while ago a fringe activity.

There seems to be a gap in the Government's thinking and planning: they have their own energy gap, between the talk and the action. I hope that the Under-Secretary will assure us that they are determined to bridge it.

The Government garnered a great deal of praise because of their leading role in developing the Kyoto agreement. Indeed, they almost boasted about it. Yet in parallel they introduced a gas moratorium. They have taken the credit for getting rid of the non-fossil fuel obligation and substituting the climate change levy, yet we have had the NETA and their impact on the combined heat and power industry.

The Government talk about the need for social and environmental guidelines to inform how the energy market is run. In November, I was told that such guidelines were likely to be issued in January. I have not asked recently, but it may be next January. Meanwhile, Ofgem resists applying any implied social or environmental guidelines and is rigidly stuck on a strict market interpretation of its role and functions. I have challenged its director on several occasions. He makes the point that if the Government wanted him to apply social and environmental guidelines, they would issue them. I therefore hope that we shall hear that those are in the post to Ofgem even as I speak.

We have had the PIU's energy review, which has been dismissed this morning as bland and stating the obvious. It may have stated the obvious for many of us participating in the debate, but for many people outside, its conclusions were not necessarily obvious. It points in the right direction. It could have been bolder, more succinct or more determined in its recommendations. However, I criticise not the PIU report but what flowed from it—the key issues for consultation, which were issued a couple of weeks ago. On close reading, I find that they include basically every question that was in the PIU review, unqualified by any opinion, additional fact or perspective on where we might go next.

The consultation period is commendably long compared with all the other consultations, which are issued on 1 August and we have to reply by 31 August. However, it is so open-ended that one fears that yet another innovative project has been put on the back-burner, and that little more will be heard of it. Again, the talk is strong, and the action weak.

The renewables obligation has been delivered to us. I was delighted when it came before the House as a statutory instrument, but I was not delighted that the proposals for the renewables obligation to be an escalator beyond 2010 were not accepted, as that would have made a lot of sense. Although we have an escalating requirement for the use of renewables, it stops at 2010. The hon. Member for Harrow, West made a good point about the need to extend those targets beyond that date not because they are a threat to industry, but because they provide a framework for future investment. If we wait until 2005, 2006 or 2007 to set those targets, investment will never catch up.

Like the hon. Members for Harrow, West and for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock), I went on the trip to Germany. We discovered that although we have installed 60 MW of wind power in the past year, Germany has installed 2000 MW. It has designated offshore areas, and has taken a route that enables development to take place, rather than one that prevents it. The UK has a small number of photovoltaics. We shall have perhaps 5,000 by 2005; Germany will have 140,000.

The Government's talk about renewable energy being a vital issue with top priority can be somewhat discounted when we realise that there have been four different Energy Ministers in the past five years and that four Departments—DTI, DEFRA, the Treasury and DTLR—have responsibility for different fragments. There is talk of vigorous expansion, but there is a muddle about making onshore and offshore developments. We cannot even agree about net metering, although many countries in Europe and across the Atlantic are doing it as a matter of course.

Ministers have talked the talk, and today we would like to hear the Under-Secretary say that she intends to walk the walk. Could we have some co-ordination, put a sustainable energy policy in place, rescue CHP and get wind power going properly? Will the Government also invest in energy conservation? It is possible to prepare the UK to meet not just our 2010 targets but sensible targets beyond then. As soon as they are announced, industry can start to provide the investment that can deliver not only the targets but access to the expanding international market for renewables. There is deep frustration—and an overheated planet—out there; I hope that the Under-Secretary will respond to that.

I echo the congratulations to the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas), who has been in the forefront of such debates. I have always thought of him as a rather forward-looking person, but there were moments in his speech when I thought that I was facing a hybrid creature a cross between a dinosaur, an ostrich and Mr. Angry—across Westminster Hall. I am sure that he will take that in the spirit in which it is intended.

The hon. Gentleman can be forgiven a little party political taunting, but it was the Government of my noble Friend Lady Thatcher that funded the research that discovered the hole in the ozone layer in the first place. It was her Government, and that of my former right hon. Friend John Major, that led the way to Rio and all that followed. It is ridiculous to make the assertion that he made; as if anyone would believe it. May we have less Millbank spin, please?

Of course we are not ashamed of what we achieved. If there had not been the liberalisation of markets that began under the Thatcher Government, we would not be in our current position of leading all European countries in the energy market and energy consumerism. It is important to recognise that, when we consider renewables, we should take it for granted that we are all in favour of them because their first objective is to tackle climate change and carbon emissions. That straightforward objective is sometimes mixed, to say the least.

The hon. Member for Harrow, West talked about NETA. I was interested that he believes that no lawyers, accountants or dry economists should have anything to do with renewable energy; I am a dry economist, I suppose. We should be more realistic about the problems, and I shall concentrate my remarks on practical impact.

As several hon. Members said, the Government are pepper-potting or adopting a scattergun approach on renewables and carbon emissions. We must firmly focus on carbon emissions. Neither the United Kingdom nor the European Union are single-mindedly dedicated to reducing carbon emissions. The processes and tax structures in place throughout the European Union are a strange mixture. That is, however, a bit wide of the mark for this debate.

It is important to reinforce the point made by the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) that the Government are in a bit of a muddle. The recent consultation paper adds to that muddle and to the sense of confusion. We do not believe that the Government know what they are doing when they publish a consultation paper that is a list of more than 100 questions that arise from the previous PIU report, which was only an internal report to the Government. It is scandalous that the Government have not made time available for a debate on the Floor of the House on this important issue. How are we to reflect the wide range of views of our constituents and organisations if we cannot have such a debate? I hope that we shall not have to wait for that debate until January next year when the White Paper will be launched; that date has slipped from the autumn.

The consultation paper is the latest in a long line of papers that raise an enormous number of issues, and summarises questions from the PIU report. However, we should discuss the strategies that the Government must put in place. Doing nothing or dithering is not an option because that would delay important investment decisions that should be taken now.

Perhaps the most important decision to be taken about renewable energy is on security of supply, which is a huge problem. Intermittent generation is inevitable and we must react to that problem positively. NETA has not done that; it is part of the problem, not part of the solution. I sympathise with the criticism of Ofgem; the director is doing his job and the Government have not told him to do it any differently.

Different approaches to the security of supply of existing renewables occur throughout the world. Last year, the regulator in New Zealand had to deal with a substantial drop in water levels. The previous winter had been very dry and the supply squeeze was greater than that in California during the previous year. The market was allowed to work in New Zealand. Price signals were sent to consumers, demand decreased and there were no blackouts. Lake levels have now recovered and, consequently, prices have fallen. Such market flexibility must exist.

Many trading tactics that worsened the supply crisis in California were a consequence of the exploitation of regulatory interventions by market participants. Many interventions such as capacity requirements and congestion payments were designed to protect the security of supply but, ultimately, they had the opposite effect. If the interventions had not existed, the crisis would have been less severe. Security of supply is best achieved by allowing markets to work and intervening only if there is clear market failure and if the cost of that failure outweighs the cost of regulatory fixes.

Many people who are involved in renewables remain worried about the renewables obligation. They believe that we can work our way through it, but the current potential for renewable generation is the real problem. It is limited. I should love to join those who are absolutely determined that, come what may, we will achieve our 2005. 2010 and 2020 targets. However, we must be realistic and note the advice from those who have to produce the technology, such as turbines for wind power. I have been told by a serious source that we would have to construct two wind turbines a day for 20 years to achieve such targets. That is a long shot. The British Wind Energy Association is doing a tremendous promotion job. I was interested to read a comment from Nick Goodall of the BWEA. He said that NETA

"has, as predicted, shown itself to be a profoundly flawed system … that does little to create confidence in intermittent, distributed and small-scale generation."

He is right. Like so many people. he said that planning is one of the main problems.

I wish to concentrate on some of the problems that we are facing. It is not really fair, because the matter is not the Under-Secretary's particular remit; will she be kind enough to write to me about the point that I am about to make? Yesterday, the Minister for Industry and Energy issued a press release from the Scottish islands about crofting law and the impact on crofting of wind energy. He said:

"If crofting law did not exist in the Highlands and Islands then it would have to be invented for this purpose. Crofting communities are entitled by law to half the development value of projects which take place on their land. That is a principle which could usefully be applied throughout the UK if we are serious about winning acceptance for renewable projects…It is a message which should not be lost on the industry, or indeed on landowners elsewhere in the country. If they want support for their projects, they should offer something in return."

If that is a new statement of the Government's policy, it needs clarifying quickly.

In terms of landowners, the current rate of return for royalties is put at about 2 per cent. of gross revenue. It is a standard figure that perhaps the Duchy of Cornwall would expect if wind farms were constructed on its sites. However, if the Minister for Industry and Energy is seriously proposing that the figure should increase to 50 per cent., he will kill stone dead most wind energy and renewables projects. I should be grateful to receive clarification of whether the press release represents a new policy of the Government or a new approach from the Department of Trade and Industry.

Communities feel strongly about such issues. It is no good calling them nimbys. They are not. Ordinary people are seeking straightforward answers to difficult questions. Let us consider the Isle of Arran, in the constituency of the Minister for Industry and Energy. I have had an interesting flow of e-mails and telephone calls with its community. A pyrolysis plant has been proposed for the island. It has received outline planning permission, but there is a dearth of information about it. The Minister has made some inflammatory comments to his constituents about the bubonic plague being imported to the island. Nevertheless, genuine questions have been asked. If we want communities to accept pyrolysis plants or wind farms, we need upfront information and straightforward facts so that fears can be put to rest.

Another problem area is the Cefn Croes farm in the constituency of the Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Thomas). A planted question on today's Order Paper from the hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) asks when the Secretary of State

"will take her decision on the application to build a windfarm at Cefn Croes".

I am sure that such a decision has been made. It has been a hugely controversial problem for the hon. Member for Ceredigion.

There are other areas in which the Government could do more, one of which is geothermal heating. This concerns the interesting matter of building loops that incorporate heat rejecters and boilers to dissipate excess heat and to add heat respectively in extreme conditions. It is more efficient than conventional air conditioning and heating installations. There is also the ground source heat pump when the ground, lake or sea is used as a heat source or a heat sink to eliminate the need for a heat rejecter and boiler. Heat can be extracted efficiently via the heat pump from ground temperatures as low as minus 4 deg C. Such technologies exist. The heat pump technology is up and running in Chesterfield, and Chesterfield borough council has taken a lead in that at the Dunston innovation centre, a three-storey office complex.

There are questions to be asked about roof installations. Powertech Solar Ltd. in Ferndown wants to know why, although we are talking about £20 million of funding for the solar power initiative, the solar energy system does not attract support. Those are different kinds of energy; solar power is photovoltaic, but solar energy is panels on roofs. I could offer further examples. For instance, the Association of Coal Mine Methane Operators is worried because the industry is so tightly restricted.

Progress is being made, but it is piecemeal. That is the problem. If we have to wait for another six months before we have a White Paper, and only then move to legislation, that will be too long; it would lead to the postponement of investment decisions that need to be taken now.

We wish the Government well, but we want to ensure that they go faster and further, and that they are better informed and take people with them on this great quest that—it is important to remember—has the objective of cutting down carbon emissions to stem global climate change.

The debate is taking place at a turning point in the development of renewable energy in this country. At present, less than 3 per cent. of electricity that is generated in the UK comes from renewable sources. Much of it comes from traditional large hydro, despite a growing contribution from other sources, such as wind, biomass and small-scale hydro.

We are now implementing a policy that will advance renewable energy much more quickly than in the past, make a significant renewables contribution to our energy supplies in the coming decade and beyond, and contribute to meeting our Kyoto targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The centrepiece of our policy is the renewables obligation. It came into force on 1 April 2002. It requires electricity suppliers in England, Wales and Scotland to provide a specified proportion of their sales from renewable sources each year for 25 years. That proportion rises each year until 2010, and our target is that 10 per cent. of sales will come from eligible sources by that year.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas) on securing the debate. There is much interest in the subject, and the Government welcome the opportunity to address it.

The 10 per cent. target that we have set is challenging. There is long way to go and we need to get there Quickly but we believe that the target is achievable through the strategy that we have developed. We expect that renewables will contribute more than 10 per cent. a year after 2010. The PIU review suggested that the targets for beyond 2010 should be considered after progress on the obligation has been examined in 2005–06. The figure of 20 per cent. for 2010 is important because of the impact of the cost of electricity to the consumer.

Will the Under-Secretary give way?

No. I am sorry, but I have only eight minutes left in which to respond to a lengthy debate, in which many points were raised.

Planning is always regarded as the bugbear of renewables projects—and of wind farms in particular and it has much concerned hon. Members in the debate. Renewables generally have had about the same success rate as other planning applications in the past decade or so, although the success rate has decreased recently, and is varied by technology.

Achieving our renewables targets means that more renewables generators will be built, and it is not good enough simply to pay lip service to the environment, and oppose sensible action that would help to tackle its problems. There is bound to be some impact on the countryside but, as always, a balance must be struck, and the key is to get public opinion on our side. I agree with the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) that that is important.

Sensitive design can make a great difference to a proposed project's reception. Developers know the public's main objections by now, and they can go a long way towards ameliorating matters through their designs. That may not be the whole answer, but it is certainly an important aspect that developers need to take into account. The public are hugely supportive of renewable energy in principle several hon. Members made that point—and we need to harness that support in practice.

The Government will produce revised planning guidance for renewables, and a draft is expected to be ready for consultation in the next few months. The equivalent guidelines for Scotland have already been revised, and we shall certainly consider them as a model for the future. We are also allocating £2.5 million to support planners and local decision makers on renewables, and we have allocated £10 million to support community-based renewables.

Applications to build larger-scale projects over 50 MW in England and Wales are approved by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Many such projects, are in the consents process in Scotland, where such consents are devolved, and in England and Wales. In all, large-scale projects with a total capacity of about 800 MW are seeking consent. Many are wind energy projects, and about half the applications are in Scotland. That gives a good idea of how the introduction of the renewables obligation and the other support that we have introduced is accelerating the drive towards cleaner energy.

I wish to deal with some of the points on planning guidance issues that my hon. Friend and others raised. The Government's national planning policy in England on renewable energy is set out in PPG22, which gives local planning authorities guidance on the issues that affect the siting of all renewable energy projects. Work has already started to revise PPG22. The Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions aims to finalise the consultation draft during the summer and to publish a final version next spring. It will underline the key role that planning must play in supporting renewable energy targets.

As several hon. Members mentioned, planning is a significant issue, and a major hurdle for many projects, but regional resources estimates, supported by the Government, suggest that though challenging, our target is achievable. The key is to get public opinion on our side, and developers have a major role. We have also allocated additional funds to achieve further support.

On the DTI bid for renewables in the comprehensive spending review, I am sure that my hon. Friend and other hon. Members appreciate that it is not appropriate to reveal figures when in the middle of discussions with the Treasury. However, the Department gives a high priority to renewables, and we are discussing with the Treasury how that should be reflected in future allocations. We have already increased the budget substantially, including an extra £10 million for blue skies research only last year. We have agreed that more money is needed for photovoltaics in the longer term, and we have just launched the first phase of the DTI major photovoltaics demonstration programme, which is worth £20 million in the next three years. We are also working with the industry on an offshore deployment strategy, but we are not clear that grid connection is the right way forward. I may briefly come back to that later.

On other support measures, renewables are exempt from the climate change levy and, by 2010, the market for ROCs—renewable obligation certificates—will be about £1 billion a year. If we add the value of the electricity itself, including that outside the scope of the obligation, and the value of the climate change levy exemption, we anticipate a total market value for renewable energy of somewhere between £1.5 billion and £2 billion a year by 2010. That is a significant step change for renewables and a massive opportunity for British industry and investors.

The Government recognise the different rates of development of renewable energy technologies. The most commercial technologies will benefit significantly from the renewables obligation, while those that are at the demonstration stage—for example, offshore wind, energy crops and solar photovoltaics--need additional support to bring them to market. Other technologies such as wave and tidal energy need more research and development and prototype testing to work through any remaining engineering problems.

In all, the Government are providing more than £260 million in the next three years through grants and research and development support. That substantial support will bring forward the next generation of renewable energy technologies. I agree with hon. Members that we need to deal with the matter energetically.

I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks that we are at a turning point. By that, I meant that we are moving into a new phase of deployment of renewable energy, with the emphasis now very much on the industry taking forward its plans and utilising all the Government support available. We are pleased to say that the industry is responding well to our initiatives. A good example is offshore wind energy. My hon. Friend the Minister for Industry and Energy announced only a few weeks ago consent for a 76 MW capacity offshore wind farm off the coast at Great Yarmouth. This will be the UK's largest wind farm so far.

He also announced the establishment of Renewables UK, a business support team based in Aberdeen, to maximise UK potential in the supply chain. We now have 19 offshore wind energy projects that have obtained leases of the seabed from the Crown estate, which is the first step in taking forward such projects. The offshore wind energy capital grants scheme is twice oversubscribed. We have received bids for more than 2,000 MW of capacity offshore, which seek some £160 million of grant support. That compares with the £74 million available from the DTI and the new opportunities fund. We agreed that grant provision from the two complementary programmes will be closely co-ordinated and that there will be a single point of access to the process.

The Government's role is to ensure that interest and momentum are maintained and that ambitions can be fulfilled. For offshore wind farms, we need a vision of how larger offshore developments than those envisaged could progress over the next few years.

Order. We must move on to the next debate.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on this subject. I shall begin with a few observations about the state of politics, and particularly party politics in Britain today.

By general agreement there is a crisis of trust in politicians and of respect for parties. In a MORI poll published today, 85 per cent. of the British people say that they do not trust a Minister to tell the truth. Lest hon. Members think that I am making a partisan point, the figures are scarcely better for the Conservative and Liberal Democrat spokesmen. Trust in political parties is also at rock bottom. In 1974, 39 per cent. of people trusted Governments to put the interests of the nation above the party. According to a long-running survey of British social attitudes, which has asked the same question every couple of years since 1974, the figure has now fallen to 16 per cent.

My first observation about the loss of trust makes my second observation particularly ironic. During my five years as an MP, I have come to the conclusion that, contrary to public perception, it would be difficult to find a group of 659 people more dedicated and less corrupt than my fellow MPs. I doubt that any country in the world is less corruptly served by its elected politicians.

My subsequent observations will try to explain the paradox of the first two. The behaviour of parties, particularly the way in which they fund themselves, is a major cause of mistrust in politics. Allocations of cash for favours predate the election of Labour, but the latest rash has been especially severe: Bernie Ecclestone with his £1 million donation; the Mittal scandal; the Hinduja affair; the Enron donation; and now, PowderJect and Richard Desmond.

Then there is the trafficking of honours, which we all know is happening. Perhaps the Conservatives were at it too, but I thought that Labour was going to clean it up, that is until their lordships Bragg, Gavron, Haskins and the rest collected their red cloaks—all are big Labour donors. No wonder that the public think that politics stinks; perhaps it does.

One reason why the parties need to find money, and why the stench has got stronger, is that the once broad base of party funding from individual membership is collapsing. Mass parties are dying. In their 1950s heyday, 4 million people made an annual sub to one of the major parties, and that excluded subs paid through unions. Today, the number is 400,000, which is one tenth. The plain fact is that the major parties are bust, skint and in debt. Both businesses and individuals have simply stopped giving to, or even joining, parties.

I am led to several broad conclusions. First, British party politics, as we have known it—based on mass party activism and having a broad funding base is history. Both the major parties, but particularly Labour, have to scrape around in unsavoury barrels to make ends meet. Accepting tainted donations has put a stench into the nostrils of the electorate. Party politics simply cannot carry on in that way. We must clean up our act.

I am saying nothing new, although I have not heard our respective party leaders making these points so starkly. None the less, both the previous Conservative Government and the Labour Government have tried to do something about it. They have responded in the same way with two sorts of measure.

First, they have introduced more transparency of donations, the so-called shareholder requirements for corporate donations and the disclosure provisions. Secondly, they have sought to bolster public confidence in politicians by creating respectable, independent-minded, sleaze-busting committees. There is a long list: Downey gave way to Filkin; Nolan gave way to Neill; and we now have Wicks. There is also the Electoral Commission. The trouble, which is not commonly perceived, is that all those initiatives are making the problem worse.

Taking the disclosure provisions first, it is often said that sunlight is the best disinfectant, but in this case disinfectant is killing the patient. Very few public companies even try to obtain shareholder approval for a donation to a political party, so that source of funds is drying up. That leaves parties in the hands a very few, rich, individual donors, which takes us back to Bernie Ecclestone, Mittal and all the rest. Is any hon. Member here prepared to stand up and say that those donations were wholly altruistic? No. So why on earth do we expect the public to believe that they were?

As for the sleazebusters, they certainly constitute a thoughtful, worthy and well-intentioned crew. That is what Britain does well—the best of the good and the great in action. Their problem is that, far from assuaging public concern. everything they say tends only to inflame it. That is not their fault. They make balanced comments and produce considered and worthy reports, but if they so much as hint at a problem with party funding and so on, the press have a feeding frenzy and the public's perception of politics declines further. Far from being part of the solution, the sleazebusters are part of the problem.

What is to be done? I shall not try to cut the canker out of the body politic in five minutes flat and I shall leave the sleazebuster problem, which is particularly difficult, for another day. However, we can do something about the funding of political parties, and we must act decisively to quench the impression that parties can be bought and that influence in government is for sale. Several basic measures are needed.

First, big donations, whether from rich individuals, their companies or trade unions, should be banned entirely. Institutional funding, as it is called, should be ended. I would put a cap on individual donations of £1,000—some say that it should be more and perhaps we could wear £5,000, but it should be low.

Secondly, parties need cash because that measure would remove the last remaining source of funds. A matching funding scheme is the best way forward. I suggest that state funding should provide that by matching donations from individual members of political parties up to a specific limit.

An alternative, which many countries have, is a scheme based on the number of votes cast at the previous election. It looks reasonable, but a severe drawback is readily apparent when looking at the way in which politics operate on the continent. It would almost certainly lead to further centralisation in the selection of Members of Parliament and, therefore, the erosion of that endangered species, the independent Back Bencher.

An even more presidential style of politics would result and I do not like that. We already have a system of government that is too centralised and a system of politics that is too presidential. Payments made by the state on the basis of votes cast would only make the situation worse.

There are objections of principle to state funding, and I shall go through one or two very briefly. They are well rehearsed, and they are almost entirely bogus. The first is the argument that it forces people to give money to causes in which they do not believe. That is a complete straw man. We do not exempt pacifists from tax, even though we know that it is used partly to fund defence spending. In any case, and I think this is a much more important knock-down point, state funding is already here in a big way. About 40 per cent. of the cost of political parties between elections comes in cash or kind from the state already. About 60 per cent. of the cost of fighting general election campaigns is also state-funded one way or another. Those figures may strike some people as surprisingly high. I will put a couple of tables that I have prepared showing how I arrived at those figures in the Library and give them to the Lobby and the Minister after my speech.

What is at stake is not the principle of state funding, but the degree. There is another purist argument against state funding, which is that it would snuff out private civic engagement in the political process and ossify the party structure, turning parties into a unique form of nationalised industry. That is the best rhetoric I can find to justify that argument because I think rhetoric is all that it is, for several reasons. First, the public are already disengaged from party politics. That is the 4 million to 400,000 point with which I began.

Secondly, broader civic engagement is thriving in Britain. Let us look at the vibrancy of pressure groups. There is a huge amount of political activity going on in Britain today, but it is not channelled through the traditional system of party politics. It is mainly boring old politicians such as us, and institutions such as Parliament that find the fact that there is so much of this novel, unusual form of politics going on so concerning. They might be giving us the bird. but people are more informed and attentive to political life in Britain in the widest sense than they have ever been. I am particularly struck when I go to schools in my constituency and find how well informed young people are about politics today, and that they are often already engaged in interest groups. That is quite the opposite from the rhetoric that comes from the main parties about how sad it is that we cannot get the young to vote. The young are deeply engaged in politics, but not the form that we would like them to be engaged in.

The third reason why I think that the purist argument against state funding—that it would lead to civil disengagement is nonsense is that we are where we are. At least, matching funding will encourage parties to increase their membership and that might revive just a little the type of civic engagement that many want to see. Of course, matching funding will not assuage the public's mistrust of politics and parties at a stroke. State funding has not spared several continental countries from scandals of their own. However, I am confident that we cannot stay as we are.

Politics cannot function without parties, and parties cannot be forever struggling to find the cash to enable them to perform essential functions while struggling to fend off allegations of improper funds brought to them from sources that they would rather not know about. That cannot go on. It will carry on eroding the public's trust in the body politic itself unless we take action. Action is available the sooner we take it, the better.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) on securing a debate on a topical issue—the funding of political parties. I commend him on a thoughtful and carefully reasoned contribution to the debate, which the Government welcome. Equally, we do recognise that at the moment there is no consensus on the issue. Indeed, that is reflected by the fact that I suspect that the hon. Gentleman's contributions are, for the present at least, at odds with the leadership of his party in Parliament and the country.

The hon. Gentleman is right to reflect on a conundrum in public perceptions. Hon. Members on all sides of the party divide—they are represented in the Chamber have entirely honourable intentions, although they may not agree about how to implement them. In that regard, I share the hon. Gentleman's view of our colleagues, which certainly reflects my overwhelming impression after five years in Parliament.

It is also a conundrum that many members of the public may take a low view of MPs, but a high view of their MP. The way in which they think about their MP differs from the way in which they think about Parliament and MPs in general, because they know him, what he does, how he got there and what his aims and intentions are.

To respond to the hon. Gentleman's points, it would be wrong not to recognise that a carefully developed and robust regime is already in place to deal with the funding of political parties, and the hon. Gentleman mentioned sleazebusters. The Government did not dream up that regime to suit their own ends, and it flows directly from the recommendations in the fifth report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. The Committee discussed the funding of political parties in the United Kingdom, and was chaired by Lord Neill of Bladen. The policies and practices that the Government follow today are square with its recommendations. The hon. Member for Chichester said that that might be part of the problem when it comes to dealing with the longer-term consequences of any changes, but it is important to recognise the Government's position.

The core values of the existing regime are openness and transparency. When the Neill Committee reported in 1998, it took the view that it would be wrong to limit the amount that any individual company or institution could contribute to a political party, and there were clear arguments in support of that view. It was argued to the Committee that limits on the expenditure of political parties would tend to lessen the need for large donations, and prevent parties from becoming too dependent on a narrow income basis. The Committee felt, however, that that argument was outweighed by the threat that such restrictions would represent to individuals' freedom to contribute to parties, which is an essential feature of a healthy democracy. At the same time, the recommendation for limits on campaign expenditure would have a regulating effect on levels of donations.

Equally, the Committee saw that openness and transparency were central to ensuring that the public had confidence in politicians and to the effective operation of any democracy. Openness and transparency were seen as the best way of tackling concerns that undue influence on government decision making might arise from donations to political parties. The Committee therefore recommended introducing a requirement to disclose any donation of £5,000 or more, to remove illegitimate pressure and suspicions that improper influence or access might be gained by making substantial donations.

The Committee noted that further transparency would be obtained by requiring a company to obtain the agreement of its shareholders before making donations, and the hon. Gentleman mentioned one practical outcome of that requirement. Reforms that were introduced in 1984 had already made it a requirement for trade unions to gain their membership's approval for donations, so the new requirement levelled the playing field.

It has been Labour party practice since 1995 to record donations in its annual report, so the Government welcomed the Neill Committee recommendations. Parliament then legislated for such a regime in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, and new rules on declaring and registering donations have been in place since 16 February 2001.

The Neill Committee did not, however, examine what should happen as regards donations in isolation. It concluded that donations to political parties, if properly regulated, were a vital element in ensuring a buoyant political party system. However, it also considered—this is the nub of the hon. Gentleman's point whether there was a case for the state funding of parties, either partially or wholly. It considered the arguments both for and against state funding. many of which were mentioned by the hon. Gentleman this morning. As he said, we already have a strong starting point for state funding in the Short money that is provided to enable opposition parties to conduct their business in Parliament. New money will soon be made available by the Electoral Commission and, although it is not generally recognised, there is substantial underwriting of the expenses incurred in taking part in a general election, such as postage in sending out election addresses. I was interested that the hon. Gentleman made a precise calculation of the extent to which state funding already plays a part in our system.

In favour of state funding, the Neill Committee emphasised that it might have a purifying effect, as large donations would no longer be needed; it would allow parties to perform their essential tasks more fully and effectively; and, in some countries, where donations from individuals are matched by state funding—that is a form of the proposal that the hon. Gentleman put before us today—overall party funding has increased because the state funding and donations from individuals run side by side.

The Neill Committee also set out some arguments against state funding: taxpayers should not be compelled to contribute to supporting parties with whose policies they may strongly disagree; it is difficult to justify such expenditure against other calls on public expenditure; there is a possibility of parties ossifying and not allowing new blood in. The hon. Gentleman also referred to funding elsewhere in Europe, where, one can argue, the way in which parties are funded means that they exist on the basis of that funding and do not necessarily rise or fall as a result of the more natural processes of their appeal to the public on the basis of their policies.

The arguments are finely balanced, as the Committee on Standards in Public Life recognised. It said that there might be circumstances in which the need for more state funding became imperative, but it was firm in the view that that time might never come and certainly had not arrived in 1998 when its report was published. The hon. Gentleman's arguments may suggest that that debate has already moved on somewhat.

The Committee concluded that no new system should be introduced whereby the state was obliged to provide financial support for political parties for the indefinite future. At the time, the Government agreed with that conclusion.

In conclusion, I want to emphasise two points.

I wonder whether the Minister would clarify one point. As I recall, although I do not have a copy of it in front of me, in the Labour party's submission to the Neill Committee, the main objection to the argument that a more comprehensive system of state funding should be developed was that the Labour party could think of better ways to spend the money. It was not an objection of principle but of practicality. Is that still the Labour party's principal objection to the Neill Committee's findings?

It would be difficult for me to speak authoritatively for the whole Labour party on that matter, but the point was made at the time—I have already alluded to it as one of the arguments against state funding that was considered by the Neill Committee—that any substantial expenditure, such as a block grant to the major political parties, might need to be justified against other calls on the public purse for pressing matters of public investment and expenditure. It might be difficult to say that a block grant should go in one direction rather than another that is seen to be a matter of pressing public concern. That argument should be taken seriously. It is interesting, in terms of the recent conduct of the debate, that hon. Members, not just the hon. Member for Chichester, have been considering different ways in which a block grant might be cast—perhaps by using matching funding on membership or on votes cast—and a recent article in The. Times by an hon. Member suggested that it might be possible for people to tick a box on their tax returns. Various devices might overcome that objection. Nevertheless, it is a substantial concern that must be addressed if hon. Members are thinking about how to make progress where state funding of political parties is concerned.

I apologise for having intervened twice and am grateful to the Minister for giving way. It is a political fact that the Labour party is getting hit at the moment, not the Conservative party. We hear one allegation after another. I am not debating any particular case—that is not the issue. It is the public perception that concerns us today. Does the Minister concede that if we are to alter public perceptions, the Government must give a strong lead? It is not enough to hope and to wait for other political parties to weigh in behind.

My immediate thought is that the lack of consensus among political parties about the way forward has an effect on the extent to which any governing party can declare that it wishes to go down a certain route and expect that to be taken as a valid starting point to a debate. The Government of the day—of any day—is the focus of the spotlight on donations. A unilateral decision about what to do might be seen as the Government's attempt to extricate themselves from a perceived position. It is therefore important that any debate should be conducted in terms of a consensus about what should be done for the health of the body politic, rather than for perceived party advantage.

I will be very brief. It is a question of saying not "This is what we are going to do", but "This is a direction in which we would like to go". I am not getting that sense of direction from the Minister. I know that he does not want to change party policy right now, but if we are to make progress, there must be a desire to change direction; otherwise, nothing will happen.

I think that the hon. Gentleman would be surprised if a sudden announcement were made about the future of state funding for political parties during an Adjournment debate in Westminster Hall. I have attempted to set out a number of relevant matters for consideration, and I welcome the fact that the hon. Gentleman has raised his issues in such a thoughtful and careful way.

Stories about donations and whether they have or have not had influence seem to be flavour of the month. No evidence has been produced to indicate that any donations have resulted in their donors receiving improper or preferential treatment, nor is it the case that the Government have closed their ears to any debate on the issue; we welcome the current debate.

Four years have elapsed since the Committee made its recommendations and over a year since the provisions of the 2000 Act came into force. The Electoral Commission has begun a review that will assess the case for a cap on political donations and state funding, and the Select Committee on Transport, Local Government and the Regions has announced that it proposes to look into the matter. The Government look forward to studying both reports.

Order.

I am delighted to be able to kick off in this debate, not least because it has fortuitously ended up on a day when the subject of drugs and drugs misuse is so topical. I have been trying to secure the debate every week for the past six months because on my first day of canvassing in the general election campaign that ended last June, the first door on which I knocked was that of a family in Treorchy. When I asked the man whether he would be voting Labour, he said that he definitely would be. I asked whether he was interested in any particular issues and he told me that his son had died of a heroin overdose some six weeks earlier. I was introduced early on in my campaign in the Rhondda to problems that many people tell me are new in valleys communities. They have arisen in the last five to 10 years in relation to heroin.

It is difficult to obtain accurate figures for drug-related deaths, but there have been about 14 in my constituency in the last year that is, more than one per month. In small communities, where everybody knows and belongs to everybody, that is a potent symbol of the state of the community and of the lives of, particularly, young men.

I also wanted to have the debate because I spent last Friday night out with the police in the Rhondda. They were very disappointed because it rained all night, so it was very quiet—rain being the policeman's greatest friend--and they said that I should not go away with the impression that there should be fewer police officers in the Rhondda. What was striking was that the police officers told me that of the six cells in Ton Pentre police station, five are normally full and all those five people are likely to need the visit of a doctor in order to prescribe methodone, because they will have a drug dependency problem. That clearly suggests that the vast majority of acquisitive crime and of violent crime—the kinds of crime that might lead to somebody being in the cells—is related directly in valleys communities to drugs and drugs misuse, especially that of heroin. Crack cocaine does not seem to have arrived in large measure in my community; heroin has.

Over the past eight years, there have been more than 1,100 drug-related deaths in Wales, but it has only been in the last two or three years that the drug that has led to most of those deaths has been heroin rather than paracetamols or anti-depressants. There is a changing face to drug misuse in valleys communities and, I would suggest, in the whole of Wales.

In all the surveys that have been done and all the statistics that have been put together, Wales falls behind the rest of the United Kingdom. I say that not to minimise the issues that we face in Wales, but to put them in context. Wales was the only region in the UK where, when the Home Office surveyed 16 to 29-yearolds last autumn to see how many of them had used controlled substances during the last year, the percentage was less than 1 per cent. We are therefore considering a problem that is small but extremely significant—not only because it leads to deaths and to crime, but because it leads, certainly on the evidence of my surgery, to the vast majority of antisocial behaviour issues that come to my door month in, month out.

I should say, in parenthesis, that alcohol is still by far the worst besetting sin of all the drugs that affect our communities. I say that with some feeling, as the child of an alcoholic mother who died of alcoholism. Every Friday and Saturday night the police deal with the effects of alcohol, whether it is fights outside or inside pubs and clubs or the battles that go on back at home between husband and wife. That is to say nothing of the problems that alcohol causes with health and social well-being.

Some issues are specific to the valleys of south Wales. When the last of the mines closed and it felt to many people as though the heart had been taken out of former mining constituencies and the Conservative Government had turned their back on mining and the tradition of south Wales valleys, a generation of young people grew up who felt, in hundreds of different ways, that there was no hope for the community in which they lived. They felt that there was no hope of employment, a decent social life or a strong community. They felt that there was no hope of the community becoming a good place for young people to be and to spend their lives and that it would just decline and become older. There was no hope that the rest of the world would look at the Rhondda with pride.

However, many of those aspects of life in the Rhondda are beginning to turn around now. I constantly shock people by asking them what they think the unemployment level is in the Rhondda. It is currently 4.2 per cent. That the figure should be so low is to many people profoundly shocking. Of course, that masks all sorts of problems with people who are unable to present for work for a series of health reasons, many of which are related to stress. However, our valleys communities are beginning to turn round economically. We are beginning to see major regeneration, thanks to a series of projects devised by the Government and by the Assembly.

However, there are still families with second-generation and third-generation unemployment or drug dependency. For those families, a family is not just mum, dad and two kids. Everybody knows that in the valleys of south Wales a family is an extended concept a matter of belonging. In many such extended families, where the people belong to one another, there is a sense that there is no hope. If there is a single thing that I would hope a Labour Government could turn around, it is that sense.

My hon. Friend knows that my family comes from the Rhondda valley. In that extended family that he was describing, consisting of people who are not necessarily blood relations but are felt to belong, I know people involved in drugs. There is enormous concern and anxiety among their friends and family about what will happen, because they know of two or three cases of boys of that generation who have died. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is time for us to treat heroin users as a health problem rather than a crime problem and to start prescribing the drug, thereby destroying the drug dealers' market incentive to create addicts?

I thank my hon. Friend. I know of his connections he is a Rhondda boy—and of his family in Maerdy. A few weeks ago, we had a specific and frightening problem involving a young lad who had died from a heroin overdose. The dealer who had supplied him during the past year turned up to the funeral. Understandably, the community was in semi-riot and the police had to come out with tear gas.

The reclassification of drugs as proposed in the Select Committee report today will make no difference to what happens in the Rhondda. That proposal rather misses the point. I agree with my hon. Friend that a drug addict is always somebody's brother, sister, father or child and that those people need to be treated as human beings, because that is the only way to rescue them. There is, however, also a major set of criminal problems, including acquisitive crime and the fact that people deliberately set about dealing in communities that are not their own, which affords them a degree of protection. We must deal with those issues in a tough way.

We have a specific problem in the Rhondda. because housing is extremely cheap. It is not difficult for a private landlord to buy a house for £10,000, £11,000 or £12,000, although it will be in extremely poor condition. He will need to do nothing to make it a decent place in which to live, because no checks will be made, and he will receive between £4,000 and £4,500 in housing benefit as soon as he puts someone in it. We should seriously consider telling local authorities that they cannot pay housing benefit until they have checked that homes are habitable. Social services reckoned that 33 children in the Rhondda were at risk, and 19 of them were in one small area, Clydach Vale. That is because it is cheap to buy houses there, and landlords have deliberately set about buying properties so that they have a reliable, steady stream of income from the state, rather than from individuals. The result is that heroin ghettos are created in particular areas.

I understand the sincerity of the hon. Gentleman's position, but I want briefly to return to the point made by the hon. Member for Cardiff, Central (Mr. Jones). Heroin was prescribed for about 40 years, until about 1965. Would it not be worth while to revisit that experience to see whether lessons can be learned from it? On reclassification, there are fears in the south Wales valleys that ecstasy may act as a gateway to cocaine, because they have the same classification, even though they have different health consequences.

I disagree as regards ecstasy, because classification is not the issue. Alcohol is classified in such a way that it is a freely available legal drug of choice, but that has not removed the criminality element or resolved the behavioural issues. I am unconvinced that it would be possible to determine what is a safe dose of ecstasy, and many people have had major health problems because of the drug. We do not know its long-term effects.

To move on, prevention is by far the best cure in this regard. Since becoming involved in the issue in the Rhondda, I have supported the Drugs Awareness Resistance Education programme, which is run in primary schools in the upper Rhondda fawr. I would dearly love to see the programme rolled out across the whole of the Rhondda and, indeed, throughout the country. Unless we give very young children the facts and the personal skills and ability to use them to take a strong personal decision that is right for them, we shall have failed them. I do not want to make many party political points, but Rhondda Cynon Taff, which is run by Plaid Cymru, still refuses to provide support to DARE, and that is a mistake.

Could my hon. Friend give an example of any anti-drugs education programme in this country or any other, in this century or any other, that has led to a reduction in drug use?

I have not been around in many other centuries, so that might be a bit difficult. The single biggest problem for many kids in the Rhondda when they get to the ages of 10, 11 or 12 is that they have a manifest lack of self-confidence. Drugs education should not be primarily about showing people terrible images of what drugs might do to them, but about building children's self-confidence so that they can take good health decisions on a range of issues, including what they eat. The project in the Rhondda is working, and there are two measures. One is whether it has cut numbers; the other is whether it has prevented an increase, which is, of course, impossible to determine.

Another problem that we face in the Rhondda is the minimal provision of rehabilitation services. We have no residential rehabilitation unit or beds in either the Rhondda or Bro Taf health authority, which is a significant problem. Residential detoxification and rehabilitation is not right for everybody, but is certainly right for some, and we must make sure that it is available. Some 36 beds are available in Carmarthenshire, but there are none in Bro Taf.

The queue for the community drugs and alcohol team, which is based in Church village and covers the whole of R hondda Cynon Taff, consists of 95 people who wait for 12 months before they see a nurse on the team. If we employed one extra nurse we would be able to cut that waiting list to three months, and if we employed two such nurses one of them could be based in the Rhondda. Every disincentive that we put in the way of somebody with a drug-dependency problem's getting themselves sorted out must be counterproductive, so we need to build better services.

At the moment, there are some excellent services in. Merthyr, including probably the best home detoxification service in the country, which is the kind of service on which we need to build. Such services should not be patchy in the valley communities. I worry that when we change the structure of the health service in Wales next year we may lose sight of these issues, and we need to ensure that that does not happen.

There are major issues surrounding the police. Because it is so easy for somebody to come and live in the Rhondda, which is a relatively cheap area, people bring the problem from Bristol to the Rhondda with impunity. The police have argued I find this very persuasive—that they are short on numbers. I know that the overall level of crime in the Rhondda is low, which is why we do not have as large a police force as in the past. Many police officers are doing excellent work in different departments, many of which are based in Cardiff and Bridgend, but it is difficult to carry out proactive policing around the issue unless one has enough police officers to do the job.

Perhaps the single most difficult thing for the Government to do is to get people with drug-dependency problems into work. Anybody can write the script explaining why that is difficult. Many employers would not want to take on such people and one must face the issue of those people's motivation. It is extremely expensive to take somebody from drug dependency through to work. Unless one can do that, however, one is effectively condemning a section of society to the scrap heap. I welcome the Employment Service's pathfinder project, "progress to work", which has been going for only five weeks. One project area is based around Rhondda Cynon Taff, and I hope that we shall see a significant effect on which we can build before rolling out the project across the country.

Some people would say one of my constituents rang up and said this to me on the radio this morning that money spent on these issues is just money wasted on druggies. It is actually money well spent because it tackles social disorder, crime, the destruction of families and the corrosion of tightly knit communities. It is vital that we make the investment to put these issues right.

Finally, many different projects are going on, which is entirely commendable. Sometimes, however, they do not gel together. Different agencies are not good at working together because of the silo mentality that such bodies always have, and their professional pride. Sometimes it is difficult to make the different funding streams from the Home Office, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Assembly work together, and that is a test for devolution. Will the Minister consider whether there might be value in creating a specific post or team to address the particular issues of the valleys communities in south Wales? Such a team would co-ordinate the work of the Assembly, Westminster and the different agencies in the field to allow us to achieve better value for money for every extra pound that we invest.

We have been given the opportunity this afternoon to highlight the problems of drug misuse in Welsh valley communities. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Mr. Bryant) on his persistence and on at last securing the debate. We all take the issue of substance misuse extremely seriously; as a member of the informal ministerial committee on drugs, I can tell hon. Members that the Government do so too.

Police intelligence suggests that south Wales, especially the valleys, is being flooded with heroin. In Wales in 2000, 44 deaths were attributed to either heroin or morphine. The impact of drug misuse on our communities is an important factor to bear in mind.

I saw evidence of that impact for myself when, a few months ago, I spent a day as a fly on the wall with someone who works for Drugaid in Merthyr, meeting that person's clients and speaking to people whose lives had been blighted because they had become involved with drugs, particularly heroin. I was impressed by one chap who had become involved with drugs about eight years ago. He is now off heroin and evangelical against drugs. He lives three doors away from the local drugs dealer, so he is under temptation 24 hours a day.

I admire the fact that he has got himself together. He managed to do so with the support of Drugaid, an organisation based in Merthyr, which has become his lifeline. I cannot speak highly enough of organisations such as Drugaid, which have become beacons of hope to many in our valley communities whose lives are blighted by the use of drink and drugs. Drugaid's director, Stephanie Hoffman, tells me that it has about 200 referrals a year. In 2000–01, 24 per cent. of those were heroin users. That shows the extent of the problem.

The crime reduction director for Wales, David A'Herne, has said that there are signs that organised crime from outside south Wales is flooding the area with drugs and regarding it as a market opportunity.

I thank the Minister for giving way in this short debate. He praises Drugaid. Did its staff speak to him about what it believes that the Government should be doing? It believes that the Government's policy of simply getting tough on various drugs is insufficient, and that they should be considering other policies.

Certainly. Indeed, I witnessed some of what Drugaid was doing to put in place policies relating to a broader range of initiatives to combat drug misuse, as I shall discuss in a moment.

As I said, David A'Herne, the crime reduction director for Wales, warned us that south Wales was being flooded by organised crime and people from outside pushing heroin. When he recently met Members of Parliament who represent Wales, he said that the next blight after heroin would be crack cocaine—a violence drug. The police are aware of that emerging issue and are considering the best approaches to tackling it.

Like me, the Minister has spent his life in the south Wales valleys. If someone had suggested to him 20 years ago that the big problem in the valleys would be heroin, one would have questioned their sanity. I do not know whether there are links between drug use and the breakdown of communities, but at one time in the valleys, the one thing that we had going for us was communities, which have broken up quickly in recent years.

Several agencies are involved. Last financial year, the police received additional resources. Has the Minister done any work to find out whether that additional money has helped the police in performing their role?

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We need resources for the police service, which means extra bobbies on the beat, and to ensure that initiatives are introduced. I know that in Gwent and south Wales there have been several initiatives in which the police, with a number of agencies and voluntary groups, have organised blitzes to tackle drug-related crime and the blight that it causes communities. He will know Pantside, which is not far from where he lives. I recently chaired a meeting there to which 300 people turned up as a result of their concern about drug misuse in the area.

Drug misuse is also a factor in rising crime, because people are committing crime to fund their habit. We need to tackle the supply of drugs. Colleagues will know that drug pushers are parasites on our communities. They distort the face of our valley communities and prey on our young people. I welcome legislation that will allow us to seize the assets of convicted drug dealers, but that is just one weapon in the armoury needed to combat drug misuse. If we do not face up to the problem, we will not recognise our grandchildren's generation.

My hon. Friend mentioned how our valley communities have changed in recent years and how there is less of a community feel. That community will be further undermined if we do not ensure that we put every effort into combating drug misuse.

Does my hon. Friend support the proposal in the Select Committee report for experimental shooting galleries, which have been operating in Australia, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, and which have reduced crime and saved lives?

The Select Committee report has made an important contribution to our widespread debate on drugs. In due course, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will respond to it and give the Government's view. As I have said, the Home Secretary has responsibility for setting policing priorities. I welcome the publication of the report, because it is produced in response to the Home Secretary's challenge to all of us last October to have a sensible, adult debate on how to tackle drug misuse in the UK. However, I cannot give the same welcome to the Committee's proposals for reclassifying ecstasy, but that is a matter for wider debate, and we shall have such a debate in due course.

In south Wales, the police have the latest technology. They are working with police forces in Gwent and Dyfed-Powys and with national agencies on initiatives to combat the misuse of drugs in our valleys. We need to tackle the demand for drugs. In my view, demand can be reduced by a multi-agency approach. I do not particularly care for the phrase "joined-up", but it means a linking of various agencies and Departments, so that we involve the Government, the Assembly, local authorities, the education service, the health service and the voluntary sector a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda mentioned prevention, which I think is important. Education plays an important role. I spent part of my time with Drugaid in a classroom with young students who were going through a series of seven lessons. The tutors were people from Drugaid. I was interested to see how the class's discussion developed. When I talked to the young people afterwards, I learned that they thought that the knowledge that they gained from attending the classes had armed them, and that they now felt well equipped to argue against peer pressure to abuse drugs. I was encouraged by that, as I think that education is an important element.

One of the four key aims in the strategy put together by my colleagues in the Assembly is to help children, young people and adults to resist substance misuse. We have to start doing that much earlier. My local rotary club organises an annual event in which 1,000 youngsters go to the miners' institute in Blackwood, where four or five performances of a play relating to drug misuse are staged. The play warns them of the difficulties that they will encounter if they misuse drugs.

My hon. Friend also mentioned DARE. I am sorry that his local council, Rhondda Cynon Taff, is not helping out financially. I hope that if DARE applies to the council again, it will give more favourable consideration to the matter. He also mentions the need for resources. I can tell him that more resources have been put into the police service throughout south Wales.

We have to bear in mind that many factors are causing the misuse of drugs in our communities, which suffer from deprivation, poverty and great difficulties. As my hon. Friend said, it is important to pull the multiple agencies together. David A'Herne, the crime reduction director for Wales, is making an important contribution to that. We will tackle the problem only if we all get on board and say that we have to do something about the blight of drug misuse in our society.

Several arguments will rage as a result of today's report. We must all engage in the debate whatever our views on drug use. If we do not do that, we will face a society that most of us will not recognise in the years ahead. We can tackle the problem only by pulling together.

I am pleased to secure this important debate. I welcome the fact that the Minister for the Environment is here to respond. He has a good record on campaigning in the Government for stronger environmental measures, and I suspect that he and I would not disagree about the need to tackle waste and improve recycling and reuse. If his reported comments were accurate, we would not disagree about concerns about incineration compared with other waste-to-energy techniques that are being developed. I do not think that we shall disagree on the basic issues.

I requested the debate because Cornwall has plans that I believe fulfil all the Minister's objectives. All that we need from him and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is the go-ahead. I shall make the case for that and outline our disappointment—at least our disappointment in the Minister's officials; it remains to be seen whether that disappointment lies with the Minister—that there has not been a positive decision, which we expected some time ago.

Looking at the specific needs of Cornwall and our current recycling performance, it is clear that action is needed. The availability of landfill is rapidly diminishing, although the Minister and I share the worry that we should avoid unnecessary landfill. In Cornwall, 94 per cent. of waste goes to landfill. Cornwall has a poor recycling rate of 9.5 per cent. County targets for 2005 are 12 per cent. and national targets for 2005 are 25 per cent. of household waste. We are clearly a long way off those targets. However, there are reasons for that. The rates are not untypical of similar rural counties, and I do not want to be unfair to those in county hall or County Environmental Services, which is the main company that deals with the county's waste. However, we do not have a good record, we do not beat the averages and we are a long way from meeting the Government's national targets.

We have the additional problem that, in pure environmental terms, it is important that we meet the need for increased recycling and reuse and do so in the most environmentally friendly way. Cornwall is very far from established markets for recycled materials. Penzance is more than 75 miles from Plymouth, more than 200 miles from Bristol and more than 300 miles from London. However, if one examines the established markets, the figures are even worse. Paper processing occurs 350 miles away from Cornwall and sites for metal processing are further away. Glass and plastic processing occurs 400 miles away.

Significant distances must be covered to tackle the problem, which is why we believe that it makes sense not only to develop the ability to collect and separate materials, but—this is the key to the private finance initiative proposal—to make use of the materials locally. That would greatly improve the economics and environmental factors of recycling, keeping traffic off the roads and creating more jobs. The scheme works very well in terms of joined-up government. It fits in with objective 1, the process of economic regeneration in the country's poorest county, and it meets the Government's environmental targets.

Money is needed not only to establish the markets and the processing facilities, but to improve collection services in Cornwall. Like most rural areas, it is difficult to collect for recycling because the communities are spread out, which makes such a process much more costly. Cornwall is both heavily populated and widely dispersed. Compared with Devon, it does not have wide-open spaces, but village after village. We do not have a Plymouth or Exeter where the collection schemes for recycling are a little easier to establish. The population density is lower than any other south-west county and only 30 per cent. of the Cornish population live in towns of more than 10,000. The figure nationally is 80 per cent.

The other good aspect of the project is that it has brought together the districts and the county in a consortium that works together towards achieving the Government's targets. In an area without a unitary authority, that is difficult to achieve because districts have different priorities for collecting the waste from the county that is responsible for it. All six locally elected district authorities and the county are in partnership, but the delay in gaining approval is putting strain on that partnership. All the authorities have Government-set targets to meet in respect of improving their services and they are becoming increasingly nervous that, without a decision being made, they will be left stranded and criticised for falling far short of what the Government demanded of them.

The scheme is receiving receive strong support from the population in Cornwall. Much campaigning has taken place, and the one matter on which all the campaigners are united is the need to improve recycling and reuse. Whereas what happens with the waste-toenergy scheme may be controversial, the bid for the scheme to improve recycling and reuse has total support. Hopefully, it will minimise the need for a waste-to-energy scheme, although some form of one will be needed. I hope and strongly believe in a campaign, not in an incinerator. I think that the Minister may share my view.

On a waste-to-energy scheme, does my hon. Friend agree that, in Cornwall, technology is very much at the cutting edge in the sense that more energy is being generated proportionately through geothermal sources? We have a higher level of wind energy in proportion to population and land mass than elsewhere in the country. The proposal has at its base the fact that Cornwall is more receptive to acceptable waste-to-energy techniques than many other places.

I agree with my hon. Friend. It is worth bearing in mind that the PFI bid is purely for recycling and reuse, which is stage 1 of the process. I am glad that stage 2 has not revolved around an incinerator. It covers a waste-to-energy scheme, but alternative technologies are being explored actively. The key aspect of the bid is that it will put back the need for waste-toenergy schemes for some years, because it will be possible to start meeting the Government's targets on reuse and recycling and minimise the use of landfill. It will allow the pyrolysis and gasification scheme that the county is examining to be proven as technology. As the Minister will be aware, the manufacturers of such technologies are making big claims about them. I hope that they are right but, as yet, in this country they are relatively unproven. The bid will allow that better scheme to come forward.

It is worth saying that one of the core themes of objective 1 is to build on the environmental technology base in Cornwall and the perception of high environmental quality. The scheme will help to build the cutting edge in Cornwall's development of the new technologies for not only waste, but energy. The scheme fits in with objective 1 status. It is not reliant on objective 1 funding because the area would allow that to be received. That is why we need the Government's approval for the PFI. It ties solidly into the themes of the objective 1 programme.

As I said, the proposal has received much support from the local population. In Chacewater, we have a pilot scheme, by a company called Rag and Bone, to create a one-stop shop for all recycling. It has received huge local support that goes well beyond the target that was set.

I turn to the most crucial point. I have said that it is necessary to meet the Government's recycling targets in the waste strategy of 2000. If the bid is approved, the recycling rates will jump from 9.5 per cent. at present to 35 per cent. by 2008, which is in excess of the Government's target of 33 per cent. by 2015, and well ahead of their time scale, even with regard to the interim target of 2010. If the bid is not approved, and even if best practice is employed, the conclusions of the consultants that the county has taken on and the analysis that has been conducted by its own staff suggest that we could achieve recycling rates of only 18 per cent. by 2005, when Government targets demand 25 per cent. of household recycling by then.

That shows the difference between taking the lead and exceeding the Government's targets, and inevitably falling behind them because of our geography and our relative position with regard to other markets. The sooner that this project is approved, the more likely it will be that the targets are met. The original bid was based on the assumption that, by now, we would be in the early days of making that happen, but we are already, in effect, up to a year or more late. If the project is approved, that will help investment, the economy, jobs, transport and the environment.

As I have said, it is a two-stage plan. Stage 1 involves the PFI bid that is before the Minister and his officials, which allocates £25 million solely for investment in enhanced waste recycling and recovery, along with the target of 35 per cent. by 2008–09. It includes improved civic amenities, kerbside collections, new composting through an on-farm composting network processed and used on the farms to minimise transportation, and the development of Glasphalt schemes with quarries to surface roads. All seven local authorities support giving financial assistance to the ReMaDe scheme, which is prioritising materials to be recycled even before markets can be found. It covers all waste streams, and it can bring huge benefits. It meets the criteria for everything that the Minister is concerned with. Also, every aspect of it will lead to more jobs in the county, and creating jobs is another Government target. We all welcome that, so we want to see it put into practice.

I turn to stage two. Originally, the county was asked to put together a bid for the entire scheme. Then it was told that the amount of money was cut, and that the whole issue of waste-to-energy was not included. There is a stage 2, but it is not committed to mass burn incineration, which the Government rightly appear to be moving away from. Instead, it is committed to looking at emerging technologies and matching them to the county's needs; depending on the success of stage o ne.

We will see how much we can achieve through recycling and reuse before we even examine waste-toenergy; when we come to address that, it will be the new technologies, rather than the incineration technologies, that we look to. I understand that plans with regard to that matter will come forward shortly, but that is not what is up for consideration here; the scheme is aimed entirely at increasing recycling. The Minister may be aware that the Waste Strategy 2000 includes levels of waste reduction that can be achieved only through extensive mass burn, but that is not part of this plan.

I will finish by addressing the more negative matters; only because I want the Minister to understand the process that we have been through from our side. I have no doubt that, from the point of view of officials and the Department, that process may have seemed rather different.

In June 2000, Government officials suggested to the county that it might wish to consider a waste management PFI application. The county was very keen to take Cornwall to the cutting edge with regard to this technology, and it quickly set out to meet the Government's timetable. It hired PricewaterhouseCoopers, Eversheds and Arthur Andersen as consultants to its hid; blue chip consultants at the highest level. By September 2001, it was possible to put forward an outline business case.

However, the county council was advised that it should hold back to meet new criteria that would come into effect from the end of September, the key element of which was the reduction of the ceiling from £50 million to £25 million. Splitting the application into two stages, given the uncertainty over waste-to-energy policy, has actually been very good for the project and very helpful to the Minister in approving the bid.

We originally expected a decision in early 2001 but, at Easter, the Government questioned the role of the waste company operating in the county, County Environmental Services, and asked the waste applicant to produce a public sector comparator. It was an odd request, because at that stage it would have been illegal to deal with waste in that way. However, the county produced one. Still we heard nothing.

Three civil servants have taken the lead in the relationship with the county. A new manager on the project said that the application was in the Minister's box and that there would be a reply by Christmas. Hopes were very high, and I was told that an announcement was expected at any minute. However, nothing happened. A third civil servant is now taking the lead on the matter, which we understand is in the final stages. We last heard that the application was about to go to the Minister. The debate may have affected the process somewhat, because the Minister will have been briefed on the matter. We understand that it is now—once again, at any moment—likely to reach the Minister.

Meanwhile, the county council put the PFI bid together back in October 2000. It had a dedicated waste management team working on the project. It has spent £150,000 preparing the outline business case at a time when, as the Minister is well aware, all local authorities face very challenging budget restrictions. A huge amount of hard work has been done in-house and by the consultants. There was a lot of popular support, and we really felt that we were doing everything that the Government had asked of us.

I wrote on 27 November, expecting an imminent response. I had an acknowledgment of my letter but still have not had a reply from the Minister. I chased that up with a parliamentary question on 25 January and wrote again on 12 April, but we still have received nothing but a holding reply to the parliamentary question. As far as we can tell, there is good will at the Minister's end and at our end, but the process has come off the rails.

We really need a response from the Minister. The project is good news, and the Minister will have huge support and our gratitude if it gets the go-ahead. Frankly, we cannot understand why it has taken so long.

Waste management is undoubtedly a key issue faced by the country; it is certainly one of the biggest environmental issues. As I would have expected, the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Matthew Taylor) made his case extremely well. One of the great advantages of debates such as this is that I get an insight into how a situation looks from the other side; hitherto I have not seen it in quite that way.

I have been given a note about submissions made to me. The general application of the waste management strategy is an ongoing matter with the Department, but I assure the hon. Gentleman that, as far as I am concerned, this is the first time that I have been asked to take a specific decision on the application. He is quite right that it is now nearing the decision point. I understand his view that it has taken a long time and I apologise for that.

Cornwall's proposals raise several difficult issues relating to the changes that we must make to our current waste management practices. I was stunned to hear that the landfilling of municipal household waste in Cornwall is 94 per cent; that is quite extraordinary. However, I would like to say a few words about the overall approach.

As the hon. Gentleman rightly said, the waste strategy was published in May 2000 and I am pleased to hear that officials in Cornwall responded to it extremely quickly. The main requirements of that strategy are to tackle the continuing growth of waste—not least by finding innovative ways of minimising its creation—to maximise the amount of value that we recover from waste through recycling and reuse and to improve the very low levels of recycling that, unfortunately, have been traditional in England and Wales.

Our strategy sets statutory performance standards for local authority recycling. Local government as a whole must double the amount of recycling within three years and triple it within five years. That is pretty testing, given the past record, but it is achievable with the extremely low starting point. The national level of recycling was 2 per cent. in 1992 and 6 per cent. in 1997; it is now II or 12 per cent.

Cornwall county council must achieve 12 per cent. recycling by 2003–04 and 18 per cent. by 2005–06. I am sure that the county, given the readiness with which it is facing the problem, is already taking action to deliver the first of those standards, independent of its proposals for the longer term, as the hon. Gentleman implied.

We have provided significant extra resources, although budgets are tight. In the 2000 spending review, there was an increase of £1.1 billion in the relevant standard spending assessment block over the three years covered by the review. We have also created a new £140 million ring-fenced fund that supplements the general grant provision. I understand that local authorities, including Caradon and North Cornwall councils, are currently applying for money from that fund. We have also put new money into a new programme: the waste and resources action programme—WRAP--to tackle market issues and particularly to open up new markets for recyclates. We have provided £220 million of private finance initiative resources specifically for waste management projects. When local authorities acquire a capital asset, they may choose whether to borrow the money or use PFI money. Central Government can provide revenue support towards the cost of repaying interest and capital on the loan by credit approvals and through special grant for PFI schemes.

Turning to Cornwall's proposals on waste and the decision-making process involved, in addition to the value-for-money appraisal, there is a policy assessment for waste PFI proposals. The hon. Gentleman referred to the fact that in September 2000 we published criteria for waste PFI projects that reflected the Government's strategy on waste. The hon. Gentleman was at pains to say that Cornwall met those criteria, which made it clear that waste recycling and composting lie at the heart of the solutions to local authorities' waste management problems. I am very keen that we maximise reuse, recycling, recovery and composting, and that mass burn or, preferably, alternatives are used only when absolutely necessary.

It is particularly relevant to Cornwall that the criteria also require proposals, including incineration, to demonstrate that all opportunities for recycling have been considered first and this is demanding—that there is no barrier to the future development of recycling. I do not want proposals to be agreed if they could undermine future possibilities for recycling. We also stipulated that schemes should include proposals for combined heat and power, which should be appropriately sized I think that is a code word for relatively small—and that they should include CHP where possible.

Cornwall first submitted its outline business case to us in October 2000, which was fairly quick off the mark. That was just one month after the criteria for waste projects were revised in the way that I described. The county's proposals have changed over time, as the hon. Gentleman indicated. That is not particularly surprising as they were originally drawn up when the criteria for waste PFI projects were far less demanding than they are today. There has been considerable ongoing dialogue between officials in my Department. On our side, that has achieved a variation that I had not realised before. The dialogue has taken place because we recognise the considerable challenge that the county faces on landfill and the tight time scale that it has in which to draw up alternatives.

The proposals do, as the hon. Gentleman made very clear, have several positive aspects including an inn )vative proposal for composting green waste on site anc on the county's own farms, and substantial work on wa: to minimisation. I am very keen on that. There is also a s rong commitment to the project from all the local aut torities. The proposals on energy from waste include cor ibined heat and power as a strong option.

Will the Minister give way?

I am anxious to get on, and I think that the hon. Gentleman will be pleased if he allows me to finish.

Less compelling is the ambition to improve recycling in the county and to provide new incineration capacity. The hon. Gentleman did say that that was not a foregone conclusion. As I have indicated, we insist that incineration proposals are appropriately sized, that such proposals do not crowd out recycling and that the potential for recycling has been fully explored. Officials have highlighted to Cornwall that its headline recycling rate of 35 per cent. over the long term is low in comparison with most of the other PFI proposals that are being put to us. Many of these are planning for recycling rates of between 50 per cent. and 60 per cent. in the long term.

Before the hon. Gentleman leaps to his feet to tell me this, I recognise the county council's awareness that its case is not as compelling as others. It has said that 50 to 60 per cent. recycling rates are not, in its view, achievable in Cornwall even in the long term for geographical and economic reasons. In particular, Cornwall is sparsely populated and remote from the existing recycling materials processors, and the gross domestic product per capita in Cornwall is only 70 per cent. of the United Kingdom average.

As a part of its response, Cornwall county council has proposed to adopt a two-stage approach that will test the recycling rates. I think that that is helpful. Bidders will be asked to achieve a minimum 35 per cent. recycling rate and would be offered financial incentives to achieve higher recycling rates. However, I am not yet convinced that the recycling ambition in the county's proposals is sufficient. I am not convinced that the proposed approach on financial incentives will prevent the crowding out of recycling in future. I do not say that I am not persuadable, but, on the evidence that I have seen, I am not yet convinced. Nor am I convinced—this is my real problem— that the proposals for an incineration capacity, or possible alternative, of 200,000 tonnes is the minimum that is required.

Obviously, I look much more favourably on pyrolysis and gasification, but my understanding is that incineration was not ruled out in the proposal made to us. To feed that kind of level of incineration, pyrolysis or gasification would require waste streams being preempted, which could undermine the recycling targets.

I fully recognise that Cornwall faces challenges in developing sustainable waste solutions given the economic position in the county and the nature of the area. However, the very nature of Cornwall means that we must be extra vigilant in ensuring that the recycling options are fully explored and that the absolute minimum requirement for incineration is put in place. I am conscious that we may not have been fully able to explore the issues in the course of 15 minutes talking to each other. I am aware that the hon. Gentleman previously wrote to me suggesting a meeting. I would, therefore, like to meet him and a delegation from the county council before reaching a final conclusion, if there are further points that he would like me to consider.

I would. of course, be especially interested in the way in which the people of Cornwall have been consulted on the county's ambitions on recycling and the new incineration capacity that may be required. Getting the support, not only of the agencies and the authorities, but the people of Cornwall, who in the end will face the consequences, is important. Subject to that meeting, I will issue a decision on Cornwall's proposals shortly, but hope to meet the hon. Gentleman before.

It being Two o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the sitting lapsed, without Question put.