London is booming. More people are living and working in our city, yet our transport infrastructure is inadequate and overcrowded. Trains are unpleasant. They operate at massively overcrowded capacity. Our roads are congested. There are road works and delays. Badly planned junctions and badly phased traffic lights are causing serious problems for people who commute into this city.

It is not all bad news, however, because improvements are being made in some parts of London. I draw attention to the work of the Thames Gateway local authorities. Their document "Transport Agenda" sets out proposals to extend the docklands light railway from City airport to connect with the north Kent line and the tunnel connection between Silvertown and the Greenwich peninsular, and the shared use of the Thames Gateway bridge. They are also supporting crossrail, as are many other organisations. There is currently a stakeholder consultation on the crossrail 1 option.

I want to add my voice strongly to the call that was made some months ago by the Corporation of London for the classic crossrail route—the route from Liverpool Street station to Stratford through Ilford and on to Shenfield. That will be the best option in the early stages for ensuring that pressure eases on the Central line, making conditions far better for my constituents and many others who commute from east London and Essex to work in central London. Hopefully, the channel tunnel rail link will connect at Stratford with crossrail and the Central and Jubilee lines. It is vital that the first development of that beyond Ebbsfleet should go to Stratford, not St. Pancras, because of ease of communications and its ability to take people around London, not through the centre.

Some problems have been caused by a lack of leadership, sensitivity and focus. I shall not concentrate today on congestion charging. We dealt with that in this Chamber about four months ago. I shall not deal with London Underground and the public-private partnership because that will be debated tomorrow. I shall focus today on the problems of Transport for London, an organisation that should be at the forefront of improving matters in partnership with the 32 London boroughs, the Association of London Government and central Government.

Sections 142 to 144 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 require the Mayor to prepare a transport strategy for London and to encompass all forms of transport, including movement of goods as well as people. Section 154 of the Act established Transport for London and its powers. The Mayor is given wide powers of control over TFL. Members of the Greater London Authority have limited powers to scrutinise and challenge, but the Labour group and others on the GLA have challenged TFL for its lack of openness and on its ability to deliver on its programme—unfortunately, not with great success.

What, then, are the problems with TFL, and why do they occur? Let me quote from a column in The Independent on 10 June 1998:

"Unfortunately, Gordon's economic misjudgements are the major factor threatening our chance of gaining a second term in office … An insight into Gordon's subservience to the City comes from an examination of the credentials of those he has chosen to appoint to the monetary policy committee of the Bank of England. How on earth a Labour chancellor could feel that a former CIA agent would be of value in pursuing Labour's wider agenda on the MPC is a matter that 'passeth all understanding'."

I was a member of the Committee that considered the Greater London Authority Bill, as was the author of that column, the then Member for Brent, East, Mr. Ken Livingstone, who was elected in May 2000 as the independent Mayor of London.

On Saturday 13 January 2001, BBC Online reported:

"Former CIA agent Bob Kiley has been drafted in to try to save London's ailing Tube network. His four-year contract started on Monday.

It is the most unlikely of alliances: the left-wing rebel, scourge of the Establishment, and the former CIA man and one-time union basher, united against the plans of Big Government.

Now ensconced in a £2m house in Belgravia and on a £2m four-year contract, Kiley is rising to meet the challenge before him. He is said to want to bring 100 of his former American colleagues to manage London's transport"—

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

May I finish the quote? I shall then certainly give way. It continues:

"currently run by what Ken Livingstone has cuttingly described as 'dullards'."

The hon. Gentleman is making a strong point. He will recall that I served on the Committee, too. The Opposition pointed out that this is exactly what would happen. The then Minister was asked what would happen if the Mayor were not of the same party as the Government. We were told, "That can't happen." The hon. Gentleman's party set the authority up that way, and his party must take responsibility for it.

My recollection of the Committee—and if we were to read the transcript, we would find that I am right—is that those words were not used, although we may certainly debate what happened all those years ago. I will deal with that matter as I go on.

Mr. Kiley came with an impressive CV. The Sunday Telegraph's City editor, Neil Bennett, wrote last August:

"Ever since he was appointed by Ken Livingstone last year, Kiley has paraded himself as the answer to all the capital's transport needs. He has been regarded as a near-messianic businessman by adoring journalists, who credit him with the transformation of New York's subway from a graffiti-sprayed crack den into a space age neural network.

Kiley's track record in New York deserves closer examination. By the time he quit in 1990, the subway was an altogether more dangerous place than when he had taken over seven years earlier, with a sharp increase in muggings and fires.

Only months after he departed, the subway suffered one of its worst-ever disasters at Lexington Avenue that caused five deaths and 150 injuries.

Kiley has an unfortunate habit of taking the credit for other people's successes. Much of the improvement in the subway during his tenure should be credited to Richard Ravitch, his predecessor, who won approval for a $6.6bn capital improvement programme. This provided the new trains Kiley likes to talk about so much.

Kiley says less about his consistent failure to hit targets for passenger growth on the network—numbers actually fell in his last year in charge—and his bungling financial management that drove the authority ever-deeper into the red."

TFL recently appointed RMT leader Bob Crow to its board. However, the unions should be wary. In New York, there were no strikes during the changes that took place under Kiley, due no doubt to the state's punitive laws against strikes. Leaders could lose their homes, and for every day of strike action, an employee would lose two days' pay.

Mr. Kiley has little experience of running a modern and complex bus service and comes from a city in which buses are still in the dark ages, with no advanced technology, few bus lanes, no effective route co-ordination and half the ridership of London. There are 4 million passengers in London, and slightly more than 2 million passengers in New York.

Mr. Kiley's career has been dogged by continual accusations of cronyism and fat cat pay. In New York, he and his sidekick, David Gunn, both earned substantially more than the mayor. In London, he has assembled more or less the same team as was with him in New York, all funded by the London taxpayer.

Another article in The Sunday Telegraph, by Jonathan Petre and Sonia Purnell last August, pointed out that several of the specifically recruited team were paid grossly inflated salaries. An independent report commissioned by Mario Cuomo, then governor of New York, found that some posts had been filled by Mr. Kiley's right-hand man, David Gunn, without having been advertised and that normal job requirements had been waived.

In 1985, a report by the inspector general of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, of which Kiley was then chairman, said that there was "clear salary favouritism". The 1985 investigation by the inspector general, Sanford Russell, found that several staff taken on after Mr. Kiley took over the New York subway had received excessive salaries and expenses. The salaries of a group hired from Pennsylvania, formerly headed by Mr. Gunn,

"increased approximately 80 per cent on average over the previous salaries".

Mr. Gunn, who was president of the New York Transit Authority under Kiley, is one of the consultants on the payroll of Transport for London. Last year, he was said to be Mr. Kiley's first choice to run the tube. However, he is now president of the troubled Amtrak, which is under investigation by the US Senate because its "general state is dire", and faces closure. I am therefore not sure whether Mr. Gunn will be coming over after all. He clearly has more pressing matters with which to deal in the United States.

Bob Kiley has appointed a large number of Americans to TFL in long-term consultancy positions. Most have worked before with Bob Kiley or Jay Walder in the United States.

Jay Walder is an interesting man. He is the finance and planning managing director, and now calls himself chief executive, of TFL. He is a former professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. According to a document that I acquired from within TFL, he was

"employed on a consultancy basis while working at Harvard University".

From November 2000 until the end of January 2001, he provided advice to the commissioner on the PPP proposals and congestion charging—that is, before and immediately after Kiley officially started work for TFL. The fees paid were £18,662. From 5 February 2001, he was hired on a four-year contract worth £200,000 a year as TFL's managing director of finance and performance, although he seems to have time to lecture in the United States. Last week, he gave a lecture on

"Transport for London: A Discussion of Modern Transportation"

at New York City technical college.

I found that information on the internet. It was widely advertised several months ago. I do not know how many other lectures Mr. Walder has given during the period and how much time he has spent in the United States. Those are relevant questions that need to be investigated.

Maggie Boepple, a New York lobbyist who worked on the MTA in New York, was employed from February to August 2001 on a consultancy basis and was involved in early work on the PPP and TFL's alternative investment programme. She was later appointed on a fixed-term contract until 30 October 2002 to manage the transition of London Underground into TFL.

Steve Polan, a senior legal adviser on the MTA, works for a firm called Kalkines, Arky, Zall and Bernstein, which is engaged on a consultancy basis to provide specialist legal advice to the commissioner on financial contracts. The total fees paid to Kalkines, Arky, Zall and Bernstein for work done by Steve Polan to the end of August 2001 amounted to £183,112.

Tom Amenta worked in the finance group of the MTA. He advises on the PPP, focusing on the integration of London Underground. His salary is about £90,000 to £100,000. The total fee paid between November 2000 and the beginning of February 2001 was £28,859. From February 2001, Tom Amenta was employed as a senior projects manager reporting to Jay Walder. His contract ended in March 2002.

Drew Hyde worked for TFL on a consultancy basis between October 2000 and May 2001, and drew fees of £58,540. Charles Monheim has worked on ticketing and the smart card project, and Eric Rothman works for Jay Walder on approval of business plans

In total, about 20 Americans do regular consultancy work for TFL, and they have been given that work through Bob Kiley. The consultants can earn around £1,000 per day, which is all paid for by Londoners through Ken Livingstone's precept on the boroughs and other income generated by TFL.

In the interests of balance, will the hon. Gentleman set out with similar detail tomorrow the consultancy fees that have been charged by the various consortia that work for the Government on PPP? Alternatively, will he mention Cap Gemini Ernst and Young, which is working on Railtrack in administration? I understand that its fees are £700,000 a week.

No doubt the hon. Gentleman will have the opportunity to make his own speech if he catches your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker. I shall continue with my speech.

Bill Bratton is the ex-commissioner of police in New York city. Previously, he was chief of New York's transit police. TFL paid to bring him to London. He spent lots of his time meeting the Home Secretary, other political figures and people in the Metropolitan police. Bill Bratton runs The Bratton Group in New York city. A TFL document states that the group

"were engaged by TFL to inventory the issues surrounding congestion, bus movement and security".

The group published a report entitled "Adopting a Modern Enforcement Strategy for London's Buses" in September 2001. It is known in London Assembly circles as the Wasserman report, after its principal author and Bratton employee, Bob Wasserman. He is an adviser to TFL and is well known in the American police for his work on the broken window theory: if one deals with the small crimes, the big ones will sort themselves out.

Bob Kiley has made at least 30 key appointments throughout the organisation. As far as I understand, they have not been advertised externally. Some of the appointments are new, and some are major promotions. They include a senior communications position that was advertised at a salary of around £50,000 and appointed at £70,000. Kiley's own speech writer, Sarah Moule, is on around £400 per day plus an agency fee. Jeroen Weimar recently moved from being Kiley's chief of staff to director of corporate services. The sum effect of that is that Kiley and Jay Walder have introduced a regime with centralised power. Kiley's Americans are rewriting the transport strategy at this moment with no consultation whatever, and frequently recommending things that people are querying and saying do not fit into British law or experience.

Kiley and his team are not following correct procedure. They are insensitive and, in the opinion of many people working in TFL, totally ruthless in the way in which they operate. New US staff are being sought all the time. For example, there is an ad on the alumni news and information website of Northwestern university for the transport planning opportunity of the decade: the post of transport planning director in London. It says that the post will be appointed by Transport Commissioner Bob Kiley and Jay Walder, and adds that this is a unique opportunity. That is being advertised on US university websites. I understand that it is not being promoted via human resources at TFL; it is being done directly by the Kiley operation.

Mr. Kiley recently sent someone to Harvard to investigate direct recruitment from there. As I speak, well-paid US consultants and contract-holders are sitting together on the 14th floor of Windsor house, where the American colony has been established, watching CNN and Bloomberg TV over coffee, gossiping about baseball, discussing old times together in the CIA and FBI and their operations in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, reading specially delivered copies of The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and The New York Times and planning their next first-class trip back to the big apple. It seems that we have a big problem if an organisation is created and run by an abrasive, autocratic and aloof group of people, who appears to believe that all British employees of TFL who were there before they arrived are not to be trusted.

There is clearly a culture of fear within TFL, and I understand that at least 10 senior British managers earning £70,000 and above have been asked to leave the organisation. On the whole, they appear to have signed gagging orders, and they no doubt received substantial pay-offs in the region of one year's salary. Recent departures include Richard Smith, director of integration, and Mike Swiggs, who was acting chief executive in the pre-Kiley era, and who left his post as corporate director two weeks ago.

Ken Livingstone is chair of TFL, but what has he done? He seems to have some kind of pact with Bob Kiley not to interfere in the management of TFL as long as Kiley gives him good political cover and support on the PPP. There is now no one left in TFL with senior management experience of London Underground. One of the only senior British staff left there is Peter Hendy, managing director of London Buses, who is an extremely wealthy man from buying out his bus company during the Thatcher era, and the improvement in bus services is about the only visible achievement made during the two years of TFL. Then there is Derek Turner, the managing director of street management, who is the only senior manager left from the start of TFL. He will presumably be there as the fall guy when Ken's foolish congestion charging scheme ends in disaster.

It was not meant to be like this. The essence of the Greater London Authority Act was for partnership with the ALG, the boroughs and the Government. However, the Kiley team has acted more unilaterally than in partnership. It has not consulted the boroughs. For example, last year, Jay Walder proposed to change the system for paying the boroughs the intermediate transport programme grant from quarterly in advance to monthly in arrears. That led to very sharp exchanges with the director of the ALG transport and environment committee, Nick Lester, and the boroughs were incandescent. They protested, but nothing changed. The Kiley model is going ahead regardless.

Kiley and his American team seem to believe that London boroughs ought to be in the same weak relationship to the city government as the boroughs in New York are to the New York city government. They do not understand that this is the United Kingdom and that London has a very valuable tradition of strong borough-based local authorities. It is essential, if things are to work effectively in London, that the London administration co-operates and does not ride roughshod over local authorities in our capital.

May I gently remind the hon. Gentleman that that was exactly the Opposition's argument in the Committee stage, when he voted against it?

If the hon. Gentleman reads the Act, he will see t hat it makes it absolutely clear that there should be partnership between the Greater London Authority and the Mayor, and the boroughs. That is what I am calling for.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

No, I do not have time. I need to make a few more points and then conclude. I understand that other hon. Members want to make contributions. I should be happy to carry on talking but they might not like it.

Recently, London Buses entered into a joint arrangement with the Metropolitan police service for a contract worth £25 million a year. The Met's lead on that project is Commander Alan Shave, and the money is coming from Transport for London to pay for policing relating to bus routes. I gather that that has been introduced rather quickly, without considering whether it will necessarily be value for money. It was not piloted. The contract between TFL and the Metropolitan police service was signed without the business case having been approved. I understand that, as part of the project, a group of 10 TFL and Metropolitan police staff were taken first class to New York to meet police there and to see how they were operating.

Before the GLA came into existence, there was a London bus initiative with the boroughs. Recently, London bus initiative 1 has been developed into London bus initiative 2. Initially, the boroughs played the leading role in the initiative, but now they are being excluded and there is no partnership with them. That was, again, brought in without any consultation or discussion with the boroughs. Centralisation of control is damaging to effective government in London. It is also damaging to the way in which TFL is operated.

It takes, on average, eight months to get basic business cases within the organisation approved. Kiley's team in charge of business cases, run by Jay Walder, decided recently to recruit 10 additional staff to try to clear the backlog of cases that has built up because no one makes a decision, rather than devolving the powers to the managing directors. Everything has to be taken through the centre. The result is that projects are delayed and cannot proceed unless they are Bob Kiley's own pet projects.

TFL was established with optimism. There was much new money to be invested and it seemed that transport in London was at last going to get the work and investment that it needed. Sadly, since the publication of the flawed transport strategy, things have gone from bad to worse. Serious questions need to be asked about why there are so many staff on sick leave, why people believe that stress in the organisation is leading to chaos, why meetings of the chief officer group and its decisions are not minuted, why people get decisions made by talking to Jay Walder in corridors rather than through formal meetings and why there is a culture of a lack of trust of the British employees in TFL by the American management team that has come in and colonised the 14th floor of Windsor house. Serious questions must be asked about the money being spent outside. Fishburn Hedges is being paid £60,000 to £80,000 a month to run media relations, despite the fact that there are 11 staff in TFL's media office.

Other issues need to be examined. Questions must be asked, and I call today on the district auditor and the Audit Commission urgently to investigate employment practices. Were posts correctly advertised and filled? How much has been spent on headhunters and consultants here and in the United States? How much has TFL spent on transatlantic flights and hotels for its consultants and employees? Has the equal opportunities policy on recruitment been followed? How much has been paid to experienced staff who have resigned or been dismissed, and how much extra was paid to buy their silence in gagging orders and deals?

Have the various appointments and consultancies been value for money? Was the £1.5 million on legal work, including legal challenges to the PPP and the costs of losing the last judicial review, correctly spent? Was TFL right to spend £37,000 during the 2002 London borough elections on the "last chance for Londoners to say no to the PPP" campaign? Is it appropriate that TFL spent £3 million last year and will spend £7 million this year on matters related to the underground and PPP? Is all that money being spent correctly?

Londoners deserve and need a modern transport system. As chairman of TFL, the Mayor bears ultimate responsibility for the actions and regime of his appointed Transport Commissioner, Bob Kiley. Londoners deserve better, and we want answers.

I will deal with issues relating to transport in the capital, particularly the underground. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes) on securing the debate, which is very important to Londoners and the significant number of people who live outside the confines of the M25 but work in London and rely on transport in London.

When the hon. Gentleman says that the situation was not meant to be like this, I am inclined to say, although I was not in the House at the time, that Conservatives warned the Government about it. The idea that Londoners would elect a London Mayor with a huge personal mandate and that that Mayor, whoever the person was, would not take to himself many centralised powers was unrealistic, to put it mildly.

I shall discuss issues that specifically relate to central London, such as the congestion charge, which I shall mention shortly. Tomorrow, we shall debate on the Floor of the House the report on the PPP by the Select Committee on Transport, Local Government and the Regions. The current state of affairs in London Underground is nothing short of a national disgrace. There is little doubt that if animals were subject to the conditions that many underground passengers have to put up with, it would immediately become a national scandal. The problems occur not just in the rush hour but for much of the working day.

Clearly, the massive strategic problem with funding the underground must be addressed. Unfortunately, a case is going to court. The only thing that we can safely say is what the Mayor has said: there will be scratchy public transport for the next 10 years. There is little doubt that the London Underground situation will get worse before it gets better, irrespective of the resolution of the court case in the next few months.

The Mayor has significant powers, and I appreciate that the hon. Member for Ilford, South has great concerns about the execution of those powers within the confines of Transport for London. All the bickering will not get us anywhere. It is important that London MPs play their part in facilitating matters. For our part, Conservatives have spent much of the past year encouraging Ken Livingstone and Bob Kiley to ensure that the right thing is done in the interests of Londoners. We have done our best to be constructive in the matter.

However, politicians and, more importantly, our constituents are running out of patience because of the mess that is being created in Transport for London and the poor relationship between the Mayor of London and central Government. At the heart of the PPP issue is the funding of the programmes that we have in place. It is easy for all of us to blame the Mayor or Transport for London, but the Treasury has deliberately held on to the purse strings not just for transport and crucial day-to-day issues concerning transport, which is specifically within the confines of this debate, but for public services as a whole. London gets an appallingly bad deal from central Government.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when looking at transport problems in London, all roads lead to the Treasury? On the PPP, London Underground could be wholly privatised—I would not support that, but it could be done and would have intellectual consistency—or it could remain in the public sector. However, the Government's chosen course of PPP is the worst of all possible worlds.

I suspect that I shall not utter these words too often in my parliamentary career, but I entirely agree with the hon. Lady's sentiments. PPP is absolutely the worst of the available options. The Select Committee knows considerably more about the details, but it is clear even from a cursory look at the PPP document that the Government are saying that transport in London will get worse for at least the first seven and a half years of PPP's operation, assuming that it can be got under way.

It strikes me that the whole fiasco of Railtrack and the oft-repeated phrase that there would be an integrated transport policy under the Deputy Prime Minister, the former Secretary of State who now has responsibility for the regions, point to a lack of central Government credibility. The Government's transport policy for London and where it is going is greatly worrying.

On congestion charging, the big idea of the Mayor was predicated on the fact that there would be great improvements in public transport prior to the introduction of the congestion charge. Indeed, that is self-evidently necessary because, if the congestion charge is to be effective, it will take some 15 to 20 per cent. of capacity from central London's roads. That capacity must go somewhere and the obvious idea was that it would go into the public transport system.

We have seen a lot of publicity from the Mayor about improvement with the buses. There has been an improvement and there is clearly a long-term investment structure for buses in central London. However, the great worry—the reality is undeniable—is that the buses can make only a very small difference in capacity. However much they are improved with bus lanes and so on they will not be able to make the necessary difference. The flag that has been run up by the Mayor and Transport for London that buses are the answer to all the problems prior to the introduction of congestion charging is a political red herring. Things will get worse before they get better, and it is now incumbent on the Mayor of London to postpone congestion charging for the foreseeable future until those improvements are in place.

As many hon. Members know, my local council—Westminster city council—is taking the matter to the High Court in the middle of July. It is regrettable that it has been forced so to do, but it is understandable given the concerns of many local residents.

Does the hon. Gentleman suspect, as I do, that the Mayor might secretly welcome Westminster city council's legal challenge because a delay in introducing the congestion charge might avoid a political fiasco and disaster for him?

I had suspected that and I pacify a number of my local residents associations and constituents on that basis. My only caveat to that theory, which goes back to funding, is that the one significant benefit of congestion charging for Mr. Livingstone, over and above the environmental advantages and other political aspects that have driven the policy forward, is the prospect of £130 million to £150 million a year that he can securitise for transport and other projects in the years ahead. So little money is coming through from central Government that he may find it difficult to resist such a prospect, notwithstanding the potential political fiasco, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, of introducing a congestion charge in that way.

London needs a strong and credible Mayor with the legal authority to drive through an agenda. Unfortunately, over the past two years, we have had little more than a media personality using his celebrity to proclaim a vision without any idea of how to deliver it.

Central Government need to understand that the devolution of power in London must at the same time ensure that the city is suitably rewarded for being the economic powerhouse of the country. It is little short of a disgrace that the Government have largely ignored the quality of life of so many Londoners. They are happy to take the taxes, the increased stamp duty and inheritance tax that flow from the wealth created by Londoners, but do not invest in the basic transport infrastructure that is so necessary.

Transport is one of the most fundamental issues for all Londoners, whether rich like some of the voters in the constituency of the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field), or poor like many of my constituents in Hackney. It is a crucial issue for people who use public transport, but also for those who do not. There are no more passionate advocates of investment in public transport than London taxi drivers, who know that in order to make a living travelling around London, it is essential to ease the congestion, which requires state-of-the-art 21st century public transport.

Transport was a key issue in the last mayoral campaign. Let me remind my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes) and Conservative Members that my party brought the whole weight of the Labour machine to bear in the last mayoral campaign in support of policies such as PPP—and it was humiliatingly smashed. A good man whom I personally like and admire, the then Member for Holborn and St. Pancras ended his national career in a regrettable way.

It amazes me that colleagues such as my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South are still trying to re-fight the mayoral campaign. Too many of my Labour colleagues are like Japanese soldiers in the jungle, still fighting the second world war. They cannot acknowledge that Ken Livingstone won on a policy that is directly contrary to those that my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South and others are still trying to peddle. Londoners were opposed to PPP. Ken beat the Labour party on PPP in the mayoral election. Londoners remain opposed to PPP. By the time the next mayoral election comes around, Londoners will not have seen any gains from PPP. Colleagues arguing that PPP is the way to get things done will have to eat their words.

On behalf of Londoners, I urge my colleagues to put an end to this petty and personal sniping at the Mayor, which is based on the ignominious failure of the Labour candidate at the last mayoral election, and to work constructively with him. When it comes to the big political issues, such as PPP, the importance of investment in transport, and the need to put pressure on the Treasury to make the money available, the people of London are solidly behind their Mayor. Parties and people who are seen to be involved in petty, personal sniping and retaining tittle-tattle about TFL—

Is my hon. Friend saying that she does not care about the way in which Londoners' money is spent? Is it right for the Mayor to appoint a Transport Commissioner and allow him to do what the hell he likes, with no one allowed to query or challenge it? Is my hon. Friend really saying that?

rose—

Order. Before the hon. Lady resumes, may I remind her that the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) is still a Member of Parliament?

I am grateful.

In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South, of course I care about Londoners' money. He is as knowledgeable about the legislation and construction of the Assembly as I am, so he will be aware that a detailed structure of scrutiny, appraisal and report ensures that the Mayor and TFL have to account for the money penny by penny and year on year through the committees, the Assembly and the reporting systems. The structures exist for scrutiny and to make the Mayor accountable. For my hon. Friend to imply otherwise suggests that he has not read the legislation or has not been to Romney house recently.

It is vital.

Yes, it is vital. This is where my hon. Friend swept up the tittle-tattle with which he has been detaining the Chamber. Of course it is vital that there is scrutiny and accountability. Fewer public officials in this country have more statutory scrutiny and accountability structures and requirements than the Mayor. Londoners may set their minds at rest. If there is any problem about scrutiny and accountability in relation to the Mayor, I suggest that my hon. Friend takes it to members of the Assembly. The responsibility for scrutiny rests fairly and squarely with the Assembly. Let us kill this notion here and now that there is no scrutiny or accountability where the Mayor is concerned. If anything, the legislation and institutional arrangements provide for an excess of scrutiny and accountability.

On the questions raised about TFL, the people of Ilford are as dependent on transport as anyone else. They will therefore be surprised to read that my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South seeks to detain the Chamber this morning with all sorts of whinges and tittle-tattle from nameless people at TFL, rather than to call for more money for transport and an end to the misbegotten public-private partnership, or to work more constructively with the Mayor.

I know that there are many hard-working and pleasant people at TFL, who are no doubt kind to their grandparents, small children and animals. However, as my hon. Friend will be aware, there has been a longstanding issue at TFL about the overall quality of management. I have heard colleagues make the same point about project management, although not everyone at TFL has been lacking. It would be surprising if the new Transport Commissioner did not bring in new people to address the systemic failures in management. Indeed, it would be remiss of him not to. My hon. Friend has gone sweeping the corridors of Romney house for tittle-tattle about complaints about the new management structure, and brought it to the Chamber as if it constituted a substantive critique. The sort of whinges and complaints about Americans with which my hon. Friend has sought to detain the Chamber are inevitable when one is trying to strengthen a management structure that is notoriously weak, with all due respect to individuals. They are inevitable when one is trying to put in place international expertise, to fill the gaps and to make TFL an institution that can manage a 21st century transport system for a 21st century city.

The people of Ilford would prefer a Member who seeks to work positively with someone who is, after all, the elected Mayor. When you sneer at the notion that Ken Livingstone was elected Mayor, you sneer not at the individual, but at the thousands of your Ilford constituents who came out and voted for you. You need to take the views of the people of London more seriously.

Order. I remind the hon. Lady that she is supposed to address the occupant of the Chair, not the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Gapes).

I do not want to get into a personal argument with my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), but my constituents may judge me on my record and, no doubt, my hon. Friend's constituents will have things to say about her record in due course. It is important that hon. Members are prepared to represent the concerns that are brought to us. Just because someone has been elected does not mean that they can do what on earth they like for the period of their mandate. We have a duty as London MPs to ensure that public money—our money—is spent properly.

As I said, there is no question of the Mayor being able to do what he likes. The law does not allow that. Nor does the Assembly or, if I might say so, the Evening Standard. If there were no Assembly or institutional structures, the Evening Standard would keep any Mayor on his or her toes. The notion that I am saying that the Mayor should be able to do what he likes is nonsense.

To return to the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South on Transport for London, there are bound to be stresses and strains as TFL modernises and as the type of international management expertise that it needs is introduced. It would be highly surprising if none of the people who had to leave or modify their working practices had complaints. As I have said, it is surprising that an hon. Member, rather than raise substantive issues, has brought such tittle-tattle before the Chamber.

I want to comment on the congestion charge as a London Member who does not drive and therefore does not perhaps have the same heartfelt feelings about it as other hon. Members. Although I do not drive, I am well aware that in the 14 years that I have represented Hackney, increased congestion has meant that it has taken longer and longer to make the journey to Westminster. A journey that took 30 minutes in the rush hour when I was first elected in 1987 now takes between 45 minutes and an hour. Considering that London is the economic heartland and motor of this country, especially with the financial services in the City, something must be done.

People in other cities in Britain and around the world will examine how the congestion charge works in London. The Mayor has no choice but to see whether it can work. Something must be done because the congestion is an economic and social problem with potential health effects.

The congestion charge is a weapon, but I am mindful of the fact that in a borough such as Hackney many poor people have to drive. A single mother who works shifts as an office cleaner and has to get her child to nursery has to have an old banger to get around. I stand at bus stops and see those ladies. They are not rich, or even middle class, but because of the transport deficiencies in Hackney and other parts of London, they have to own a car.

In principle, the congestion charge is right, but as I have told the Mayor in private and now say in public, it must be thought through properly. He must ensure that it will not have an unnecessary detrimental effect while dealing with congestion. Some of the potential inequities must be thought through.

Speaking for myself rather than my party, I have no objection to the principle of a congestion charge. Ultimately, if we believe in free markets, road pricing is a potential element. However, there is a clear crisis in the public transport system, and the only viable alternative is for people to use their cars, so does the hon. Lady agree that now cannot be the right time to introduce such charges? The Opposition have also raised ongoing concerns about the fact that congestion has become worse with TFL's policy of reducing three-lane roads to two-lane roads and altering traffic light sequencing. When the charge is introduced, some of those changes may be reversed and prove that the congestion charge has improved the situation from very bad to not quite as bad.

I understand the hon. Gentleman's comments, and there is a sense in which the congestion charge is a gamble. It has never been done in a city of the size and density of London, so it must be carefully thought through, but I suspect that there will never be a right time to introduce the charge. It would have been better to see a step change in the quality of public transport before we introduced the congestion charge. However, if my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South had spent some of the energy that he spent on petty personal sniping against the Mayor on trying to get the Chancellor of Exchequer to provide the funding and support needed to give Londoners the public transport that they deserve, his constituents would have reason to be grateful.

I do not want to detain the Chamber, because I know that many hon. Members want to speak. However, it would be wrong for this debate to pass without reminding the Chamber that London's elected Mayor retains the support of most Londoners for his transport policies. In particular, all the polls show that he retains the support of most Londoners for his opposition to PPP, and that Londoners are grateful to TFL and the GLA for the improvements that have been made to bus services.

Londoners are looking to hon. Members on both sides of the House to stop engaging in the petty warfare that stems from the mayoral campaign, to look forward and to work constructively with the Mayor. No one can say that he has not attempted to run an inclusive administration, and to work with people. The time is long overdue for some of my colleagues to put their anger and bitterness about the mayoral campaign behind them and to seek to work constructively with the Mayor. The people of London deserve no less.

The hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) hopes that this debate will be the end of petty warfare. I suspect that it is very much the opening salvo of what will become a sustained campaign over the next 22 months, and that it will be entrenched rather than petty warfare.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes) on securing this debate on an important subject. In truth, however, he missed his opportunity. As we look around the Chamber, we see the Minister, who has given up a morning to be here, his officials, the people who run the building, and members of the public who have come to listen. In fact, we have witnessed internal warfare between the various factions of the Labour party. It is a shame that such debates are used in that way.

To respond to the speech by the hon. Member for Ilford, South, if ever there were an endorsement of the Opposition's position during the passage of the Greater London Authority Act 1999, that was it. Most of the things that he complained about were things that we said would happen. He is right to raise those issues, but he must accept that that is what devolution means. His party is committed to devolution in a way that my party is not, but that is what democracy is all about. As the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington said, Mr. Livingstone was democratically elected—he got his mandate. If the hon. Member for Ilford, South does not like the way that the Mayor is running the show, tough. That is what politics is all about.

The hon. Gentleman made some quite serious allegations about the conduct of a number of officials at the Greater London Authority. [Interruption.] I am prepared to give way to him if he says that he will repeat those allegations outside the Palace of Westminster.

Many of the things that I said were quotes from press articles published in August last year. Other quotes were from the internet. They are already public information

That is a slight fudge of an answer. Will the hon. Gentleman repeat his allegations outside this Chamber?

I see no need to do so. I am happy that my information is based on reliable sources.

That sounds like a waiver of privilege to me.

Order. No hon. Member can waive their privilege.

I hesitate to disagree, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I think that the courts have found that there can be a waiver of privilege. Anyway, I do not want to dwell on the point and I am sure that you are right. I shall move on because we have limited time.

The hon. Member for Ilford, South said that the boroughs were not being properly consulted and their views were being overridden. The Opposition tabled an amendment to allow the boroughs more powers and more involvement, but the hon. Gentleman voted against it in Committee and on the Floor of the House.

The hon. Gentleman complained about the precept. In Committee, he and I were given assurances that the precept would be capped. However, the cap was lifted in the House of Lords. Two hundred amendments came back and were debated in four hours on the Floor of the House. Among them was the removal of the cap on the precept. That is what happened. The way in which the hon. Gentleman's party took the legislation through the House led to all the things that he has complained about. If he continues with this line over the next 22 months, we will consistently remind him and his party that they are completely responsible for this state of affairs.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman on one point. The Mayor has been profligate. He has hired too many special advisers and he has achieved little. There are more pigeons in Trafalgar square than when he started. He has done absolutely nothing as Mayor. We will feel the impact of his policies when he introduces road-user charging. There are two sides to that debate. I happen to be against it. Of all the places in Britain to introduce the pilot scheme for congestion charging, central London is not it. It will lead to a lacuna in the middle. The constituents of the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington will be able to drive with ease through the centre of London, oblivious to the complete chaos that will surround the area. It is a disastrous policy, but again the Labour party gave the Mayor the power to do this. It has to live with the consequences. It voted for and welcomed road-user charging. We will hold the Government to account.

There are many more policies that we could talk about for a long time. It is so sad that London has such potential on the transport side. There is a huge underground network, which, if it were run properly and if this disastrous PPP were scrapped, could be the best metro system in the world. We have taxis. We have buses running through the night. The buses have been a success story, but as they have been given an £800 million subsidy, it would be a scandal if they were not. If there is good will on all sides, proper funding and commitment, things can be achieved. The Government are responsible for the present state of affairs and they must answer for it.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes) on securing the debate. He heaped praise on the Government for their role in transport and castigated Transport for London. I hope to be a little more balanced. He should perhaps have called the debate "Get Kiley". We would then have known what notes to prepare. I take it that he is against the use of consultants in any capacity, and will object to the Government's use of consultants in relation to PPP and Railtrack in administration and to the £36 million paid in success fees to tube lines. I will listen to tomorrow's proceedings with interest.

What is interesting about the figures that the hon. Gentleman produced on spending on different consultants is that he managed to obtain them. Can the Minister provide hon. Members with a similar level of detail about the spending on PPP and on Railtrack in administration, so that we can see precisely how much the individual consultants who have been working on those jobs have received over the past four to five years? I bet the hon. Gentleman that the Minister will tell us that it will cost too much money to produce that information.

The hon. Gentleman was lucky in securing his information. Many of his final questions about the way in which TFL has operated could be addressed to the Government in relation to PPP and Railtrack in administration. I am perhaps disappointed that he did not do that this morning. He said that it was not supposed to be this way. Of course it was not. A compliant Labour Mayor was supposed to be elected. That did not happen and now he is partly to blame for the mess that we are in.

I will not make the tube the focus of my comments this morning because I want to keep my powder dry for tomorrow's debate. There are clearly many unresolved matters to which the hon. Member for Ilford, South did not refer such as the funding gap, whether the financiers now have partial responsibility for safety, success fees and the conflict between what Londoners expect and the reality, in view of the headline figures and the billions that will allegedly be invested as a result of PPP.

Many matters could and should be raised today. Crossrail is an important project, which is vital for the sustainability of London. As regards phase two of the channel tunnel rail link, I hope that the Minister can confirm that the ongoing discussions about Network Rail have not caused problems.

Another project, the Chelsea-Hackney line, is vital to my constituents, and my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes) should lobby the Treasury for money for it.

Indeed, it is a vital project for a part of London that has no access to the tube, as I well know from my time as a councillor there.

Congestion charges were the subject of a debate several months ago. If time had allowed, we could have mentioned a positive development at Connex, which has allowed its staff to train as specials. That is a useful development, which I hope other train companies will take up. We could have considered commuter rail services and the franchise negotiations. What is happening to South Central, where is it going in terms of a new franchise, and will it deliver what commuters want?

We could have talked about cycling, and it is a pity that the Mayor is scaling down the plans for the cycle network. We could have talked about road safety. I am concerned about the way in which TFL is operating in that regard. I know of a pedestrian crossing that is desperately needed in my constituency, but we have been told that it will take six months to consider the matter. Work must be done on such issues.

There are problems with consultation. TFL recognises that it is perceived as seeking views on schemes after they have been drawn up, rather than at the formative stage. It is belatedly undertaking to provide clear and accessible information, to consult on schemes at the formative stage and not to refuse to attend local meetings to which it is invited, which is clearly important. Minicabs are a significant issue in London, but what progress has been made on licensing? There is the issue of co-ordination between train-operating companies and those that run the Croydon tram. Information about connections with the tram system is, for instance, not available to people who buy tickets at Connex stations.

Those are some of the issues, but, in the few minutes that remain, I want to concentrate on buses, to which the hon. Member for Ilford, South referred. TFL must significantly improve the information that it provides and, more specifically, the countdown system. For the benefit of those who do not use the buses, that system tells passengers, in theory, when the next bus is due. Some 4,000 displays are to be installed by 2005, but that is not ambitious enough. We must ensure that information about the arrival of buses is available throughout the network, because that is the only way to get people on to the system. In future years, any significant sums that we raise through congestion charging could be used to achieve that.

The accessibility of buses is a significant problem in London and, I suspect, elsewhere. Ramps may not work, or drivers may not be trained to use them. Those who have been trained may feel unable to use the ramps because they are worried that they will not be able to pull them back in. The bus would then have to stop, everyone would have to be thrown off, and a replacement bus would have to be found. I hope that TFL and the Government will tackle those significant issues, which may also require action elsewhere.

I think that all hon. Members agree that London is not moving, and the Minister must accept that he shares responsibility for the crisis. His Government were responsible for drafting the legislation, his party was responsible for creating Ken the martyr and for underfunding London's transport infrastructure for many years.

I quote:

"The capital is bogged down with funding arguments, planning arguments, congestion charging scheme arguments, endless roadworks and projects that are already facing ballooning costs. London needs investment and delivery of significant improvements to keep it on the move. Political infighting over the past two years has let London down at the very time swift, decisive action has been required."

So concluded Tourism Alliance in its report published in April 2002. That influential body, led by Digby Jones, brings together all the tourism interests in the United Kingdom, but it concentrates on London, where tourism represents economic activity worth about £10 billion each year, about 8 per cent. of gross domestic product. It is London's second largest industry.

Tourism Alliance homed in on the issue of political infighting. If anyone doubted that that was happening, those doubts were removed today. I cannot understand the motive of the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes) in introducing the debate in the way in which he did. I congratulate him on his success in the ballot, but it is regrettable that he chose to spend half an hour laying into people who are in no position to defend themselves in this Chamber, instead of concentrating on the real issues that affect Londoners, such as the appalling state of transport in London. I do not know whether he has been put up to it by the Government, who are worried about what may happen in the High Court in July—

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I have not been put up to it by anyone.

I accept that. The hon. Gentleman takes full responsibility for what he said, but this is part of a pattern, whereby Labour Members are more interested in political in-fighting and point scoring than in delivering services to Londoners.

Let us remind ourselves of the awful nightmare in which Londoners currently live. Traffic crawls at 9.9 mph, the lowest speed since the era of the horse and cart. The Mayor of London has taken down his red flag from County hall and now carries it before him on the streets of London. In any 24-hour period, almost the same number of vehicles enter London now—1.6 million in 2001—as in 1987, when the figure was 1.59 million, yet as the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) said, her journey has increased during that time from 30 to 45 minutes because of congestion. That congestion is not caused by an increase in vehicles, because there is hardly any increase in the number of vehicles entering London; it is caused by other factors, such as road works, manipulation of traffic lights and ill-designed traffic-calming schemes.

Back in the days of the Greater London council, I remember a half-baked scheme to try to close off most of the roads in London. Fortunately, that scheme did not go ahead because of central Government intervention, but we now have an independent Mayor, who seems to be able to achieve now what he was unable to achieve before.

Significantly, road safety is deteriorating fast. In spite of the lowering of traffic speeds, we are witnessing totally unacceptable carnage on London roads. Some 357 people were killed on London's roads in 2001, an increase of 73, or 25 per cent., on the previous year's figure. Almost one in 10 of the people killed on Britain's roads are killed in London, where the traffic is travelling relatively slowly. That is a major indictment of Transport for London and the Labour party.

Briefly on the point about road safety, there are particular concerns about children. The sad fact is that children in poor areas are far more likely to die on the road than other children. That is a serious issue.

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. When I was the Minister responsible for road safety, I was conscious of that. I am disappointed that the road safety statistics are now going in the wrong direction and that the most disadvantaged and vulnerable members of society are suffering most.

London has the most disrupted, overcrowded and costly underground network in the world. We shall debate that tomorrow, so I will not pursue the matter now. Perhaps the hon. Member for Ilford, South would have been better employed dealing with London Underground rather than attacking the personalities involved in the debate.

What is the prospect for the future? It is for more litigation, more political in-fighting, higher fares and charges, more congestion and pollution and the nightmare of congestion charging—40 or 50 per cent. of it to be paid for by the people living by the gateway at which the charges will impact. That will create diversion of traffic, distortions in the market, additional journeys and a nightmare for Londoners. We have the prospect of higher tube fares or much higher precepts in order to deal with the enormous funding gap that has been identified in the papers for London Transport, particularly for London Underground. There might have been some improvements on the buses, but overall the costs have shot up, investment has fallen and service is deteriorating. It is a nightmare, yet the hon. Member for Ilford, South spent hardly any time talking about that.

In contrast, my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) made some constructive comments, based on his experience and that of his constituents in facing up to what is happening in London. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Richard Ottaway) rightly drew attention to the extent to which the hon. Member for Ilford, South must share responsibility for what has happened: he is the joint author of the situation that he described so vividly. He introduced us to superb political theatre. The fantasy was enhanced by clear evidence of his short-term memory loss: he had been involved in the wrong side of the argument when Conservative Members were warning Londoners of the consequences of what the Government were doing.

The Government's attitude seems to be to say, "Hands off. It's nowt to do with us guy. The congestion charging scheme is a matter for the Mayor. We are not involved in it." There was an amazing response in the other place whenViscount Astor asked whether the Government endorsed the Mayor of London's proposals on inner-London congestion charging. He was told by the Minister responsible, Lord Macdonald of Tradeston:

"The particular scheme that the Mayor of London is planning to introduce is his responsibility, not the Government's."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 18 June 2002; Vol. 626, c. WA81.]

Today, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has briefed us on what he will say at the Mansion house dinner tonight. He has said how important it is to increase productivity. At the same time, the Government are saying that they are not interested in actions taken by the Mayor of London that will result in higher costs and lower productivity, more congestion and less competitiveness for London. That is a disastrous situation. It has been brought about by the folly of the Government's policies over the past few years. It is incumbent on the Government to own up and accept responsibility, apologise and do something to help Londoners to get out of the jam that they are in.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes) on securing this important debate. I often sit in debates, listen to Back Benchers on both sides of the Chamber, and to Liberal and Conservative Front Benchers. I have long given up on hearing a policy proposal from the Liberals. Today, we heard a former Minister with responsibility for transport, speaking for the Opposition, who gave us little insight as to what his policies would be. I always take note. As a regular contributor to the Chamber, I live in hope that one day a box will open and we will see some of the policies that the Opposition have to offer.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South spoke forcefully and eloquently, as always. He raised some important matters. I cannot comment too extensively on the issues to do with the Mayor, but I was interested to hear what my hon. Friend said, and I am sure that it will be noted in other quarters. As we speak, the process of accountability is taking place in the London Assembly itself. The Mayor is answering questions at this very moment.

My hon. Friend raised several important points in his well-researched manner. Transport for London is a best value authority, and it must therefore demonstrate best value for money and services. It is answerable to the district auditor for its plans. The actions of TFL are subject to the scrutiny of the Assembly, and decisions require the approval of the TFL board. Accountability for many of the matters that he raised is down to other sources, and properly so.

My hon. Friend spoke at some length about appointments that the Mayor has made to his management team. That is a matter for the Mayor. If the voters do not like what he has done, or are concerned about the matters that my hon. Friend has raised forcefully today—I am sure that they will be mentioned at any future election—it is for the people of London to hold the Mayor to account. I am sure that they will.

My hon. Friend gave an outline of how things were in London. If we are to sustain a vibrant and flourishing economy across Britain, and particularly in London, we need to reform and to invest in our transport infrastructure. Our transport system has suffered not years but decades of under-investment. Wherever we look, whether at rail, road or air, there are tremendous strains and stresses. However, we are the world's fourth largest economy. I am pleased to say that in recent years our economy has grown and improved.

London is important not just in Britain but as a world city. It is a major financial and business centre. I note that the latest Healey and Baker European cities monitor rates London as the best European city for external links and the second best for internal travel. It is worth putting London in the context of the rest of Europe. However, we should not be complacent. The scale of London and the complexity of the transport system, coupled with the enormously high demand, mean that the city's transport problems are of a considerably different magnitude to those in other parts of the country. London's successful economy has placed great strains on roads, rail and the underground network, especially at peak times. I am sure that the pressures of demand will increase.

It is worth giving a statistic: since 1989, London's population has increased by 600,000. That is roughly the population of a city such as Sheffield. In the next few years, London's population will further increase substantially. It is probable that something like the population of Leeds will be added to it, although I am not saying that everyone will move from the north to London. There are many more people now in work. There is more economic activity, and so more strain on London's transport system.

The 10-year plan that we published two years ago set out our vision and objectives, and the means by which we will achieve real change this decade.

The Minister mentioned the importance of transport to people who work. However, I remind him that there are big pockets of unemployment in London, and developing the transport infrastructure has an important role to play in regenerating areas such as my constituency.

My hon. Friend has raised an important point, and what she said applies throughout the country. It is necessary to improve transport, especially bus services, for people who are not in work or who live in areas of long-term high unemployment. There are certainly large pockets of wealth in London, as there are large pockets of poverty; that is the position in many other cities. Improving transport links, particularly to enable people to enjoy some of the benefits of the improvement in the economy, are important.

Can the Minister confirm that there has been no threat to the channel tunnel rail link phase two, and that that is not the reason why the negotiations about Railtrack in administration and Network Rail seemed to have been prolonged?

I am hoping to cover such matters later.

The plan takes a long-term approach to the problems that face us. It is a working document. We want to see it develop. We have put in place the funding to carry out many schemes. I am pleased that the stop-go funding that characterised previous Governments has now come to an end.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South and others mentioned the crossrail development, in which much interest has been shown. The Government will support viable proposals for a new east-west rail link across London. The project is highlighted in the transport plan as potentially contributing a 15 per cent. increase in seating capacity on the rail and underground network in central London during the morning peak. I know that my hon. Friend has particular ambitions and the actual detail of the project will come to pass shortly.

We are debating London Underground tomorrow on the Floor of the House, but it would be remiss of me not to refer to it today. Through the PPP, the modernisation of the tube is almost ready to begin. The plans are designed to unlock unprecedented sums for investment—some £16 billion over the next 15 years, including £4 billion from the private sector.

We know that London Underground's old procurement methods have let down passengers. The Jubilee line extension was a prime example, being late and with a 76 per cent. cost overrun. By contrast, the modernisation plans under the PPP provide the right incentives to contractors and give them the freedom to innovate, to seek efficiencies and to satisfy customers. We have great confidence in the PPP. We want it to work. We want the extra investment that is so needed in our transport system.

The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) and others drew attention to congestion charging. I cannot comment on the legal challenge that has been made by Westminster. That is a matter for Westminster and the Mayor to sort out between themselves. We are keeping a close eye on the development of congestion charging. We provided such powers under the Greater London Authority Act, and other Acts have given local authorities throughout the country the ability to introduce congestion charging. Enabling powers have been given to the GLA and local authorities. It is for those authorities to make sure that they account democratically to their local population for schemes, whether they work or whether they do not. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that improvements to public transport must go hand in hand with the congestion charging policy. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) made a similar point.

Whenever I speak at meetings outside London, all I hear is that the south-east and London are getting all the money, so it is interesting to hear those who represent constituencies in and near London saying that the money is not being spent in London. The hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) will know that, under the 10-year plan, £182 billion will be spent—a massive 44 per cent. increase on the previous decade—and that £25 billion of that sum will be allocated to London in the next 10 years. That is a substantial amount of money.

As always, I have not had time to respond to all the points that have made in the debate, which at times was more like a London Assembly debate than a debate in the House of Commons. None the less, I have enjoyed it and many valuable points have been made. If hon. Members wish to pursue points that were not answered, I shall be delighted to do that through correspondence.

I start by saying that I welcome the debate. Given the interest of several hon. Members who hope to participate, I know that the subject is a matter of considerable interest and concern throughout the House. That is indicated also by previous debates on ten-minute rule Bills and Adjournment debates on the subject. Those debates had one thing in common; they were serious efforts to address the real issues that surround state funding of political parties, the problems of the present system and the public's perception that the emphasis is on scrabbling around for large amounts from a few individuals which raises worries about undue influence or access being offered or asked for in return.

It was notable from those debates that although political warfare outside the debates is often concentrated on individual examples and criticism of the Government of the time—we can all think of allegations and scandals of possible sleaze and corruption—the debates themselves did not focus on that, but on solutions. I plan to do the same today.

This debate is being held at an important time, because we are clearly entering a process in which there is great focus on major changes that might take place to the basis on which political parties are funded. Research has been undertaken by organisations such as the Institute for Public Policy Research. The Electoral Commission is about to embark on a serious piece of research on both the overall spend of political parties during elections and how parties raise the money. There will be lengthy deliberations, but the process is starting to kick off and the commission will reach its conclusions toward the end of next year. This is an appropriate time for the House to consider the issue.

The reason to hold the debate is perfectly apparent. At a time of declining membership, political parties' fundraising efforts are increasingly focused on small numbers of individuals who are able to pay large amounts. In the past, fundraising was focused on businesses and trade unions, but all parties—especially the major parties—are now focused on encouraging a tiny number of personally wealthy individuals to make very large donations.

At the time of the last election—to give a sense of scale—some individuals made single donations that were more than my party could spend in total; £5 million. That raises worries that affect us all, including my party. Such donations raise the question of what individuals want and might be given in return. That adds to a general reputation that politicians are corrupt and that favours are offered in return for money. I suspect that most members of the population do not draw a great distinction between donations to political organisations and the thought that the party might be in someone's back pocket, although I do not believe that that is the case.

Previous work on the issue was essentially about greater transparency and exposing donations to the light of day. The Neill committee report recommendation to put all donations on the record has not delivered the solution that was expected. It made the process more public, which means that criticisms are there to be made. The major reason that the present Government have suffered so much is not that they are any different from any other Government, but simply that they are the first Government to have put the information so publicly on record. Future Governments will suffer in exactly the same way—

More.

Possibly more, as the hon. Gentleman suggests. All political parties raise donations. Opposition parties raise less, because they are in opposition, and, perhaps more importantly, because they are less liable to be asked what favour is involved, as Opposition parties can, by definition, offer less. Nevertheless, the process corrupts the reputation of all political parties, and it is time to bring it to an end.

I believe that partly because I believe that those questions are real. It is hard to understand how a party treasurer or leadership that is desperate for funds does not leave at least a crack open for someone to push for something that is in their interests. At the very least, they will have a level of access that no other person is likely to have; a seat at the top table or personal meetings with Ministers, who undoubtedly—indeed, overwhelmingly—intend to do no more than perhaps say, "Thank you."

An even more important reason for tackling the issue is the creeping process of state funding for political parties. The proportion of funding of political parties undertaken by the state is rising rapidly, but by the back door, and not with public support, a Bill in the House or in a way that has been properly open to public scrutiny. I am not suggesting that the process is secret, but funding is happening in ways that do not involve an announcement that we are moving to a formal system of restricting big donations and replacing them with state support. It is happening with an increase in Short money; huge increases in the case of the Opposition parties. There has been a huge increase in taxpayer-funded political advisers for Ministers, so it is not only Opposition parties that are benefiting; the Government are too.

Research funding has been introduced, and I hear that there may be further increases relating to the introduction of information technology by political parties and the training of activists and officials. All those ways of funding avoid having to make the big announcement that we are going to change the political system, and they do not make the big and necessary change which is to stop the whiff of corruption that surrounds the desperate search for a small number of multi-millionaire donors.

The system is highly undemocratic. It rewards the establishment, of which all of us present are part, in one form or another. It rewards the status quo and penalises those who might try to challenge it. It is extraordinary that the research money explicitly relates to the work of political parties in developing European manifestos and manifestos for Scotland and Wales, but is tied to representation in this place. Organisations such as the Green party or the UK Independence party are excluded, even though the money will help us develop manifesto policies for elections to bodies to which they are elected and in relation to which they compete.

The current system is the worst of all worlds. The whiff of corruption and the desperate search for multimillionaire donors remain. The current development of central state funding rewards the status quo and is unattached to proper democratic developments and the wishes of the electorate and does not prevent any emerging problems.

What could and should be done? I strongly believe that—as others in the House, from all parts of the party spectrum have argued—we need to end donations of such a size as to suggest that they might influence party or Government policy. That means keeping them relatively small; to thousands of pounds, not tens of thousands, and certainly not hundreds of thousands or millions. I believe that the public are looking for a situation where donations are on a small enough scale that there can be no suggestion or belief that they could possibly influence Government, or the policy of Opposition parties, or that sums of money can buy one's way to the top table of influence; they will be insufficient to do so.

If we are to make that change, it is equally apparent that in a vibrant, functioning democracy, political parties need to be able to raise sufficient funds to do all the work of a democracy. Incidentally, that includes campaigning. The idea that we should fund political parties for everything except the campaign seems to be nonsense. Ultimately, the campaign itself is the most vital ingredient of democracy. The counter-arguments between the political parties, and their ability to communicate those arguments allow the electorate to take their decision. A manifesto of which no one has ever heard, or a policy of which no one is aware, is not part of the process that delivers democratic government.

The campaigning process is important. Therefore, we need a system that will bring in the necessary funding to allow that. If we cut donations to very small levels and do nothing else, I believe that we will not achieve such a vibrant, functioning democracy. The latest figures from the Conservative party show that of their funding of £20 million in a general election year, £1.4 million came from small donations from individual figures. Similar figures could be given for any of the political parties. I use those figures because they are the ones that have recently been analysed.

I believe that we need a system of match funding in which the state links any funding it gives to the individual small-scale donations that are raised. I do not suggest that the rate should necessarily be £1 for £1, 30p for £1 or £3 for £1. The rate will be determined by proper debate about what we need to raise and spend so that political parties can work. That debate has to be tied to the work of the Electoral Commission on the capping of spending by political parties. We need to look at what they can reasonably raise, and what they reasonably need to spend. Clearly, there should be a limit on how much can be raised. If we are going to cap how much parties can spend, there is a limit to how far state funding will go.

Equally, it is important that the funding is tied to legitimate political parties, in the sense that they genuinely contest elections. It may be that, whether it relates to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly or this place, there is a minimum requirement to contest seats and attain a minimum level of support. I am not trying to exclude groups because they have an extreme view. I am simply saying that we do not want people to set up pseudo-parties, as we have seen in some parts of the world, to access funds to buy themselves a holiday home, a pensioners' rest home or one of the other examples that we have seen.

I have heard an argument that the proposal might help some extreme groups; I would say that we have to contest with them democratically. I would point out that the present system has the potential for one multi-millionaire to fund the British National party, the National Front or any other party at higher levels than the existing political mainstream parties. It is just a matter of chance whether someone comes along with sufficient money to do so.

Under the system that I propose, it is a question of whether they can recruit sufficient individual members willing to put themselves up publicly as party donors, in order to win match funding. I do not believe that the extremists in this country can win that membership support. All the evidence is quite to the contrary. If a group such as the Greens, which has developed in relatively recent decades, could build up membership and a measure of electoral success, why should it not be able to obtain funding in the same way as those of us who are already privileged to be here already? It should be all about the ability to find people who will join, support and make small donations to groups that reflect their political beliefs.

So far, I have made arguments very similar to those of other hon. Members, but the reason, above all, why I wanted to take the opportunity to make my argument was to highlight another issue, on which I shall finish. It is my belief that there have been a couple of major drivers affecting turnout that have tended to be under-stressed. One is a loss of belief in the political system itself. That loss of belief is very closely tied to the feeling that all political parties are much the same and, above all, that they are all in it for themselves; they are all scrabbling around with multi-millionaires and are not really interested in the concerns of ordinary people. All of us here know that that is generally far from true and that we all deal with individual cases all the time, which is our primary job. However, that is the perception and it has gone a long way towards distancing the electorate from the political parties.

The second factor relates to the fact that people are less involved in community groups. That has affected not only political parties, but everything from the Women's Institute to the local parish council. People are less willing to get involved in the community because they can make other choices; through television, through video and through the ability to get in the car and travel much longer distances to join friends and relatives. They no longer have to be involved in the local community in the same way. Because of that, we have seen a huge decline in political membership and in activity on the doorstop. As a response, political parties have increasingly moved their smaller and smaller numbers of troops to a handful of political seats that they think can be won in any election. In a safe seat, people are unlikely to see anyone knocking on the door or much in the way of literature because the activists there will have been asked to go to the next-door seat, which might be more easily won or lost.

We see that happening as a strategy in all the political parties. We know that where there are the highest levels of political activity, there are the highest election turnouts. Where there are the lowest levels of political activity, there are the lowest turnouts. A process of refocusing the political parties so that they move away from a large number of people concentrating on a small number of individual donors—the high donation unit—and concentrate instead on building individual membership will in itself not only deliver a sleaze-free political funding system, but generate a much higher level of political activity on the ground. Parties will then be forced to concentrate on building membership in order to fund their activities, rather than on a few dinners with multi-millionaires, which is what happens with much of the effort at the present time.

I have some figures, which, again, by chance, relate to the Conservative party. However, I make no particular criticism of the Conservative party. Figures recently released on the breakdown of staff show that, in 1997, the Conservative party employed 59 regional and 147 central staff, but that that has now changed to 18 regional and 172 central staff. That centralisation process is happening across the board.

If we are to have a genuinely vibrant democracy, we need not only to move away from tying funding to very wealthy individuals who inevitably seek some return, but to rebuild the membership on the ground to deliver the electoral message in the conventional way. We should never forget that the original reason for the development of mass-membership parties was the extension of the franchise and the need to get the vote out. It is not simply the case that, somehow, people today are massively less willing to vote. It is also true that political parties spend much less time persuading large numbers of people on the ground to become involved in getting people out to vote. That has made a very significant difference.

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman for missing the start of his speech. I understand his concern about the very large donations that have caused difficulty across the political spectrum, but how can we move towards a system of state funding, as he suggests, at a time when the standing of politics and politicians is so low? Surely he recognises the considerable difficulties with public opinion in moving in that direction.

I am well aware of the concerns expressed by the hon. Gentleman and, not least, the Government. We have a chicken-and-egg situation; if we are not prepared to tackle the reasons for the decline in public standing, one of which is the issue of funding, we will never solve the problem. Therefore, the issue must be faced head on. In the scale of things, we are talking about tiny amounts of money. All in, £10 million or £20 million might be needed to achieve the process.

Crucially, it is exactly that concern that is leading to the development of state funding in a much less upfront way. Back-door funding does not tie in with building membership on the ground or developing dynamic, active political parties. It leads to the freezing of the existing system and the development of central funding of political parties, which is exactly what has led to the near-death of active memberships in other countries in which parties have such funding. If hon. Members want a lot of money to go to central headquarters—untied to membership and freezing the success of existing political structures—they should allow development to continue as it is. It does not confront the electorate, and the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph are less likely to run attacking editorials on politicians because we have introduced state funding. But the truth is that we are introducing state funding, although we are doing it in the worst possible way.

It is time that the House said no to that and developed a system that is about making parties concentrate again on attracting and involving ordinary members. That is how we will deliver a vibrant democracy. We have to take it on the chin, because people would far prefer the results of that system to the present accumulation of sleaze that affects every Government, no matter how principled their intentions may be.

One thing is certainly true; democracy is not cheap. I have been a member of the Labour party since 1979 and have always been a grassroots activist. I cannot speak for the Liberal Democrats, but we in the Labour party value our grassroots activists. I see my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, the Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton), in her place; I can assure the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Matthew Taylor) that, in Doncaster, we canvass and campaign, even though we are in a safe Labour area. That is probably why the Liberal Democrats have not had much success in Doncaster.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell on securing the debate today. We need a debate in which we can explore several different options, because the subject is complex. Let us have an honest debate about the different ways in which the state funds parties, whether through Short money, MPs' salaries or, at local government level, time off for councillors to carry out their civic responsibilities and allowances for councillors to do their job.

Perhaps we should consider an audit of what is currently provided to allow democracy to flourish. It could be the starting point for further exploration across the party divide of how we can address some of the issues that the hon. Gentleman raised. There is no doubt that we will have a job in achieving public support and confidence in any such moves. Even an audit might cause certain negative reactions. It would be interesting to see how the press and broadcasting media respond to it.

As I said at the outset, democracy is not cheap. In 1997, I had the opportunity to visit America as part of an all-party delegation. We met representatives from Congress and state legislatures. I asked some of them about funding in America, why so much had to be spent and why a reasonable cap was not put on the amount of money allowed to be raised and spent. I was told that a price could not be put on democracy; my response was that if the price were the same for everyone, we would all have an equal chance within the framework.

I am conscious that other hon. Members want to speak, but I want to make a few points about some of the areas that could be looked at. The cap on election spending could be revisited to see whether it should be reduced.

In the debate and in the language we use, it is easy to play to an agenda of defending our position as politicians. Dare I say it, but most of the people I meet from all parties in this House try to do a decent job and represent their constituents well. Across the party divide, we may have different ideas of what we want and how to get it, but we generally have a set of beliefs that drives our politics. Many of those beliefs are tied into how we believe communities can better be represented and served by appropriate laws, depending on where we come from. We should not allow ourselves to fall into the trap of always defending ourselves against the negative backlash against politicians. Whatever we do, politicians will not top a poll of people's favourite profession. Such polls, even on the august "Today" programme, are rather flimsy in their contribution to the general debate about politics.

We should use language that can be branded—perhaps that is not the right word—democracy-building and explain how we can achieve that. I have a couple of ideas to throw into the pot. I believe that individuals who want to make a contribution to a political party should be served in the same way as those who give to charity through the gift aid programme. People often say they are not interested in politics and do not want to take part, but we do not encourage activity and involvement in politics by suggesting that giving to a political party is not as nice as giving to a charity. I fully support charitable giving, but we could consider whether individual donations of up to, for example, £5,000 should be tax-free.

Does the hon. Lady remember that the Neill committee suggested in 1998 that there should be tax relief for donations? I am not trying to cause her difficulty—I am sure that I could not even if I tried—but the proposal was turned down by the Labour Government.

As I have said, today we are debating how to move forward. I am making my contribution to that debate and I believe that such matters are up for discussion again. The Labour party never thought, having had openness and transparency in our funding rules before 1997, that when we came into government and proposed legislation to make political funding more transparent, that would not calm or reassure people, but would lead to negative press comment so that everyone who gives money is scrutinised. That is not good for democracy.

The debate is open again and we should revisit areas against which political parties, including my own, may have set their face. I am referring to relatively small donations that people may want to make because they feel it is their civic duty; those people are interested in politics and want to be part of it.

Another area that is worth considering is the establishment of what I would call a democracy fund. By that, I mean that individual donors or companies that are interested in supporting politics or a political party could donate to a democracy fund, which could be administered by the Electoral Commission and would be like a blind trust. Donors would use the commission as a third party and could designate that they want the money to go to the Liberal Democrats, Labour or the Conservatives. That would then he sent via the Electoral Commission and, as far as possible, it would not be in the public domain.

Companies or individuals might wish to give money to support democracy or political parties in general, so a formula could be devised to decide how the commission should divide such money between the political parties. That could be based on the number of MPs or councillors, or on their share of the vote. That is one way in which the larger donations could be channelled to move us away from the present publicity, which does none of us any good.

Although I believe that we should do an audit of how the state supports democracy to help inform the debate, I am not sure if state funding could totally provide for political parties. I am also unsure about whether we could win the argument on what matters parties need to fund but that the public may not want to fund. There will need to be a mixture of state funding that should, if possible, be agreed across the party divide, as well as a framework in which people can support their party's activities.

We should support the people who, individually and in small ways, support their parties of choice through the tax system, and establishing a democracy fund that allows the Electoral Commission to act as a broker for large donations might be a way of overcoming the negative publicity that has been continually fed to us for what seems like a very long time.

I also welcome the debate, which was intelligently introduced by the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Matthew Taylor). The subject needs a wide public debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) will be the Conservative's official spokesman, but I am vice-chairman of the party and will say something about our position.

We are opposed to the principle of state funding. Why should taxpayers who do not subscribe to the views and values of my party be forced to contribute towards it? Do we think that people's priorities—which may include the national health service, the police and schools—should be displaced by taking money from taxpayers, many of whom may not be particularly well off, and contributing it towards political parties? There may be less hostility towards giving to a mainstream party, but such a funding system always includes the possibility of extremists—whether they are the British National party or Sinn Fein—benefiting from state funding. When listening to the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell, I wondered whether the contribution to the parties would come out of the 1p rise in income tax advocated by the Liberal Democrats. I am not convinced by any of the arguments.

I fear that a major state contribution would dissuade many people from making smaller contributions in the constituencies; they would not want to contribute because the state was supporting the parties. There is that danger, although how the scheme is designed would be relevant. We have heard a great deal about how it would make politics rather more honest. People talk about purifying the system, but there is a danger that state funding could ossify the system. State funding would tend to go to political party headquarters, which would inevitably build up power at central office, the Labour office in Millbank and other major centres. That would not be good for a political party's diversity and grass roots.

Looking abroad, we can see that whether political systems are corrupt has much to do with the culture of the country. Germany has heavy state funding and yet, recently, Chancellor Kohl and many others within the German system have had problems because of illegal funding. Even today Kohl is in difficulty because he will not give up certain donors to the CDU because of the problems of funding in the past.

There have just been presidential and Assembly elections in France, and there has been some comment about the French President, some of the funding arrangements and the use of that money in France. The French system is funded fairly heavily by taxpayers. Indeed, one of the driving forces behind the centre-right coalition to support the President in the recent Assembly elections was that for every seat won, there would be a matching contribution from the state. Culture has a lot to do with it. Despite what one reads in the papers, I believe that the culture of British politics is honest. There is not a vast number of former colleagues or former party treasurers in jail at the moment. The reason is that although sometimes a party's activities do not smell as good as they could, no one has been convicted of any wrongdoing. By and large, we have pretty high standards in the United Kingdom.

As has been mentioned, we have Short money and Cranbourne money. The reason for that is simple. We have an over-mighty Government system, backed by the full power of intelligent civil servants. If one believes in a democracy of Government and robust Opposition, there should be some contribution towards the policy making of the parties that may form today's Opposition and tomorrow's Government. That has been our tradition of recent years and is not unreasonable. My party is also fairly relaxed about funding some degree of foreign travel for politicians so that they can look at the alternative systems abroad, moving forward the e-democracy agenda and modernising things.

There may be a logic, which the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell has mentioned, in training councillors. They fulfil important roles in a large corporate structure that delivers many important services. There is always a balance to be struck and it is a matter of where one draws the boundaries. I do not think that the case has yet been made for saying that money should be given to political parties for overtly campaigning purposes. I tend to take a different view about large donors. People have given to all political parties; even the Liberal Democrats have been the beneficiaries of large donors in the past. People give their hard-earned money to a cause in which they believe and are often vilified, possibly unjustly.

If one tells people who may well have deep pockets that they cannot contribute, one must also question whether trade unions should be able to contribute. If we put caps on individuals, what do we do about political action committees or pressure groups? A group that wished to ban hunting could easily raise a lot of money to give to a political party. There are many issues here and I do not see why wealthy individuals should be excluded from spending their money in the way that they want. Some people would want to buy villas; others will want to give to political parties. We have been pretty well governed over the last 50 to 100 years—one need only look at Argentina to see a state that is very badly governed—and we have a lot to be proud of within the UK.

I do not think that the case for state funding has been made, although there are different ways to deliver a particular outcome. The point my hon. Friend the Member for Stone made about the Neill committee's reference to tax advantages might be a means of putting money through to small individual contributors, rather than centrally through the parties. By and large my party does not think that the argument has been made. As the hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) said, supporting political parties would not be popular. However, political movements should be sufficiently vibrant and successful to be able to raise the money needed to run political campaigns.

In any case, we all have a limited budget to spend on general elections. I know of no party that could not put up some 600 candidates at the general election. I do not know whether there have always been sufficient funds for an essential national campaign. However, all political parties have been able to fund at least their local campaigns by selling jam, cheese, wines and so on. In Poole, there are endless raffle tickets from my association. This is an interesting debate, but I do not think that the case has yet been made. We should be cautious before we go down this road, because the consequences may adversely affect the vibrant grassroots politics that we need.

I hope that my contribution will at least be interesting in terms of the sociology of Parliament. I replied as a Minister to an Adjournment debate on 22 May, which the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) proposed. Hon. Members may be interested to hear what I have to say a month later as a non-Minister on what is, in essence, the same subject. As I said at the time, the hon. Gentleman's contribution to that debate was thoughtful and substantially right. If he contributes this morning, he may want to add to his comment that there is a crisis, with which I concur.

We must be clear that there is a crisis in the future funding of political parties. Funding for political parties, as established in recent years, will not dry up overnight. That crisis will not suddenly appear upon us tomorrow, but the rules on disclosure and all the paraphernalia that goes with them mean that eventually it will. Some parties may believe that they can buck the trend; the remarks made by the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) seem to suggest that that is in the mind of the Conservative party. However, a substantial donor to that party recently said that the Government had made it almost impossible for companies to give money without appearing corrupt and that they now had to justify it to their shareholders. However, with all the allegations about sleaze, they could not say that it helped to gain access to, or keep up their profile with, the Government. It was a bureaucratic nightmare, and not worth the hassle.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) that the arrangements that our party made before legislation was enacted in 1997 are a good thing, and shed much light on the question of donations. It is true that the public do not want companies or individuals buying their way to political influence. Nor do they believe that large donations are given just because the donor felt like it. We are in this conundrum for honourable reasons. Donations have largely been cleaned up and made more transparent, so the problems surrounding them will largely disappear. Does that matter? Yes, it does. In his previous contribution, the hon. Member for Chichester pointed out that politics in general is alive and well as a public activity, but that party politics is not. We should ask ourselves why politics in general is alive and well.

The hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Matthew Taylor) suggested that participation in communities has dropped off. That is true of communities of place, but all the evidence suggests that that is not true of the activities that relate to social capital more generally. People are engaging in different activities that are nevertheless substantial and vibrant. They are active in what one might call participative politics; making representations and petitions, and engaging in campaigns for organisations. The question that we must ask is to whom are those people making representations when they are acting in their role as participative politicians. The answer is political parties; local government, the Opposition in Parliament, the Government or whatever. In other words, they make representations to the agencies whereby the representative process is determined.

If we believe that this country can have a representative process without political parties, we are bucking the trend of every representative or democratic process throughout history. Even in the Athenian agora, two parties were represented to try to organise different ideas for representation in the democratic debating processes of the Athenian body politic.

The politics of a body that seeks representation must be different from the politics of a pressure group that participates in the democratic process, but it will incorporate many features of the politics of such a group. The hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell mentioned that one activity of a political party is campaigning. In many ways, that goes alongside the processes undertaken by participative political organisations, but it is only part of the process that culminates in the seeking of representation and political power nationally or locally.

A body that seeks representation must have an overall programme that mediates between the concerns of the various participative political groups. Communities and pressure groups cannot run towns and cities, or indeed national Governments. The process of deciding on the priorities of various participative groups must be undertaken through the representative process. However, there seems to be a crisis not only of funding, but in the imbalance between the participative and representative processes.

Is the hon. Gentleman perhaps falling into a slight trap in his argument, in that part of the problem is the overwhipping of decision making in the parliamentary system? A great deal of disillusionment is caused when the electorate know the reason why, for example, he is taking a slightly divergent view now from the position that he took in government; that is part and parcel of that problem. I am not criticising the hon. Gentleman. I am simply saying that the question of why there is low turnout and cynicism is somewhat deeper than that of where the money comes from.

The hon. Gentleman is certainly right to say that there is a deeper issue. We need to discuss a number of issues, but the position that I am taking this morning is not fundamentally different from what I was saying just a month ago. Perhaps I am expressing it in rather clearer terms. The hon. Gentleman talked about overwhipping, but he needs to relate that to the ideas that I have advanced.

The hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor) achieved election as a result of a participative democratic campaign, but the idea of 600-odd people representing something similar in the Chamber and organising anything like the representative process is absurd. That would not happen. Instead, various people would coalesce to form parties to decide how a representative programme should be undertaken. We should not spend too much time considering the idea that loose whipping or, in some people's ideal world, the removal of political parties would somehow solve the crisis of representation, because that simply would not happen. It would not produce anything like a satisfactory representative process.

The result of the crisis is that most members of the public treat political parties as fixtures of the landscape, with mysterious people who are lobbied, pilloried or asked to do certain things, depending on how the public view their position at any particular time. Why they are there or how they have got there is not usually asked.

What can we do about the problem? How do we ensure that the process of representation is kept alive? Some hon. Members suggested a block grant, which I agree might well ossify political parties. A political party in Sweden receives block grant funding from the state but, because of the way in which the block grant system operates, it has not contested two general elections.

It is not a question of whether the state funds political parties, but of the circumstances under which it does. The hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell pointed out that, by accretion, we are funding—according to the hon. Member for Chichester—about 40 per cent. of the activities of political parties between elections and about 60 per cent. at elections. However, we are doing so under an unaccountable and ineffective block grant system, which replicates many of the problems in other countries that hon. Members criticised.

Clearly, the idea that participative democracy should be "of the people" and a representative democracy "of the state" is deemed inappropriate, yet surprisingly many voluntary organisations are effectively funded by the state—by the local authority, Home Office grants, project funding and so forth—without becoming clients of the state in the process.

The hon. Member for Chichester suggested matching funding on money raised through the activities of political parties, which is one way of looking at the problem. My hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien), now the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, has suggested a tick-box on tax returns, whereby people could tick a box that would give money either to a particular political party or to none. That strongly counters the hon. Member for Poole, who said that taxpayers would object to blocks of money being given to political parties with which they disagree. If taxpayers can play an active role in deciding whether their bit of tax should go to a particular party or to no party, it overcomes the objection. Furthermore, if political parties were incompetent in engaging the public in support for the political process, people would not tick any boxes and political parties generally would not secure large amounts of funding.

After this morning's debate, I am confident of drawing out two principles and one prediction. First, it is widely acknowledged that funding must relate to the effect of party activity; otherwise we will have a ghost system. Secondly, there must be a consensus; otherwise the temptations to free-ride on the initiative of a particular party while actually doing it down will be enormous. A unilateral decision by a party in government would be seen simply as a party in power voting money for itself. It is essential that the political community—inside and outside the House—debates the issues and that the debate ranges more widely than considerations of party advantage. Finally, my prediction is that it will happen, so we should take care to do it well.

I have already participated in an Adjournment debate on this subject, so I shall not delay Westminster Hall for long today. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) for his comments. I agree with virtually everything that he said.

I should like to make a few quick points. First, we cannot go on with the public perceiving political parties to be inherently corrupt. It is not just the short-term issue of Mittal, Ecclestone, Hinduja, Enron or PowderJect: it goes much deeper and is infecting respect for our entire polity. Whatever the reality, the perception is corroding trust in politicians generally. In any case, the public is partly right. Does anyone seriously believe that these donors never bend an ear and never have any influence? Of course not. One way or another, they manage to get privileged access to those with power and influence.

Secondly, everybody knows that honours are trafficked. Peerages can be bought and parties fund themselves partly from those donations. That is wholly unacceptable. Mass parties are dying—they are 10 per cent. of the size that they were 50 years ago—so the parties alone cannot finance themselves. It is not possible to fund political parties through individual subscriptions and no major democracy tries to do so any longer.

Thirdly, recent attempts to clean up politics where party donations are concerned have failed; with the best of intentions, they have made the situation worse. As the hon. Member for Southampton, Test said, the shareholder declaration rules have destroyed the broad base of small donations from companies. While there is a broad base, people do not believe that parties are dependent on each individual firm. Once that has gone, they do believe that the small number of large donations confers influence. The individual declaration rule's £5,000 threshold has swept away a range of people who would be prepared to donate money but are not willing to take the public flak for having done so. As a result, all parties have been thrown into the hands of a small number of large donors and the public perception of corruption has worsened. I am in favour of the transparency rules, but we should be under no illusion about the crisis that they have generated.

Point four is that the unacceptable practices that take place in order to fund political parties infect public perception of other issues—the standing of politicians and the credibility of the Government—and respect for all those in public life. We cannot carry on in that way.

What can be done? First, we must acknowledge the scale of the problem. That is what we are all trying to do today. Secondly, we must discard the myth that we would be crossing a Rubicon if we introduced state funding. I tried to show in an article in The Times, and I have shown elsewhere, that 40 per cent. of funding of political parties between elections and 60 per cent. of the campaigning costs of parties already comes in cash or kind from state sources.

Thirdly, we must work towards a system that encourages the recruitment of grassroots members; we must try to stabilise our party structure at that level in the course of introducing a state funding system. That is why I am in favour of match funding and I was delighted to hear that the Liberal Democrat party is too. Our view is shared by many in my party and, I suspect, by a large number in the Labour party. There is scope for agreement.

Fourthly, whatever we end up having to introduce, we must do it on the basis of firm caps on overall spending. We must not allow the perception to get about that very rich people can buy political parties. That will happen if there are no such caps.

The hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) referred to what we can learn from the experience of the United States. She might like to read an interesting passage in the Neill committee report. The US has very firm caps on funding of political parties and political activity. However, those are circumvented under the first amendment, which has led to the proliferation of political action committees. I am deeply concerned about that matter; the Neill committee, although it addressed it, did not analyse it correctly. In addition, the introduction of the Human Rights Act into our law has worrying implications. In the 1998 Bowman case, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that in certain circumstances the UK's existing caps are illegal. That may set a precedent for erosion of the existing caps.

In the Bowman case, the defence of margin of appreciation was used. I shall not go into that, but we could not go much further if all our caps were illegal. I merely make the point that there is a danger in applying the Human Rights Act. Similarly, American attempts to place caps on spending have been destroyed or circumvented by reference to the first amendment in the Supreme Court.

Perhaps I could help my hon. Friend with respect to the Human Rights Act. Lord Hoffmann made it clear in an important case—Secretary of State for the Home Department ex parte Simms and O'Brien—that the British Parliament is still able to amend that Act, provided that any amendment is clear and unambiguous. My hon. Friend said that we would have to accept the political cost, although I do not necessarily think that that applies, but we could ensure that we would not be trapped, were we subsequently to table amendments to remove the difficulties that he described.

I thought that something of a legal nature might draw my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) to his feet. I urge him to read the exchanges that took place on the matter in the Neill committee, which are extremely detailed and deal with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr. Syms). The extent to which the Human Rights Act may impinge on our ability to impose caps is a matter of considerable controversy among experts, and many leading political scientists and lawyers think that there is cause for concern; I put it no higher than that at the moment, because it is not yet a cause for alarm.

I shall just make one or two more points, because I have already had a good innings on this subject on other occasions. I strongly agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Poole that state funding is no elixir for curing the sickness of political corruption in any political system. He is right to say that there is corruption in many countries that already have state funding. He is right that the origins of corruption are much deeper than a country's structure and lie in its culture. There is no doubt, however, that the perception of corruption is deepening in this country. Action might assuage it, and we should act urgently. We cannot allow the impression to deepen that influence is for sale, and that political parties can be bought.

The Government already know that, and it is interesting that the hon. Member for Southampton, Test came to the Chamber to make another speech today. Why are they not acting? I suspect that it is because they do not want to take the political flak for introducing state funding. They want a coalition, so that they can share the political flak. I see that Labour Members are nodding; in agreement, I think. Of course, the public do not like politicians voting themselves money in any shape or form. Whoever takes the lead in introducing state funding will take the flak. Governments have to give a lead on such issues. There is no avoiding the flak; the governing party must take it on the nose. Whenever there is a row, for example about sleaze in the House, the governing party always ends up being hit harder than anyone else. The governing party must govern.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will not, because I am about to conclude.

If the Government propose a fair system, such as a system of match funding—I think the Liberal Democrats would agree with that, and many Conservative Members would go along with it—they will find that they have a huge amount of support and win the argument. Already, the pass has been sold on that by the increasing acceptance of the need for some tax relief on donations to political parties. If a fair hearing is given to the argument, I am confident that we can win it. If we win it, we will make the British political system less corrupt and better respected.

In calling the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), I remind hon. Members that we are moving towards the closing speeches.

On a point of order, Mr. Cummings. Is it not the custom that the last half-hour is allocated to the three Front Benchers? It is already four minutes past 12. Would not the Liberal Democrat spokesman normally be called by noon at the latest?

I am mindful of the fact that hon. Members have been waiting a considerable time to make contributions. If they adhere to my request, I am sure that everyone will be allocated time.

I will be extremely brief, even though people in the villages of Bassetlaw speak of nothing but the state funding of political parties.

Let me demonstrate my point by proposing that representatives of the three parties stick their election leaflets through people's letterboxes in the villages of Bassetlaw, and then ask voters, "Would you care to pay for the leaflet that we have chosen to give you? That will be your contribution to removing sleaze from British political life." I suspect that even I would have problems persuading the good people of Bassetlaw to pay, and I certainly would not envy Conservative colleagues who attempted to persuade them. That highlights the fundamental difference between electioneering and other forms of political activity. Any suggestion that the state should fund electioneering and political campaigning is fundamentally wrong and has no popular support.

There is a certain irony in hon. Members talking about the low standing of politicians, when those same hon. Members are the most enthusiastic about increasing the number of politicians by means of elected regional assemblies, elected mayors and an elected House of Lords. That irony will hit home, because the general public are somewhat cynical about the numbers of politicians and about attempts to increase them.

The examples of France and Germany have been well illustrated and demonstrate that state funding does not remove sleaze. However, the United States example is even more powerful. Changes were made before the 1996 presidential elections; I visited the country at the time to study state funding. The result of those changes was that the different political parties and politicians found different ways to get additional money. The new, tighter rules came in, but the amount of money doubled. Whatever rules are introduced on state funding, people will find other ways to give money, such as by using outside bodies.

It has been said that the size of political parties is declining, but that is wrong; there is a short-term problem. The Labour party did not contest the majority of seats in the country until 1935, and the Liberal Democrat party did not contest all national seats until 1970. My family has been active in the Labour party since 1901, so I know that the "halcyon days of large party membership" is a myth. There have been periods of large membership and periods of small membership. In the 1950s, when all sides fiddled the figures, levels of active membership were extremely low. Hon. Members who look at the records at Warwick university and elsewhere, and at the membership books of constituency and branch Labour parties, will see how low the levels of active membership have sometimes been.

There is an alternative, which has been tried and tested for 100 years. There is a cap of about £10,000 on what we can spend in elections at constituency level, and that system works well. If we increased the amount to £30,000 or £40,000., people would start to spend that much. Setting the level at £10,000 creates fairness at the local level, but we have failed to impose a sufficiently low cap at the national level.

I would like party political broadcasts and billboards to be banned, and I have tabled an early-day motion on billboards, which has been signed by more than 30 hon. Members. I would also like paid advertising in newspapers to be banned. The most effective way to do that would be significantly to lower the national expenditure limit at elections. The present level of fundraising would then not be required, and politics would be much healthier.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and St. Austell (Matthew Taylor) for introducing a thoughtful and interesting debate, which is one of several that we have had on the subject. It should be encouraging that a remarkable degree of consensus is developing.

The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) is probably the only person in the country who personally delivers his election address with his colleagues in his constituency. There is a huge amount of state funding, both in kind and in cash, and we deny that at our peril, because, as my hon. Friend said, we are conning the electorate.

The hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) struck a rather discordant note when he suggested that the Conservative party is "opposed to the principle of state funding". Let me remind him that Short money in the current year to the Conservative party was £3,459,536. Cranborne money in the House of Lords came to £230,556. The Leader of the Opposition's office and all the other bits and pieces around it cost £765,394. The policy development fund is a new fund of £438,890. If the electorate knew that the so-called official Opposition was taking some £5 million, not counting the amount in kind, they might very well react in the way that the hon. Member for Bassetlaw suggests.

It is an absolute hypocritical illusion to pretend that we do not already have state funding. What my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and St. Austell said is absolutely true; people do not know it. That is what I think is so critical. I shall not quote the hon. Member for Chichester at length; he has already taken up so much of my time that it would be unfair. On several occasions he has pointed out, very fairly and accurately, that there is a real concept of a sleaze operation in this place, and that is not fair. We are bringing upon ourselves the opprobrium of the electorate for totally absurd reasons. However, we are doing so because people think that there must be some good reason for people donating to political parties.

I have several quotes from people of all parties on this issue, who feel that the time has come to bring out into the open some effective linkage between state funding and the actual membership of the political parties, as my hon. Friend said. Let me quote two who think that the present system does not work. On the occasion of the award of a peerage to Michael Ashcroft, a major donor to the Conservative party, Lord Cranborne, former leader of the Conservatives in the Lords, said it was

"an affront to the dignity and the standing of the party".

Sir Edward Heath, in robust form, went even further:

"It has lowered the whole standing of our political institutions throughout the world".

He pointed out that clearly the £3 million donation to the Conservative party must have been for some purpose, and he said:

"and now we see what the purpose was."

I am not going to quote the chairman of the Labour party, but I am going to quote the Leader of the House of Commons, who said a fortnight ago:

"It is my personal view—I do not claim to speak for the Government collectively—that the credibility of Parliament is being undermined by the current argument over the funding of political parties. We cannot have parliamentary democracy without political parties, and we cannot have political parties unless they are funded."—[Official Report, 13 June 2002; Vol. 386, c. 1005.]

From all sides—a former Minister, a very distinguished member of the Conservative party who has done a great deal of work on the subject, the hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) and my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and St. Austell—there is a great gathering consensus.

In the past the Government have taken the view that unless there is a centre of gravity—a view that all parties can subscribe to—they cannot move. I endorse precisely what the hon. Member for Chichester said. It is up to the Government to lead on this—not just in the interests of the present Parliament or in order to deal with the problems of Enron and Andersen and all the other controversies that have been taking place—but for the health of our democracy. We have to re-engage the actual commitment to the political process with the way in which the political process is funded. That is why I think that the suggestion that my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and St. Austell has made that funding has to be related to the membership of the party, and what it gives to that party, is critical

. If I may say so, the tax issue—the use of some tax credit arrangement—is a bit of a red herring because a large number of people do not fill in tax returns. Many people do not pay tax. To exclude them from the ability and the opportunity to contribute to the political process would be utterly wrong. The way to proceed is precisely the way in which my hon. Friend has suggested

Mr. Cummings, I want to give maximum time for the Minister to respond because I look forward with great interest to see the extent to which her text, from the new Department responsible, differs from the previous text of the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead).

As a final comment, I would say that I cannot go back as far as the Athenians, but I know that every single party during the time of parliamentary democracy in this country has suffered from this problem. My party, in its previous incarnation as the Liberal party, suffered from it. As we all know, Lloyd George abused the system disastrously and did great harm to the political process and Parliament, but why did he do it? He did it because he became detached from the political party that he had previously led. He was no longer the leader of the Liberal party when he became Prime Minister. So, the political process was detached from the real people who mattered; the electorate. We have got to reattach it.

We must make sure that there is a consensus on the way in which the funding of political parties takes place, whether or not that is direct funding. I have already quoted examples of the way in which the Conservative party is funded, and the Government are also very substantially funded to undertake their political duties. We need a consensus on being open and honest about funding, but we should also recognise that that is simply not enough. We must find ways of ensuring that party members' commitment to political parties is translated into cash support for the democratic system.

I have found the debate interesting. It is an important debate, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Matthew Taylor) for having introduced it. It is an ongoing debate, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) has made clear. The hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) has also participated in the debate, and I have no doubt that we shall go on discussing the matter for some time.

At this juncture, I do not need to add more than was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr. Syms). The view that he has expressed on the subject is his, mine and that of the Conservative party. In the limited time left, it would be unnecessary for me to repeat word for word what he said. That is the line that our party takes. However, I have some observations to make on the reasons why we are engaging in this debate at the present time. I have already said that I do not believe that low turnout and some of the problems attributed to such things as sleaze are going to be solved by the state funding solution proposed.

I agree entirely that an element of state funding is already available through the Short money and the Cranbourne money. That is clear. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Poole said, that is really for technical objectives rather than for broader democratic aims. If we look at what is going on in Germany, we can see that in 1998, £180 million was made available for the party-political system, the biggest state funding of which I am aware in Europe. However, no one could say that the German system is free of corruption and sleaze. The perceptions of politics in Germany, and the criticisms heaped on politicians at the top, in a country that receives such vast sums of state funding, in my view contradict the whole basis of the argument for state funding. We in the Conservative party believe, as my hon. Friend the Member for Poole suggested, that it would be better for the money to go on other priorities such as schools, transport and health. We are opposed to the taxpayer funding political parties and do not think that the case has been made for state funding

. I have touched on the question of over-whipping. There is some cynicism. Before I was appointed to my present position, I spoke from the Back Benches in the debate on the strengthening of Parliament on what I believe are the real reasons why there is so much cynicism in the electorate today and why low turnouts are so prevalent. The real answer is that the fault lies, as I said in a Committee yesterday, in the increase of money, from £1.5 million to £7.5 million, being made available to the Electoral Commission for so-called public awareness on democracy and the electoral systems. Such things are seeping into the system. People think that the problems of cynicism and low turnout can be solved by throwing money at them. That is just not true. The whole question of spin and lack of trust, about which we have heard much in the past few days—broken promises and so on-has much more to do with the problem.

I shall be interested to hear what the Minister has to say. Therefore, I do not intend to go on much longer, as she will not have a chance to say anything. However, the then Home Secretary—now the Foreign Secretary the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), summed up the matter well in the debate on the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 when he said that

"rather than underpinning representative democracy, over-reliance on state funding could in the end undermine it.

Political parties should be the champions of the people, ensuring that the state is their servant and not their master. An over-reliance on state funding could absorb parties into the fabric of the state, thereby putting their own institutional needs and those of the state above the needs of those whom they are elected to represent. The health of our democracy is far better served if parties are principally reliant on their own efforts to secure adequate funding. Such an approach compels parties to engage with their members and supporters."—[Official Report, 10 January 2000; Vol. 342, c. 34.]

The Prime Minister himself stated two years ago that he was unequivocally against state aid.

The words of the then Home Secretary are eloquent. I happen to agree with him and think that he addressed the real problem. Powerful arguments against state funding were also put forward in the Neill committee report, and I would have liked an opportunity to go through them. However, as they are on the record, it is as well that I simply refer to them.

The question of compulsion to contribute to the support of political parties even if people strongly disagree with one or other of the parties is extremely important. The Neill committee report stated:

"The strength of this argument of principle would be all the greater if, for example, racist or explicitly anti-democratic parties became eligible for state funding."

We had a vigorous Communist party in this country that, some would say, was essentially undemocratic. Other parties could appear. Serious questions arise, , irrespective of how repugnant the policies of such parties may be, if, through a system of state funding, we were to impose censorship.

First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Matthew Taylor) on securing a debate on what is clearly a topical issue. Judging from the contributions that have been made today, it is of great interest to the House. I know that this debate is one of a series that have taken place. I thought that the response of my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) was extremely clear, and I reassure the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) that my text may be slightly different; he will not be able to draw the comparison that he wants to draw.

We have heard much today about consensus. The consensus that came through in the debate was that we all agree that political parties are at the root of our democracy and provide an opportunity for grassroots involvement, a forum for debate and a means of engaging with the electorate. More than a million people in Britain are members of political parties, and we would all wish to pay tribute to them, as my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) did so eloquently. Such people in our constituencies spend their lives encouraging others to use their right to vote, helping on polling day, delivering leaflets and canvassing. Obviously, the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell has some difficulties in motivating his party members, but I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley would be happy to give him some tips on how she does it so successfully in Doncaster.

However, party political activities cannot just be supported by voluntary labour. They need funding, and that is what we are discussing today. There is nothing inherently wrong with parties seeking donations and funding from supporters. Many hon. Members made the point that it is a right of individuals to support a political party as they choose. Members of Parliament should not be embarrassed about that, and we should make the point more often. The hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) made an interesting contribution on that matter. We must safeguard that right against possible abuse by parties or donors.

The hon. Member for North Cornwall touched on the fact that perception of abuse is important and the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) said last month:

"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."—[Official Report, Westminster Hall, 22 May 2002; Vol. 386, c. 115WH.]

We should make that point more often.

There is a desire that we take steps to provide a framework in which we ensure openness and transparency in political fund raising. The Labour Government implemented the recommendations of the Neill committee. I intended to go through some of those recommendations, but that is not possible in the time available.

I turn to the work that is being done by the Electoral Commission because I know that hon. Members are interested in hearing more about that. The commission has begun a review of the issues concerning state funding. Many hon. Members referred to international comparisons, and the commission's preliminary work is to make a comparison of international systems. It will also examine the main methods of supporting political parties by making an assessment of their benefits and disbenefits. My hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley asked whether it would look at the audit of existing support. That is obviously something that the commission will need to do. The commission's preparatory work will be used to test public opinion with a series of public hearings to take evidence. The scope of the study will include, among other things, the link between state funding and donations, and the relationship between parties and their supporters. It will also examine the case for change. From its findings will emerge recommendations to the Government

The review is intended to be comprehensive and wide-ranging, and I shall outline the timetable. The initial research should be ready by the end of the year and submissions will be invited during the first quarter of 2003 with an options paper being ready for the summer. We can expect to see a final report early in 2004. Many contributions have been made today and I hope that hon. Members will use the opportunity of the commission's work to make their views known to it.

On the point made by the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell about support being available at the moment to political parties. he suggested that that was in some way secret. Such matters are discussed in Parliament, so his sense of creeping state funding by the back door or as an excuse should be challenged. Parliament has an input into that debate and the whole issue of Short money. It is important to examine closely all the issues that have been raised today. As we have heard, there are many differences of opinion among Members of Parliament, but I am sure that today's debate will make an important contribution to those ongoing discussions, and that hon. Members have benefited from the contributions that have been made.

I am glad to have the chance to raise the issue of the electrification of the east coast main line rail link north of Edinburgh. As a member of the all-party rail group, I am aware that electrification is an investment priority across the United Kingdom rail network. I hope to show why the north-east of Scotland north of Edinburgh should be given serious consideration for the earliest possible upgrading.

One of the most liberating features of the modern world is the opportunity to travel—to transport oneself, either for business or leisure purposes, from the ordinary, humdrum realities of domestic existence to fantastic and mind-expanding distant destinations. As someone from a far distant part of the UK—Dundee—I know that it is good to travel and see the world.

The key that opened the lock of limitation on movement was the expansion of the railways in the 19th century, an era often referred to as the age of steam. The building of the famous Tay rail bridge crossing the silvery Tay caught the nation's attention, following the initial botched efforts and the rail disaster of 1879. The construction of that bridge, which spans the two-mile breadth of Scotland's longest river, was part of a dynamic process—the revolutionary industrial communications and transport transformation that changed the world.

The building of that immense structure, which predated the Forth rail bridge, was specifically promoted by Dundee's city fathers and business men, who wanted to reduce rail travel times from Dundee to the south and link Dundee and its hinterland to the rest of Britain. The bridge also excited the passions and poetry of a famous Dundonian, William McGonagall, the 100th anniversary of whose death we are currently commemorating. A poem will be placed by the Tay rail bridge addressed to the

"Beautiful railway bridge of the silvery Tay!

With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array".

That is clear testimony to the excitement of rail travel in McGonagall's day.

The epoch of steam was encroached upon first by the motor car and then by the aeroplane, but rail still has great relevance today, with the railways continuing to provide an important and popular mode of travel in the 21st century. Railways give direct, frequent and usually trouble-free access to major centres of population, business and leisure destinations across the UK and with the advent of the channel tunnel, in which I have had the pleasure of travelling several times—to destinations further afield in continental Europe.

The competitiveness of the railways, despite pressure from 20th-century transportation innovations, is a lasting tribute to the appeal of rail travel and the benefits it offers. The relative comfort, safety and cheapness of rail compared to the aeroplane, and the extent of the network—despite the cuts of the 1960s—have ensured the railways a niche in the travel market that allowed the network to carry 958,000 million passenger journeys in the UK last year. My colleagues from Scotland and I travel by plane weekly, and our journeys to the House from other Scottish airports cannot be completed without catching a train, whether it be the Paddington or Gatwick express or, in my case, the Jubilee tube line

. I cannot fail to acknowledge the troubles that rail travel has experienced lately. The spate of tragic derailments, signal failures and collisions has contributed to general public concern about the safety of that mode of transport. That concern has only partly been assuaged by the plans of the Government and the Strategic Rail Authority to make long-term improvements to the track, which will improve safety aspects and, hopefully, enable the railway system to regain its standing as a viable and reliable transport network.

Whatever the proposals, we have a long way to go before we fulfil the famous slogan "Let the train take the strain", which was coined in a marketing effort to encourage motorists to abandon their cars and switch to rail in the 1980s. A side effect of disenchantment with rail travel has been to force more people on to the roads, which has created a chaotic and frustrating situation on Britain's motorway system, further impeding the ability of road users safely and freely to reach their destinations. I shall return to that point in connection with the north-east of Scotland.

I welcome the Government's 10-year transport plan and the SRA's proposal for improvements to the rail network. They will create a balance in the travel options open to us and reduce the problems currently being encountered by users of the road and rail network. The plans, along with the Government's White Paper on aviation and regional airports that is to be issued later in the year, will go a long way to set the context in which the needs of travel in the United Kingdom will be met for the next 50 years. My fervent hope as an MP for a distant constituency is that all the Government's policies will be given a priority that puts investment and accessibility at the heart of the solutions that are needed to satisfy the transport needs of all Britain's regions and communities in the years ahead.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to focus on the electrification of the east coast main line. I want to bring to the Government's attention issues of investment in the railway infrastructure that need to be addressed. The goal of electrification has been shared by all communities north of Edinburgh for some time. It is a goal that has transcended the political divide and brought the often diverse and sometimes conflicting urban and rural communities that make up the northeast of Scotland together in a joint campaign. I am happy to acknowledge the work done by Create, the promoter of the campaign. I have been a long-standing member of the organisation since being involved in local government in the area. I hope that the campaign will be successful and that the benefits that flow from electrification of the rail line south of Edinburgh will be extended north from Edinburgh up the east coast main line.

Does my hon. Friend agree that if electrification of the east coast main line north of Edinburgh and any improvements to the route north of Edinburgh are to be utilised to the full, it will be necessary to clear some of the bottlenecks on the network? I am thinking particularly of the need to transfer freight to the Alloa and Stirling line to take passenger services off the Forth rail bridge and to improve the tunnel capacity east of Edinburgh. Does he agree that such matters need to be part of the package of electrification or any other improvement, and that it would be helpful if the Minister looked into such matters?

I bow to my hon. Friend's detailed knowledge of the railway system in Scotland and his constant advocacy of improvements to that system. He is right. The SRA's current policy is, as a first step, to smooth out bottlenecks and tackle problems on the line. He is right about that first step, but to achieve the end result and ensure faster journey times involves electrification.

The part of Scotland to which my hon. Friend refers—the central belt into Fife and the north-east—has long suffered from its peripheral position and relatively low population density compared with other centres of population in Scotland and the UK. Many who, like me, hail from that area, whether they are involved in politics or business or must travel frequently for other reasons, feel that they have been at a transport disadvantage for some time. That is what we want tackled.

Although the recently published SRA rail investment strategy will tackle that to some extent, it falls short of satisfying what, in terms of railway development, is the ideal solution. It does not go far enough in the medium and long terms to create parity of opportunity in relation to rail haulage and rail travel accessibility. The proposals to improve and straighten the line where possible will make rail travel marginally quicker and improve travel times in the long term, but such improvements should be only the first step towards allowing electrification to proceed eventually. It is therefore essential that we elected Members of Parliament, the Government and consumers are not fobbed off by the halfway house proffered by the SRA's investment plan.

The proposed improvements are short-term solutions. However acceptable they are as a means of improving travel times, they do not secure the improvement in travel time required to ensure the heightening of business competitiveness that is necessary to counter cut-throat competition in producing goods and promoting sales in far-off markets; nor will the proposals achieve the travel times required to encourage business travellers and other commuters who are unable to meet the higher cost of air fares to abandon the roads and take to a more environmentally friendly form of travel.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree with the chair of the UK passenger transport forum that the SRA's plan is a plan for London and the south-east of England? Does he agree with the growing consensus in Scotland that the best solution for the investment required in Scotland would probably be the full devolution of railway powers to the Scottish Parliament?

I am aware of comments made and a recent debate in the Scottish Parliament sponsored by the Scottish National party. The national rail network is a national issue, and I think that, given its connections to the UK, its integrity should remain the responsibility of the UK Parliament, especially as I am keen to ensure that Dundee, Scotland and the UK remain closely linked to Europe. Issues raised in that debate deserve attention. They include possible new branch lines and the lines north of Aberdeen to Fraserburgh and Peterhead. We Members of Parliament need to continue to put the case. I hope that we shall have time at the end of the debate to make the case for what to do next.

The SRA's improvement plans for north-east Scotland are based on the presumption that diesel-powered engines will remain the main form of traction, debarring that part of Scotland from the benefits that will accrue to Edinburgh and its passengers going south. By any comparison, electric trains would provide improved passenger environments and more pleasant journeys, and they are less polluting, cheaper to run and faster. Electrification is the only option that deserves to be considered.

I am reading Lord Jenkins' recently published and excellent biography of Sir Winston Churchill, who was for 14 years a Member of Parliament for Dundee. In that account I was interested to read that, after Churchill's electoral success as a Liberal candidate in 1908, he settled down for the 10-and-a-half-hour journey between London and Dundee to take up his seat in Parliament. One hundred years later, the journey time for the 460 miles between Dundee and London has been cut to about six hours; however, it takes an hour and a half to get from Dundee to Edinburgh—a quarter of the time that it takes to get from Dundee to London even though the distance is much less than a quarter of the distance between Dundee and London. One of the major bottlenecks on the line is between the Forth and Tay rail bridges. The severity of the delay is amplified if one travels south from Aberdeen.

We need only look at the French network to see the real improvements that could be achieved. For example, a train left the Gare du Lyon at 12 o'clock today. It will cover the 228 miles between Paris and Lyon in a staggering 1 hour 55 minutes. If we had the same system in Scotland and the United Kingdom as a whole, we could hope for a travel time between Dundee and London of far less than four hours. That would be a difference that we could really applaud.

Let us take a further step north on the east coast main line. Any improvements that we could make would be of great significance to many rail stops north of Aberdeen that often recede into the very real mists of rail improvement policy. Such rail stops are Inverurie, Huntly, Keith and Elgin. They have rail links to Aberdeen, but no direct link to London. They need speedier access to Aberdeen as a staging post to the south and south-east of the UK. Electrifying the line all the way to Inverness would be of immense benefit to us all, and especially to those rail stops.

It is sad that some people in the north-east of Scotland have no rail link at all. Towns such as Peterhead and Fraserburgh suffer a double dose of distancing, from vital access to rail services, and consequently from vital access to markets and visitor destinations. Those places might not be familiar to the Minister. On a map they might look fairly accessible to the nodal point of the east coast main line in Aberdeen, but in reality, the distances are great. I have travelled occasionally by car up there and I know that many of the roads are of a secondary nature.

The reinstatement of a rail service to these areas, which were deprived of access to the east coast main line due to the infamous Beeching cuts of the 1960s, is the responsibility of the Scottish Executive under the devolved powers of the Scotland Act 1998. However, I believe that the UK Government have reserved powers and the requirement and duty to ensure that the Strategic Rail Authority does all it can to improve that major trans-Britain railway line. That is doubly true given the very difficult journey that one can have when travelling by road for either business or for the pleasure of gaining access to the delights of our capital city.

On two occasions since my election last year, I have had the dubious pleasure of making a 12-hour car journey from Dundee to London. That is a course of action that I would not recommend to my worst enemy. The journey can be embarked upon with minimum disruption, but travel times can be considerably lengthened if one encounters the worst of the hold-ups—luckily, I avoided them—that can be experienced on what is without doubt the worst stretch of road in the UK: the M6 around Birmingham. That major west coast highway is the most heavily used motorway in the country, due to lack of investment in the A1/M1 corridor, which would be the shorter east coast trip.

I believe that if a quicker east coast rail alternative were available, many people who currently use the road might reassess their travel arrangements and switch to rail. Better still—given improvements south of Edinburgh and electrification north of Edinburgh—would be the reintroduction of the train services on which one can put one's car, as can be done in Europe. The journey to London and abroad could then be made causing less pollution.

I know that electrification is expensive, but I firmly believe that we must pursue it strongly. I am conscious that Members of Parliament use Adjournment debates to ask for attention to be given to problems that affect their constituencies, but this topic extends wider than the boundaries of Dundee, East. I am sorry that no Conservative or Liberal Democrat Member is present to take note of my concerns, although I note the presence of the hon. Member for North Tayside (Pete Wishart), a constituency neighbour of mine.

The east coast main line impacts on a wide geographical area that is home to urban and rural communities. As I said, the north-east of Scotland is at a disadvantage in relation to transport because of its peripheral location in the UK and the wider European Union. I was once the chair of economic development on Dundee city council, and I know how much a company's decision to locate to a particular area can be affected by transport costs and the accessibility of towns such as Dundee to major markets and financial decision-making centres of the UK.

Recently discussions have taken place between the Scotland Office and the SRA on the proposals for improvements in the north-east of Scotland, and I wrote to the new Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire), asking her to let me know what progress was made. On behalf of all MPs for the area, I am also writing to Richard Bowker, chairman of the SRA, to ask for an early meeting to discuss the current proposals for the north-east of Scotland, and to seek to review with him and his officials the details of those improvements and the priority that the SRA is giving to electrification.

As an MP, I am committed to continuing to campaign for Dundee, East and the north-east of Scotland, and I work with the support of my fellow MPs for that area, whatever their political persuasion. With the assistance of the Minister and his colleagues at the Scotland Office, we will succeed in our worthwhile endeavour to ensure that electrification stretches northward from Edinburgh as far as Inverness, or at least to Aberdeen as our first option.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Luke) on securing the debate and providing an opportunity for the House to discuss the possible electrification of the east coast main line north of Edinburgh. He rightly raised related issues that are of importance to his constituency and to Scotland as a whole, and asked whether some of the names of the stations to which he drew attention were familiar to me. As I recall, many of those stations had branches of the old EETPU—the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union—with which I used to deal.

I was interested to hear about my hon. Friend's road journey to London. He will welcome my announcement yesterday of £263 million that will provide motorway-standard roads through Yorkshire and improve links between the south and the midlands to Scotland. That is of interest to Scotland, especially to the north-east.

As my hon. Friend said, the east coast main line is the high-speed link carrying Britain's fastest train service between London, Yorkshire, the north-east and Edinburgh. It also links into Scotland's prime routes to Glasgow, Aberdeen and Inverness. It handles cross-country, commuter and local passenger services and carries considerable freight and mail traffic. The route is primarily a two-track railway, with four tracks in certain sections, mainly at the southern end of the route. Line speeds on part of the route between Newcastle and Edinburgh range between 80 mph and 125 mph, and between Edinburgh and Aberdeen speeds are about 90 mph. On an average day, 1,900 passenger trains carry 200,000 passengers and there are 250 freight services with a loading of approximately 200,000 tonnes.

By any measure, the route is vital to the economic health of many regions of Great Britain. All parties have long accepted that upgrading the east coast main line is a priority. It would provide additional capacity for both passenger and freight demand, and improve the network to enable train operators to deliver significant improvements in the quality and reliability of their services that customers rightly expect. A substantial Railtrack design team has worked on the scheme for nearly three years to enable the route to carry more passenger trains, faster trains and more freight services. A fundamental part of the scheme is the use of parallel routes to provide extra capacity and, in effect, a four-track railway from London to Newcastle.

Railtrack informed the SRA of an increase in its cost estimates for the upgrade, and the SRA recently examined the details of the cost increases with Railtrack. As a result, a two-year extension was agreed with GNER to secure some early benefits for passengers. The extension will give the SRA more time to formulate the requirements for this important section of the railway before going out to tender for a long-term replacement franchise.

That gives the general picture on the line, so let me deal with the case for electrification. Our concern is much more with outputs than with inputs. We intend to ensure that passengers get an appropriate level of service, but we are less concerned about how train operators achieve that. In the 1970s, electrification brought undoubted and numerous advantages, such as reduced fuel and maintenance costs, rail vehicles with better acceleration, higher top speeds and quieter operation, but in the current climate that is no longer true. Diesel fuel is now much cheaper, so the fuel cost differences have been largely eliminated. The performance characteristics of modern diesel trains have improved considerably and they are now at least as good as equivalent electric units. Although the maintenance costs of electric trains are slightly less than those of diesel trains, when the cost of maintaining overhead line equipment is included, the balance shifts in favour of diesel.

The so-called "sparks effect" was well known in the 70s. It was the name given to the tendency of electrification to increase patronage on train routes compared with when they were operated by other forms of motive power. The effect is less prevalent now—indeed, recent studies detect a "nose cone effect", whereby if trains have an aerodynamic front and appearance, there seems to be an increase in the number of passengers. Interestingly enough, a similar phenomenon is found in connection with light rail and buses.

Does my right hon. Friend accept that for those trains that stop more frequently, electric-powered engines have a quicker start-up time and gain swifter speeds earlier?

I am happy to write to my hon. Friend about that. There has been a considerable closing of the performance gap between modern diesel trains and electric trains.

The Edinburgh to Aberdeen line is in need of some improvement. We are anxious to secure greater capacity, better signalling and increased line speeds, but electrification is not required to provide that. It is extremely expensive and would not eliminate the problems caused by lack of track capacity, the winding nature of the line as it hugs the shoreline and various other factors associated with the physical shape of various sections of the line, together with the single track section at Usan, which restricts capacity.

We already have plans for improvements on that route. An extra signalling section is proposed on the Forth bridge to increase track capacity. The Waverley station scheme, as well as enhancing that station, will increase track capacity. A scheme to re-open the route from Stirling to Longannet, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mr. Lazarowicz), will increase track capacity by diverting freight trains to avoid the Forth bridge. We are anxious to improve the route from Edinburgh to Aberdeen, but do not regard electrification as the most effective solution in the short to medium term. We have a number of projects in hand to assist with that, and the SRA and the Scottish Executive are commissioning a study to investigate the most effective ways of improving capacity in the Aberdeen area.

New trains have already been introduced on the route. Scotrail's new Turbostar trains and Virgin's new Voyager trains are part of the dramatic change that is taking place in the cross-country system. They both have characteristics similar to those of electric trains. The recent two-year extension of the GNER franchise, which I mentioned earlier, included a commitment by the company completely to refurbish the high-speed trains that operate to Aberdeen and Inverness. Incidentally, all those types of diesel trains are already exceedingly popular with passengers and have created a step change in travel and in perceptions.

The Strategic Rail Authority is working with the Scottish Executive—

Order. We have to move on.

I am grateful for the opportunity to debate the report recently published by Bedfordshire county council on the incident on 14 February at the Yarl's Wood detention centre. I welcome the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration to her new position. We have known each other for some time and I understand that she is in a difficult but interesting ministerial post. We all wish her well.

I have three aims in today's short debate—to call attention to the report, to highlight some of the outstanding issues and to call attention to the lack of interest from the Home Office, which is causing my constituents real anger and frustration. Shortly after the fire on 14 February at Yarl's Wood detention and removal centre, the county council, led by Councillor Philip Hendry, resolved to conduct its own inquiry. It had three guiding reasons for doing so: it recognised its position in giving leadership to the local community that felt most concerned about the construction, operation and destruction of Yarl's Wood; it wished to give the community a public voice; and it recognised the cost of the national policy to the whole of Bedfordshire. The council understood that the local position had national resonance.

The council has succeeded in its aims, and I pay tribute to Councillor Hendry, Councillor David Thompson who chaired the inquiry, the cross-party councillors who sat on it and the county council's administrative staff who worked over and above the call of duty to make it a success. The inquiry team publicly interviewed many witnesses ranging from Group 4 and the emergency services to community groups and refugee support workers. It has been thorough, and within the constraints imposed by concurrent police and Home Office inquiries—not to mention the possibilities of criminal or civil proceedings—it found its way to sound conclusions. The shadow of other inquiries is real—I shall return to the problem—as the spotlight now switches to the Government's response.

The product of seven hearings, other visits and deliberations was set out in a report published on 18 June, and a copy was dispatched to the Home Secretary forthwith. It raised considerable interest and attention in the county, and I am pleased to see in attendance this morning my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) and the hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. Hall).

The key recommendations of the report include the creation of an independent inspectorate for detention centres and similar establishments; the removal of both Crown immunity and the ability to use special planning procedures from Government developments, except those needed for defence or national security; and the engagement to a far greater extent of local communities in the planning process. Other recommendations include supporting the local police authority in its defence of the insurance claim brought against it by the insurers of those running Yarl's Wood; ensuring that no costs fall on the local community as a result of such actions; and reviewing the practice and policy of insuring this and similar establishments.

Does my hon. Friend agree that Bedfordshire's council tax payers would appreciate an assurance from the Minister that they will not have to pay the costs of the Yarl's Wood fire through their council tax? Furthermore, the county would appreciate a reassurance that the Government will put in place measures to ensure that similar events centering on national facilities do not fall on the shoulders of local council tax payers.

My hon. Friend makes a firm point on behalf of his constituents and all people living in Bedfordshire. The Minister is likely to deal with the point. The insurance issue has yet to be resolved in the courts, but it has caused national concern. If my understanding is correct, the date to insure a variety of privately run facilities around the country is rapidly approaching. What is the current position? My hon. Friend is right to call for those assurances.

The fifth aim of the report is to ensure the use of sprinklers against fire and to improve fire drills and fire safety at detention centres and similar establishments. The sixth is to improve detainee access to third-party advice to resolve disputes, and to improve record keeping and back-up record keeping of detainee information. The last, but locally by no means least, aim is to establish an independent process to determine the need for alternative access to Yarl's Wood rather than having to use Twinwoods road alone. That would accommodate the interests of many local people, and it should be carried forward as a matter of urgency.

I endorse all those recommendations and will return later to one or two of the issues raised. The report also makes special mention of the extraordinary work of the emergency services, which I strongly endorse, and of Group 4 staff at the site, who were put under severe pressure. It also mentions the action of certain detainees who took effective action to secure their safety and that of their friends.

As I mentioned, the inquiry process raised issues that could not be resolved because of the limitations imposed by other inquiries. It is essential for the local community that the Minister addresses the problem of how these matters will finally be determined to public satisfaction. She should also reconsider the instruction, which must have been given by her Department, to tell Home Office official Stephen Moore of the Prison Service, who is conducting the inquiry, not to hold hearings in public. There is a stark contrast between the openness of the county council procedure and the closed nature of the Home Office's inquiry. That is not acceptable.

We should consider two issues that appear in the report. It is known that, contrary to the strong advice of Bedfordshire fire brigade, no fire sprinklers were in place at Yarl's Wood. Why was a substantial timber-framed building, which it was known would go up in flames quickly, allowed to be built as it was, to house 450 people being held against their will, several miles from a fire station and with fairly poor water supplies?

Home Office evidence submitted to the inquiry through Paul Quibell, which appears on pages 208 and 209 of the transcripts, says that the costs of fitting sprinklers

"wasn't really a factor for us at the time."

However, I introduced in evidence a letter from Jeff Goddard, who was acting chief fire officer of Bedfordshire at the time of negotiations with the Home Office about sprinklers. He is now the CFO of Buckinghamshire and was prepared to state unequivocally:

"There was a meeting early in 2001 at Bedfordshire Fire Headquarters attended by myself, officers of Bedfordshire and Luton Fire and Rescue Service, the Head of the Immigration Service and a representative of the H.M. Fire Service Inspectorate, when the fitting of sprinklers was a single topic of debate. The Fire Service's stance being to strongly recommend sprinklers, this recommendation being resisted by the Head of the Immigration Service on grounds of cost."

That is a clear and serious contradiction, and I would have expected the Home Office inquiry to want to address it, but when I telephoned Mr. Goddard yesterday, I was astonished to learn that Stephen Moore had not contacted him. Why was he not contacted? Is Mr. Moore, a Home Office official, not hopelessly compromised in the search for the truth by his lack of independence?

Mr. Quibell went on to say that, because of conflicting advice, the Home Office commissioned a study before Yarl's Wood was built about the benefits of sprinklers. Beyond expressing incredulity that after years of experience the Home Office could need another study, I am stunned to read that that study's findings are still awaited—after one decision by a Home Secretary not to fit sprinklers and a subsequent one to reverse the policy. Both decisions were made without recourse to the policy advice—why? Mr. Moore was asked at the inquiry whether he intended to call Ministers; he answered, "No". Will the Minister ask him to reconsider and have hearings in public? Is not that small part of the jigsaw an illustration of appalling policy procedures and decisions?

Another crucial issue in the evidence is that of police access to the site during the incident. Shortly after 14 February, many reports indicated that the police had not gained access as soon as they arrived at Yarl's Wood, but were instead held outside for some hours. I am not aware that the police have denied those reports. The police were unable to give evidence to the county council inquiry for legal reasons that I understand and respect, but Group 4 did so through David Banks, the managing director of its custodial services. On page 230, he says:

"You have asked, relative to access for the police. Were the police denied access to the site on the night of the incident? The answer is no, the police were not denied access to the site."

That is a fundamental issue. How does the Minister intend to resolve it and how may the public see that that is done? After all the legal restrictions on the police are lifted, will she contemplate giving them a public opportunity to present their description of events on the night?

My constituents and I look to the Home Office or subsequent procedures to clarify other matters. For what was the Home Secretary apologising on his visit to the area in March when he referred to errors being made in terms of the people who were at Yarl's Wood? Which detainees were there inappropriately and why? Why did Group 4 not know? How were decisions made to build such a fire risk to house people who had nothing to lose? Why were no serious fire precautions taken, save for showing detainees a video on arrival?

How were the insurance arrangements made? A parliamentary answer tells me that the Home Office has an insurable interest in Yarl's Wood because it is Crown property. The insurers for its interest are the same as those for the contractors running the centre: Mr. D. J. Pye's Lloyd's syndicate, acting through Capita Maclaren loss adjusters. As we know, it has taken the smart but immoral decision to sue the local police for £100 million and rising under the Riot (Damages) Act 1886, but the Home Office is a party to that. What insurance details were considered at the time of placing the contract to run Yarl's Wood? Did anyone think to ask what would happen in the event of a riot? If so, what was the answer? If not, why not? What will happen now to lift the threat of that massive bill off local taxpayers?

There are many other questions, but time is short, so I shall touch only briefly on the role of Mr. Moore. I understand from his evidence that he intends to submit his report to the Home Secretary by the end of June—a week from now. How many people at Group 4 has Mr. Moore interviewed? How many witnesses has he interviewed independently, by which I mean not relying on statements made to others? Which Home Office Ministers or officials has he interviewed? Has he sought access to the records of every detainee at Yarl's Wood on 14 February who was subsequently deported? Why has he held no hearings in public?

What is Mr. Moore's, and the Minister's, view of commercial confidentiality? That has been used as a screen to prevent access to certain issues. My view and that of my constituents is that when safety advice has been rejected by those responsible for the lives and safety of people kept under lock and key, commercial confidentiality should go out the window. The public are entitled to every scrap of knowledge about cost, contract, and price arrangements for insurance, and the details of every piece of correspondence or meeting through which decisions were made. Does the Minister agree, given her need to satisfy a new audience who are concerned about the planned accommodation centres?

With regard to my constituents' concerns, I asked for this debate partly because of the Home Office's failure to live up to the expectations built up by the Home Secretary on his very welcome visit to my constituency in March. If the Minister has had a chance to read the transcripts of the inquiry—I do not blame her if she has not—she will have noticed a common complaint running through the comments of virtually all groups and individuals in my constituency that were involved with the Home Office at the decision-making and planning stage for the building, and in dealing with the vital issue of access to the site. That complaint is of the Home Office's lack of attention to any matter beyond the boundaries established by a rather successful liaison committee. I pay tribute to the local councillors and those of my constituents who gave up much time to serve on that committee month after month. It provided the Home Office with substantial support, recognising its responsibilities in the face of a very difficult national situation.

However, advice about construction and safety and public warnings about security breaches were not heeded, and questions raised on a variety of issues, from who would be in the centre to the treatment of detainees, were dealt with reassuringly. No one had any reason to doubt the accuracy or good faith of those replies until we had the evidence of our own eyes on 14 February. Since then, as I have said in the House before, that confidence has been extinguished as surely as the fire was that night. People began to remember the fob-offs and the less-than-full answers.

To put that right, the Home Secretary came in March to assure us that full answers would be given to concerns raised by those close to the site. Those concerns go far beyond their own property rights or safety. My constituents, including those on the liaison committee, have always played an active part in refugee and asylum seeker support groups. That is not always popular, but I pay tribute to them for their care and compassion. I have not dwelt on their concerns, but I have not forgotten them. Certain aspects of the detainee regime might be a key part of any findings of the Home Office inquiry.

I wrote to the Home Secretary to follow up the meeting, and suggested a way forward, particularly in relation to access issues which could be dealt with quickly before rebuilding commenced and while other issues were stalled or sub judice. I cannot stress enough how vital that is. There might be some conflicts of interest, but they can he resolved with good will and energy if the Home Office gets off its collective backside and goes out to talk to people, as I suggested in March. It has not done so, and people living on Twinwoods Road—the only route to the centre—have had their patience stretched near to breaking point. I am grateful for the efforts of the local councillors and the residents' leader for keeping tempers in check, even though the chairman of the liaison committee has not had her letter answered, nor has Oakley parish council.

I put some of that strongly, but with good reason. May I remind hon. Members, stripping all niceties away, what Yarl's Wood is about and why people are justifiably concerned? On the night of 14 February, 385 people were being held lawfully but against their will in my constituency. They were in a supposedly secure environment, in a timber-framed building known to he highly combustible but without water sprinklers, and had received nothing more than rudimentary fire safety instructions. They were miles from a fire station, and the local fire brigade had warned against the absence of sprinklers but had been rebutted by the Home Office, which took precautions against accidental fire but did not seem to appreciate the risk of deliberate fire. Due to criminal activity, for which the perpetrators when convicted deserve the severest punishment, potentially lethal fires were started, endangering detainees, those guarding them, my constituents and those in the emergency services who attended and performed bravely in the face of severe difficulties.

Residents nearby were largely unaware of the incident for many hours because no system existed to alert them, nor were they aware when the supposedly safe environment was breached. Police attempting to deal with the incident were denied access when they first needed it. The aftermath includes a destroyed centre, a £100 million insurance bill, no public access to the Home Office inquiry, no action by the Home Office on a series of concerns advanced by residents, and little evidence of understanding of the frustrations being expressed. I regret to place all this before the Minister, but it is my duty to do so. On behalf of my constituents, I call upon her to recognise the severity of the issues facing her Department and to grasp this golden opportunity to make a difference.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) and to the Minister—

Order. Do you have the permission of the Minister?

I do. I thank the Minister and the hon. Gentleman for allowing me a couple of minutes to follow a measured and thoughtful contribution to the Yarl's Wood debate. I echo the sentiments expressed by the hon. Gentleman about the public's concerns, many of which are held by my constituents as well as his, and I add my appreciation of the task carried out so responsibly and thoroughly by Bedfordshire county council.

I want to emphasise three of the many issues that have been raised today and on other occasions by the hon. Gentleman and others, and by me. First, the purpose of Yarl's Wood must in future be absolutely clear. The fact that it was not used as was apparently originally intended, only for end-of-process asylum seekers, but that such people were mixed freely together with other applicants at the beginning of the process plus convicted criminals, must have contributed to the tensions that exploded on 14 February.

Secondly, Stephen Moore's Home Office inquiry needs to be published soon and must be as open as possible. Only information relating to the police criminal investigations should be withheld. Matters relating to the Home Office contract with Group 4 must be placed in the public domain.

Finally, regarding the disgraceful attempts by Group 4's insurers to send the bill for reconstruction to Bedfordshire police, the Government must ensure that contracting out public services to the private sector means that the contractor does not simply keep the profits when things go well, but that it carries the risk for when things go wrong.

Lessons must be learned from Yarl's Wood before something else happens to the detention estate. It is imperative that public confidence be restored.

I thank the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) for his kind welcome at the start of the debate. I also thank Bedfordshire county council for its report and for the work that it put into it. I endorse and associate myself with the hon. Gentleman's remarks about the excellent response by the emergency services and others at the time of the fire. I also thank him for his work and for the constructive way in which he has tried to find a way forward for his constituents. He recognises the need for centres such as Yarl's Wood, and has tried to find a way through the issues surrounding them.

I also thank local people for the way in which they have responded. I have spoken to some of them today. I accept that the issue is difficult overall, and I perfectly understand how disturbing the incident at Yarl's Wood would be for ordinary local people. I can imagine myself in those circumstances, and I share and acknowledge their feelings. I understand that their trust must inevitably have been challenged by the events of 14 and 15 February, regardless of whether that feeling is completely justified or whether some of the hon. Gentleman's points about who was in the centre and so on were accurate.

The hon. Gentleman asked many questions, and he will understand that I cannot give a simple answer to some of them. He will also understand that I cannot discuss the report and the recommendations that will inform Stephen Moore's overarching inquiry, except where the Government have already said that they have made decisions. Before I deal with some of the hon. Gentleman's more general but none the less important points about the nature of Stephen Moore's inquiry and about consulting and involving local people, let me deal with some of his specific points.

Sprinklers are clearly a critical matter. I understand the keen interest in why there were none at Yarl's Wood. All that I can say at this stage is that the then Home Secretary decided not to fit them on the basis of a range of advice from different sources. However, the current Home Secretary has undertaken that sprinklers will be fitted in the remaining accommodation at Yarl's Wood, at Harmondsworth, and at future immigration removal centres, and we have begun consultation work on that matter. The hon. Gentleman also referred to a review on the use of sprinklers, but its scope is more general, and includes several different types of estate within the Home Office. It will be concluded shortly.

The hon. Gentleman asked why events took the course that they did, notwithstanding the range of advice available to the Home Secretary. Such questions are important, and the inquiry will have to deal with them. He also mentioned inspection. He will know that the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 gave Her Majesty's chief inspector of prisons the statutory power and responsibility to visit all immigration removal centres and detainees. Before taking on my present responsibilities, I was Minister with responsibility for prisons and I worked closely with the chief inspector. I took a keen interest in and have some knowledge of her work and I am perfectly happy with it. She is the person to inspect the custodial environment in the centres, just as she does in prisons. She takes an holistic approach, and I think I am right in saying that she intends to write a thematic report on the immigration estate, as part of her work programme. I accept the hon. Gentleman's point about inspection, which is important, but the chief inspector of prisons is the right person to carry that out.

All three hon. Gentlemen who have spoken in the debate raised the question of insurance. I echo the comments made by the Home Secretary on 25 February about the implications of the Riot (Damages) Act. I cannot say more on that now because the matter is subject to continuing negotiations between the insurers for Group 4 and Bedfordshire police authority, but I reiterate the Home Secretary's comment that we recognise that the claim made by the insurers is unquestionably beyond the resources of Bedfordshire police. We will take whatever advice is necessary and work with the police authority to protect its interests and those of the council tax payers whom it serves. We shall certainly want to ensure that the police are not burdened with the bill.

We are carefully considering the more general question of the implications of the incident for future insurance. That is a big question which we must sort out, because we cannot continue to provide significant establishments, for which insurance is necessary, without ensuring that the insurers will deliver when an incident occurs.

The hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire raised several issues about the Stephen Moore report. He mentioned June in connection with the time scale, but I understand that Stephen Moore has said that he will try to deliver the report to the Home Secretary by September, because he must wait for other investigations and reports to be concluded before he can complete his report.

I mentioned June because that is what Mr. Moore said when he gave evidence to the Bedfordshire county council inquiry.

My information is different, but I shall certainly investigate that. I want to ensure that the scope of the inquiry is as comprehensive as possible in terms of those from whom evidence is sought, and that it covers the hon. Gentleman's questions. We do not want the validity and credibility of the final report to be open to challenge because people believe that not all the available evidence was sought. There will not be a public meeting of the sort requested by the hon. Gentleman, but it will be open to everyone to contribute to the inquiry process. The hon. Gentleman asked many questions that are germane to the inquiry, and I want to satisfy myself about the way in which it will be conducted and about its scope. Its terms of reference are the fire itself, but I hope that the inquiry will be comprehensive, so that it is not open to challenge.

The hon. Gentleman also raised several important points about consultation, which I discussed with residents before the debate. I say to the hon. Gentleman, and through him to his constituents, that we must get this right. As I said earlier to his constituents, they and my officials may have different expectations about the process of communication, and we need to bring the two sets of expectations closer together. I understand if some of my officials think that there is nothing much to say at the moment. That is true, because we are working hard considering the options. Inquiries are taking place, and we cannot make any definitive judgments until we have considered the results. Equally, I understand that, even if there is nothing to say, local people can be reassured in this interim period by being told that we are still here and are still interested. I give my commitment to try to ensure that that happens.

I am not going to apologise for the fact that we have a removals centre. I cannot do that because we need the facilities. I know that the hon. Gentleman accepts that. Wherever we site them, there will always be difficulties, but I accept that that puts the onus on Government and officials to try to ensure that we minimise the inherent difficulties as much as possible, and to work as cooperatively and openly as we can—although there are some limitations on that—with local people.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to debate the proposals by North West Water and the developers Arrowcroft to remove a treasured piece of green space in my constituency and turn it into a business park.

I am delighted to see the new Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty), in his place. I congratulate him on his well-deserved promotion. To some extent, I also commiserate with him because I understand that in planning matters Ministers have a semi-judicial function, and I accept that he is not going to be able to say all that much at the end of the debate because of that function. Anyway, I am very grateful that he is here to listen.

My constituents and those of my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) would not understand it if I did not take up this opportunity to press their total abhorrence of the proposed scheme. My right hon. Friend would very much have liked to be here but, unfortunately, other parliamentary duties made that impossible for him. He has been steadily paging me all morning, insisting that I put on the record the fact that he is as strongly opposed to the scheme now as he was 10 years ago when it was first proposed.

The area of land concerned is on the east side of Greater Manchester, between my right hon. Friend's Gorton constituency and mine, Denton and Reddish, in which a little of the land lies. In the 1800s, the old city of Manchester cut off one of the small streams flowing down to the Irwell and built two small reservoirs on it. Water was taken from the then Ashton canal into the top reservoir during the wet period of the winter, and was stored to provide fresh water to the people of Manchester.

Some 50 years later, in about 1885, the authorities got parliamentary approval to build five further reservoirs above the lower reservoirs, as they are now called. In fact, only three were built—very fine reservoirs, which are still there. The authorities then decided that there was more demand for water than could be coped with by expanding the Audenshaw reservoirs, and went up to the Lake district to get water from the area around Thirlmere and Ullswater. On the site of the two proposed reservoirs that were never built, first Denton golf club and then Fairfield golf club—uniquely, Fairfield is also a sailing club—grew up on the land, and they have been very successful ever since. That is a brief history of the site.

In addition to the two golf clubs, a large number of people come out from Gorton, Audenshaw, Reddish and Denton to walk through the site. It is a very important lung to the people living in that area. It is also a bit of countryside—something that I find very difficult to get across to developers and other people. The nature of the reservoirs' construction is such that someone walking through the area can look up and see first the grass walls of the reservoir, and beyond that the Pennine hills. They have a feeling that they are out in the countryside, yet they are a relatively short distance from the centre of Manchester. For local people, the area has been a lifeline for years and years.

Very sadly, just over 10 years ago, North West Water, aided and abetted by Tameside council, decided that the site could be turned into a business park. It came forward with a planning application, but much to my delight and that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton, the then Secretary of State felt that the scheme was so large that he would have to call it in and hold a proper public inquiry into it. When it came to the public inquiry, the whole thing collapsed because it was not possible to come up with a viable road system to get to the site. On the scale that was being discussed, it would not have been possible to get traffic in or out of the site, especially if a business park were constructed.

Those in my constituency know the area as "the reservoirs" or "the stonewalls". The developers at first decided that they would call the site Kingswater; more recently, having abandoned that name, they call it Waterside Park. It is an insult to local people to come up with a name like that. Having failed at the first public inquiry, Tameside council decided that it would put a business park into its unitary development plan. My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton and I spent a lot of time trying to convince the inspector at that inquiry that the council should take the area out of the plan and earmark it as public open or recreational space. We managed to convince the inspector that if a business park was to be built, it was essential that an alternative golf course be found. On that basis, he said that the scheme could go ahead, but when the council came forward with a development proposal, it could not come up with an alternative golf course. It is not possible to find the land for one in that area. If it could find the land, the business park could be built there.

We persuaded the Secretary of State that he should call the development in, and when the proposals were brought forward, my right hon. Friend and I went to the inquiry and put all the arguments to the inspector. Eventually, the case found its way on to the Deputy Prime Minister's desk, who said very firmly that the scheme should not go ahead. He gave seven major reasons why it should not go ahead. I believe that those seven reasons are still valid. Unfortunately, developers decided to challenge my right hon. Friend's reasons, and on three of them the court found that he needed to reconsider his position. During the past few months, a whole series of representations have been made suggesting that the Deputy Prime Minister got it right—or that he got it wrong. I have to say that the vast majority of my constituents have written to me saying that the Deputy Prime Minister got it spot on when he turned down the original proposal. I want to emphasise that.

I hope that the Deputy Prime Minister will take a decision fairly soon. We want the matter settled as soon as possible. It is possible for him to decide to hold a further public inquiry, but I think that far too much has been said about the matter already. An awful lot of trees have been cut down for the paperwork on it, and it would be much simpler if he confirmed his decision to refuse approval.

However, there is another aspect to the issue. I have continually pleaded with North West Water that it should understand the strength of local feeling against it and the damage that pushing ahead with the scheme does to the company's own image. North West Water is one of the major sponsors of the Commonwealth games. People will enjoy themselves at the games in July, but their importance to Manchester is that they will help to secure major regeneration of the city's east side. On the east side, the emphasis will be on new sports facilities: the stadium, the baths and the cycling facilities. It seems absolutely crazy for North West Water to want credit for helping to make those sports facilities work in the east side of Manchester while simultaneously working to wreck two golf courses.

In effect, North West Water saying is that one golf course will close and the other will have buildings put on it so that the whole course will have to be remodelled. That seems absolutely crazy. I would argue that it is in North West Water's interest to say, even at this late stage, that it is going to scrap the scheme and get credit for encouraging the development of sporting facilities in the east side of Manchester. It is interesting that Sport England has made very strong objections to the loss of the golf course.

Fairfield golf and sailing club has what might be described as a working-class membership. It is in no way elitist, but is a place that welcomes local people from Gorton, Audenshaw, Denton and Reddish. It cooperates with Wright Robinson school, which is a sports academy. The school overlooks the facilities, and many of the youngsters are encouraged to play on the golf course, which is a facility for the area.

My pleas are that the Deputy Prime Minister make his decision quickly and enforces it, and that, even if it does not happen before the Commonwealth games, North West Water accepts that it should not push ahead with the scheme but go for good publicity and abandon it.

Let me deal with some of the issues. We will not just lose a golf course but an open space that is, as I said, a lung for the whole of the east of Manchester, including the people in Gorton, Audenshaw, Denton and Reddish. People can walk out from narrow terraced houses that have only yards, not gardens, and walk through the site which has mature hedgerows, a huge bird population and attractive wild flowers. It is a place where adults can walk and kids can mess about. That does not always please the golf club, but it is important in urban landscapes to have places where kids can mess about, because they can do an awful lot of damage if they mess about on the wall outside some elderly person's dwelling. They might upset elderly people, with the result that there is conflict between youngsters and the elderly. However, if they can go out to "the reservoirs" and "the stonewalls", kids can be kids and mess about and enjoy themselves without upsetting anyone, apart from occasional minor upset to people on the golf course. Therefore, it is an important area for kids.

It is also an important area for walking dogs. There is an absolute lack of open space in east Manchester. Another aspect to emphasise is that the facilities are free. Increasingly, people in urban areas must pay for facilities. It is important that people on low incomes are able to take their kids out or put them in the pram and push them through the area at no cost.

The lower reservoirs are a major fishing site. Manchester education committee offers water sports on one of the lower reservoirs, and the Fairfield golf and sailing club used to have sailing facilities on one of the others. It is sad that, because the issue has gone on for more than 10 years, it has been difficult for Fairfield golf and sailing club to invest in improving its clubhouse and reinstating its sailing facilities. Another strong reason for making the decision quickly is so that such facilities can be reinvigorated. The open space and recreation facilities are very important.

People say that 3.000 jobs would be created. I am the last person to stop jobs coming to Tameside. However, in the 10 years that we have been arguing about the site, Tameside has had an extremely successful record in attracting inward investment. The council has managed to attract new industry to several brownfield sites. So, although it was claimed 10 years ago that we would not be able to bring unemployment down unless we had the development, unemployment has come down.

Several other sites have become available for development, most at prices that industry can afford rather than at a price that supports the sort of expensive business park development that was planned. The Hyde group is now developing a business park on the old Stratton and Henshaw site in my constituency. I could go through a list of other sites that have been or could be developed. Reeb has presented a very good site for shopping in the centre of Denton. If the same imagination had been shown by the council, a project could have been put together for a business park if necessary, but the jobs argument does not stack up.

Turning to traffic, the M60 and M67 meet at the edge of the site and the M67 ends at a roundabout. That is unsatisfactory for a motorway and there is huge traffic congestion at that point. To build a business park with 3,000 jobs. to which many people will have to commute from south Manchester instead of walking to work locally, will make the traffic worse at that point. There is talk about building a flyover or making some other arrangement, but local people are sick and tired of the traffic problems.

I understand that my hon. Friend the Minister will be happy with about 10 minutes in which to respond, so perhaps I may take a few more minutes without upsetting him. I want to finish by emphasising that the Government's policy in recent years has been brilliant. They have understood the need to regenerate urban areas, to bring new developments to brownfield sites, to reinvigorate old town centres and to reduce car dependency. In PPG3, which covers housing, and the new draft regional guidance for the north-west, the emphasis is on previously developed land.

The proposed business park flies totally in the face of that concept. Manchester has a successful business park. Manchester science park is close to the academic excellence of the university, and it is on brownfield land that needed redevelopment and has good transport links. We do not want a repetition of the 1980s and the failed idea that people must be attracted to sites by offering them green fields and trees. That is not necessary. What is important is that developments have good transport and communications links.

Developers have claimed that people can use Denton station, which is a joke. It has one train, in one direction, one day a week. That is sad and I have often tried to think what could be done to reinvigorate that station, but unfortunately the railway line goes in the wrong direction and the station is in the wrong place. To claim that Denton station will have any significance for the proposed business park is nonsense. Two bus routes pass the site, but at a considerable distance from where the developers want to build. They are now talking about the possibility of setting up a shuttle service to the site, but the shuttle service can be introduced only if the 3,000 jobs materialise and most people are cynical about that.

In terms of Government policy, the proposal is a disaster. The Secretary of State was spot on when he refused permission the first time. I greatly regret that the developers did not accept that and thought they could go to judicial review. The whole planning system is under review at the moment. One of the worst aspects of the present planning system is the way in which people rush to judicial review and then complain that the planning system is slow and cumbersome. I hope that the developers will now accept that the role of the Secretary of State is to implement Government policy, and that that policy is to have development on brownfield sites and to reinvigorate old town centres, and not to allow developments such as the proposed business park, which would simply encourage car dependency and destroy a very important lung for people in my constituency.

I shall listen with interest to my hon. Friend the Minister. I accept that what he can say today is limited, but in Denton, Audenshaw, Reddish and Gorton, there will be cheers when the Deputy Prime Minister confirms his decision that the development should not go ahead.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Bennett) for his kind words at the beginning of his speech, and I congratulate him on securing the debate and raising the issue of the proposed development, which, as he says, has a long history. I thank him for putting his concerns and those of our right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) on the record.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish said, there is little that I can say about the application for the proposed development of Waterside park, but it might be helpful if I explain the development proposal and place the current planning application into an historical context.

Waterside park is a large greenfield site of some 90 hectares adjacent to the M66 at Denton. It is owned by United Utilities, formerly North West Water. Its development for business purposes was first proposed in 1990 under the name Kingswater park. The proposal proved controversial to say the least, and was called in by the then Secretary of State. An inquiry was arranged but the application was withdrawn shortly before the inquiry was due to take place.

The local planning authority, Tameside metropolitan borough council, took forward the idea for a business park on the Denton site, and developed proposals for the land as part of its unitary development plan. Again, the proposal was strongly opposed by local people. There was a thorough debate about the proposals at the UDP inquiry, where views both for and against the proposals were expressed. The UDP inspector recommended that the policy be retained. The council accepted his recommendation that the land be allocated for business use, and accordingly adopted the UDP in September 1996.

Under present proposals, the business park will have 74,000 sq m of BI business space, with ancillary shops, pubs, leisure facilities and some 200 homes, and will involve the relocation of an existing golf club and the creation of new public open space. The development is now called Waterside park, as my hon. Friend knows. The Secretary of State decided to call in the planning application in February 1999, so that he could consider the possible implications for open space provision in the Greater Manchester area. Considerable concern had been expressed about the possible loss of the golf club: a green lung in an urbanised area.

A public inquiry was held in December 1999, and views both for and against the proposal were expressed. The inspector reported in May 2000 and recommended that planning permission be granted subject to conditions. The Secretary of State did not agree with the recommendation, as my hon. Friend has mentioned, and he set out his reasons for that in his letter of 30 November 2000. Among his concerns were the loss of the golf club and the fact that half the proposed housing would not be on previously developed land, commonly known as brownfield land. National planning policy for new housing has a preference for using previously developed sites, and he therefore refused planning permission.

The applicant launched a High Court appeal against the Secretary of State's decision. The grounds of challenge were wide ranging, and the Secretary of State, having taken legal advice, submitted to judgment in respect of two of the grounds for the challenge: the point about environmental assessments and procedures, and the point about housing densities. The decision of the High Court means that the Secretary of State has to redetermine his decision about Waterside park.

My hon. Friend knows that the Secretary of State has to play a quasi-judicial role in determining planning cases that come before him; he alluded to that in his speech. Not only does the Secretary of State have to be impartial, he also has to be seen to be acting impartially. My hon. Friend will therefore understand that I cannot discuss the merits of the case in advance of the Secretary of State's new decision.

As part of the redetermination procedure, officials have written to parties at the inquiry inviting comments on the two issues in which the Secretary of State submitted to judgment. That is a requirement under planning legislation. We have also invited views on two issues that have arisen because the world has moved on since the initial decision. Those issues are the North West Development Agency's search for strategic sites in the region, and the emerging new regional planning guidance for the north-west.

The deadline for the submission of new comments was 14 June. We are now in the middle of considering all comments, both from those at the inquiry and other interested parties. My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish will be interested to know that we received 133 responses from interested parties and local residents. I thank him for forwarding the letters that he received from his constituents.

One of the issues that the Secretary of State will have to consider in the light of the representations is whether the inquiry needs to be reopened to explore the issues further, or whether the information available is sufficient for him to reach a decision. My hon. Friend will understand that it would be premature to make a decision on that point, but there does not seem to have been any great pressure to reopen the inquiry. It would also be premature to comment on the representations that we have received, but I assure him that all representations—both those in favour and those against the proposals—will be taken into account before the Secretary of State makes a new decision.

My hon. Friend outlined his wish for developments in three key areas: first, the decision; secondly, the speed of the decision and, thirdly, matters relating to North West Water. As he knows, I can say absolutely nothing about the nature of the decisions. I hope, through my good offices and those of the Deputy Prime Minister, to ensure that the decision is made as swiftly as is practicable, but I cannot offer him any timetable. It is not for me to exhort North West Water—or United Utilities, as it is now—about its corporate responsibility, advertisement plan, business strategy for the future or any other such matter. Such aspects are of more concern to United Utilities.

May I press my hon. Friend about a further inquiry? My constituents consider that the situation is unfair in that United Utilities—or North West Water, whatever it is called—can afford to have barristers present at such a inquiry, whereas it is not possible for them to raise the money that would be needed to hire legal representation. I hope that he will take that into account and that he will accept that we need a speedy decision, not another inquiry.

I thank my hon. Friend for that response. I repeat, there does not seem to be any growing pressure to reopen the inquiry, but that remains an option to be considered by the Secretary of State. I thank my hon. Friend for drawing the matter to the attention of the House. He has put his case in his usual robust and forceful way on behalf of his constituents. I happily accept the reasons why our right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton cannot be with us today, but I know that he, too, has a long-standing interest in the application.

My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish can be assured that the Secretary of State will take note of his views on the matter. My right hon. Friend will reach a decision on the planning merits of the proposed development as soon as possible and will take full cognisance of all representations that have material planning concerns at their core. I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish that I shall take as much interest in issues in the north-west as I will in those in London or elsewhere in the country.