I am delighted to have secured this debate on some of the most important issues relating to the road haulage industry and the difficulties that it is facing. Perhaps it would be helpful at this stage to give a brief history of organisations such as the Road Haulage Association, which I have been speaking to during my research into the issues.

The RHA was formed in 1945 to look after the interests of haulage contractors in various parts of the country and, in effect, it amalgamated local organisations that had been established previously. It has subsequently developed to become the primary trade association representing the hire or reward sector of the road transport industry. Some 10,000 companies are now members of the association and they vary from major concerns with more than 5,000 vehicles to single owner-drivers.

The purpose of this debate is to highlight the issues facing the road haulage industry that arise from the Government's policies and the consequences for the future of the industry. This debate is not about hauliers having a moan and a whinge. British manufacturers are equally concerned that the high cost of transportation is a major factor in undermining their ability to compete in European and world markets. Indeed, many of them are struggling to compete in our home market.

I want to raise a number of general issues, including fuel costs, foreign competition, proposed lorry road-user charging and, perhaps most importantly, the proposed implementation of the working time directive on the road transport sector, which will be implemented in March 2005. The Government have expressed a genuine interest in working with all interested parties in the transport industry, including employers, employees and employees' representatives, such as the Transport and General Workers Union, of which I am a longstanding member. The Government's 10-year plan for England and Wales is the first long-term plan for transport policy in the United Kingdom for more than 30 years and it represents an important and welcome departure from the previous Administration's stop-start treatment of transport investment. It was warmly welcomed by the industry when it was published in July 2000, and perhaps lessons can be learned from such transport policy and rolled out throughout the UK.

Under the 10-year plan, the industry has a route map of overall spending, infrastructure and, perhaps most importantly, deliverables. It provides a context in which companies can make strategic, long-term decisions about the structure of their supply chains, establish long-term business plans and make significant investments in distribution and logistics. It would help the industry greatly, however, if the contract arrangements with customers could be extended to a minimum of five years. That would allow transport companies to plan effectively for the future and to offer their employees limited security. The contracts are currently for one year or for two to three years. Very few run for the full five-year term, although the industry would appreciate that degree of stability.

You will be aware, Mr. Deputy Speaker, of the industry's long-running and, at times, controversial campaign to reduce fuel costs. The European Commission's transport White Paper recommended that commercial road transport uses should be harmonised wherever possible to avoid distortions of competition and the taxation of fuel. The industry would support any action that could achieve that. However, there is recognition that it is unlikely that such a reduction will take place immediately throughout the United Kingdom because of the costs involved.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way and congratulate him on securing this important debate. Does he have any information about what the reduction or the increase in fuel taxation on British HGV operations would be if harmonisation throughout the European Union were to be obtained?

I do not know the precise figure—the Treasury would be more able to answer my hon. Friend's question—but the road haulage industry is considering the possibility of at least a freeze, especially on diesel, for the next few years. That would go a long way to harmonising fuel costs throughout the EU. There is a realisation among the road haulage industry that taxes in this country help to pay for the public services that so many of us enjoy. The haulage industry is no different from anyone else in recognising that there is a price to be paid for public services. Again, however, I emphasise that it would be greatly appreciated if this Government could do something to bring about harmonisation of fuel costs throughout Europe.

Is the hon. Gentleman going to say anything about the threat that the road haulage industry faces of a further increase in road fuel duty from about 1 October this year, following the Chancellor's remarks in his spring Budget?

I have no intention today of touching on what the Chancellor does, or proposes to do or not to do, in the forthcoming Budget. The RHA has told me that it is not overly concerned about the Chancellor's forthcoming plans. Certainly, it has not raised any concerns with me.

Has the hon. Gentleman seen the September 2003 edition of Roadway, published by the RHA? The whole front page is devoted to a public wealth warning on this issue.

I have not seen the article to which the hon. Gentleman refers. Any reduction in fuel costs for the industry would be greatly appreciated. I and others will be advocating to the Treasury the fact that any assistance in reducing fuel costs would be extremely helpful to this important industry. However, I emphasise that it must be recognised that there has to be a certain amount of taxation to keep the required public services. Creating that balance is important.

The industry's problems with fuel costs have been further compounded by oil companies and their distributors changing the terms and conditions of the sale of fuel to some transport companies. There is anecdotal evidence that hauliers, particularly the small ones—the most important ones—are experiencing significant difficulties with changes in how the oil companies and their distributors operate.

A Scottish haulier almost went out of business when fuel giant Shell slashed his credit terms from £60,000 to zero in just 10 days. He has been a Shell customer for almost 30 years and he spends about £300,000 a year on diesel, but Shell ordered him to provide accounts before he could buy any more fuel on credit, even though he had never previously been asked for that. When he explained that he could not comply with that instruction because his accounts were with his accountant, Shell refused to sell him any more diesel. Consequently, his wagons were laid up, as he had no fuel to drive them. Those actions could be understood if the haulier had reneged on payments or if a cheque had bounced—we might then see the sense of it—but Shell left him high and dry and with no alternative. The RHA has received many similar complaints about oil companies from its other members.

Does my hon. Friend accept that this type of practice will be a threat to small, family-run businesses if it develops more widely in the industry? We need to do something to protect them.

My hon. Friend raises an important point. That practice will particularly affect single owner-drivers, who have nothing to fall back on when faced with that type of difficulty. The houses of many single owner-drivers are mortgaged on their businesses, so when companies such as Shell behave in this way it threatens not only the businesses of single owner-drivers, but their houses and livelihoods. That concerns many of them. It is a real problem for the industry, which is in bad enough shape already without fuel suppliers making life more difficult. I recognise that there are limits to the extent that the Government can influence how major companies and distributors operate, but the Minister's involvement in trying to influence their operating practice and how they deal with their valued customers would be welcome.

I now turn to the issue of unfair competition in the industry from some European businesses, many of which exploit their employees for cheap labour and have the capacity and the knowledge to circumvent the regulations surrounding road transport in Britain and those safeguarding British workers. The problem particularly involves the ever-growing number of eastern European drivers who use our roads without making any financial contribution to their upkeep and maintenance. I have written to the Secretary of State for Transport on the matter of continental drivers and the undermining of significant investment.

Is my hon. Friend concerned, as I am sure many of us are, that after the addition of 10 new members to the EU at the end of the year, the situation will become much worse because there will be many more drivers from much poorer countries, which may have poorer standards of driving and driving tests, overloaded lorries and all the other problems associated with the industry? Does he agree that those difficulties will be exacerbated when those countries join the EU?

My hon. Friend raises an important point, particularly as he has a long history of work and involvement in the transport industry and knows a great deal about it. He is right—the problem is ever increasing as many more eastern European drivers, for instance, come into the country. One can only hazard a guess at the standard of servicing and MOT applied to those lorries, how the workers are treated and whether the practices in some countries are undermining the profitability of the industry as well as the employment rights of British workers.

There is concern about continental drivers undermining the significant investment in ports such as the Rosyth container terminal in Dunfermline, which is a valuable route to mainland Europe for many of our hauliers. There is evidence that continental drivers frequently fill up their fuel tanks, including their reserve tanks, and drive the length and breadth of our country using cheap diesel purchased outside Britain. As someone who has used the Rosyth ferry alongside a number of my parliamentary colleagues, I was extremely disappointed by the fact that that route was used mainly by British drivers. However, I have spoken to my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West (Rachel Squire), in whose constituency the Rosyth ferry operates, and she informed me that the ferry is on the up and in good shape. I was extremely pleased to hear that.

I was also pleased to hear that the Secretary of State for Transport agreed that it was unfair that hauliers from outside Britain could use our roads without making any contribution to their maintenance and upkeep. That is why the Government are introducing the lorry road-user charging scheme, which will be applied to all lorries using our roads, although it is a little disappointing that the time scale for the charge's introduction means that it will not apply until 2006. I am concerned that some of our smaller hauliers could go out of business before that happens. I would welcome any assistance from the Minister in reducing that time scale.

The introduction of the LRUC scheme is probably a precursor to a wider programme embracing the motorist. Most organisations, such as the RHA, support the proposal in principle as the best way to level the playing field between the relatively high-taxed UK-based hauliers and their EU counterparts. They would welcome the offsetting of any reduction in fuel duty as the best way to ensure that, overall, total tax achieved through the LRUC scheme will remain the same. I would welcome the Minister's comments on that. There are concerns about the scheme's impact on the hire or reward sector of the road haulage industry. Again, I would welcome any further clarification.

The burning issue in the industry is the EU working time directive, which is due to be implemented in March 2005. While it is right and proper that British workers enjoy the same employment rights as their colleagues in Europe, the legislation has major implications for the industry in terms of human and financial resources. Initial reports estimate that an additional 60,000 drivers will be required to accommodate that new legislation. That could be a window of opportunity for the industry to become more representative of the communities that it serves by recruiting more women and ethnic minority workers. Currently, a vast proportion of lorry drivers are white middle-aged males.

The Minister will be aware of consultation between his Department and representatives of the industry on the implementation of the working time directive. I would like an update on where the consultations stand and when the consultative document will be published. I would welcome a clear definition of what constitutes a working day for the British worker. Will waiting time be calculated as being part of the working day?

I hope that I have reflected accurately the views and concerns of those who depend on the transport industry for their living. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say on the issues that I have raised.

Before I call the next Member to speak, I should say that there can sometimes be confusion about whether the person in the Chair should be called by name or addressed as Mr. Deputy Speaker. Some are Deputy Speakers, some are not—I am one of the "are nots". Addressing Deputy Speakers wrongly is not a capital offence, but those who are Deputy Speakers might get very upset while those who are not should be addressed by name. My surname will suffice.

If no other Member wishes to speak, we can move on to the Front-Bench contributions. I call Dr. Cable.

I congratulate the hon. Member for West Renfrewshire (Jim Sheridan) on choosing the subject of today's debate. I regret that more Members have not taken advantage of the opportunity to participate, because it affects all our constituents. After the summer of discontent three years ago, none of us is likely to forget the importance of the road haulage industry; it has a key role in the national infrastructure.

I shall pick up on two of the key themes mentioned by the hon. Gentleman in his introductory presentation, and make a few other points. I start by talking about tax, a highly emotive matter that has dominated the national agenda in recent years. Recent diesel differentials have remained extremely large. The hon. Gentleman spoke about the matter in broad terms, but I can tell the Chamber that the United Kingdom diesel rate after tax is 81p a litre, whereas, in countries where lorries are loaded before they come to the UK, the rate is different. In Belgium, it is 49p; and in France, it is 57p.

The enormous differential presents two problems. The first, described by the hon. Gentleman, is that it affects the competitiveness of UK operators, because their basic input fuel is bought at a much higher price than that of their continental competitors. The second problem is the adverse effect on the UK economy as a whole. Large numbers of continental operators use British roads, and the heavier ones inflict serious damage on our roads. Maintenance costs are therefore higher, but those lorry owners make no contribution to our costs through their tax payments. Everyone accepts that that is fundamentally wrong and the problem needs to be addressed.

There is broad consensus on the way forward, and the various statements that the Government made in the Budget and, more recently, in May seem an entirely sensible way of dealing with the problem. All three parties accept the need for a road-user charge that should apply equally to foreign and British users. The charge should be applied in such a way that it does not involve additional costs for UK operators—the money should be rebated through either vehicle excise duty or fuel duty—but is paid by continental operators. That would go some way to levelling the playing field and providing a more rational economic basis for taxation.

The Government are right to have proposed a distance-based charge rather than a time-based one. That will give them the opportunity to apply charges that bear some relation to the environmental and social costs. The proposal currently applies to off-motorway as well as motorway use, and it would permit higher charges on the bigger, more damaging vehicles. That seems a sensible structure.

I would like the Minister to clarify two points. First, although I may have misunderstood the situation, I believe that there are difficulties in making the UK proposals compatible with EU regulation, so I want to check that that is not a problem. Secondly, there is some concern in the industry that the new distance-based charge, which is desirable in principle, may be difficult to apply because of the black-box technology required. The industry has asked the Government to help by setting standards. That would speed up the development of the necessary technology, which would not merely take the tachograph measurements but incorporate equipment for the new road charge and other technology to improve the performance of the UK industry. It would be useful to know how far advanced we are with that technology.

The second key issue raised by the hon. Member for West Renfrewshire was working conditions, including working time, which are important for two reasons. First, although people have different views about tough working standards and the extent to which they should be applied, it has been accepted for decades that road haulage is a special case because safety is an issue not simply for the employees, important though that is, but for the public. There have to be rigorous standards and they have to be enforced. Obviously, we are in favour of that.

The hon. Member for Glasgow, Shettleston (Mr. Marshall) rightly pointed out the second way in which road haulage is a special case. We are dealing not only with working conditions in the UK, which are subject to British rules, but with journeys that cross many borders. Standards across the European Union must therefore be consistent; otherwise they will not be enforced. There will be abuse, standards will fall and safety will suffer, affecting all of us. Whatever people might think about the desirability of tough Europe-wide standards in general, they must, emphatically, apply in the case of road haulage. We would fully support such an approach.

There is no fundamental disagreement about that point. There must be strong standards to maintain safety, and the approach used must involve the working time directive. The key point is that that will lead to a substantial need for additional manpower—if hours are reduced, more people are needed to do the same work—so there is a big recruitment issue, which means that there is also a training issue. Although we hear a great deal about the need for more plumbers and electricians, we do not often hear about the need for more long-distance lorry drivers. There needs to be more emphasis on vocational training to address the issue of labour supply. Has the Minister any views about that, and is there any industry-wide initiative comparable to that in the building industry, such as a levy-based system that would enable training needs to be met?

My final point is that I have read through the literature of the Road Haulage Association, which has a legitimate interest in its members. However, if we are considering freight as a whole, as represented by the Freight Transport Association, there is a bigger picture. Freight does not have to be carried by lorries. We know the sad story of the Post Office, which goes back some years. Probably the biggest planning application that ever confronted my constituency was a proposal to convert a big railway marshalling yard, the so-called Feltham marshalling yard, into a sorting office linked to road haulage, with the consequent abandonment of the rail link. Enormous social costs are being paid as a result of what was no doubt a correct commercial calculation by the Post Office. That decision has been replicated many times. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister about the Post Office's current role in freight, and about any support for the rail freight initiative through the Strategic Rail Authority.

I thank the hon. Member for West Renfrewshire for having initiated this important debate. We discovered three years ago that a great deal of complacency had set in with regard to the road haulage industry. That exploded in a politically damaging way through the blockades, so it is important to keep a close eye on the issues in the industry to ensure that that does not happen again.

Likewise, I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow, Shettleston (Mr Marshall) on initiating the debate. It is a great disappointment to many of us that there have not been more participants because it is an important subject, which goes to the heart of the British economy.

On a point of clarification, Mr. Conway. I am not from Glasgow, Shettleston; I am from West Renfrewshire.

I do apologise to the hon. Gentleman. I knew that he was from somewhere up north but I am sorry that I got his title wrong. That does not alter the fact that I congratulate him on introducing the debate.

If I were to sit down immediately we would have an hour to hear from the Minister on Government policy on the issue. I begin by asking the Minister why he, and not his hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson), is taking part in the debate. One of the most constructive outcomes of the fuel dispute three years ago was the emergence of the road haulage forum. That forum meets regularly and, as I understand it, the Government's representative from the Department for Transport is none other than the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport—indeed, he was at a forum meeting earlier this month. He is the key Transport Minister, dealing on a day-to-day basis with road haulage, so surely he should be present to demonstrate the importance of the issues raised in the debate and respond to them. I fear that, worthy as the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty), is, as road haulage is not his responsibility he may say that he does not have the necessary answers to questions that have been and will be raised.

The hon. Member for West Renfrewshire (Jim Sheridan) referred to unfair levels of fuel tax. It is worth putting on the record the front page of the September 2003 edition of Roadway, the magazine of the Road Haulage Association. Inside a black border is a statement that says:

"Public Wealth Warning. Chancellor, you threatened to raise fuel duty on October 1, 2003. Please think again, DON'T DO IT! All EU countries must pay the world rate for oil. Only the UK chooses to levy penal rates of duty. That puts transport costs up and makes this country less competitive. It gives foreign hauliers operating in the UK a grotesquely unfair advantage. In the interests of a dynamic manufacturing and service based economy, you should be REDUCING fuel duty for road transport."

I hope that the Minister will clarify the situation concerning that threatened increase in fuel tax. When the Chancellor introduced his Budget, he said that he would not introduce an increase in fuel duty because of the instability in world fuel prices. At that stage, the world price of oil was about $27 a barrel, and it is now about $28 a barrel. The price is higher than it was, and there is clearly a lot of volatility in supply. Therefore, I am surprised that the Chancellor has not made a statement to clarify his intentions for a mid-year increase in fuel duty.

I hope that the Minister will put that omission right today because, as we know, the House rises tomorrow and will not reconvene until after 1 October. It is important to clarify the Government's approach, particularly for everyone involved in the road haulage industry. As I understand it, if there were an inflation-linked increase in duty, the road haulage industry alone would be burdened with an additional £172 million of costs each year. That is a large sum of money.

We heard today on the radio that the Government are making much of spending £50 million on trying to reduce congestion on our roads by giving schools incentives to encourage children to walk and cycle to school. Some £50 million is going to that, but at a stroke another £172 million could come from the road haulage industry alone in the next few weeks—an industry which is already paying the highest fuel taxes in Europe. I hope that the Minister will respond to that concern in the substantial time that will be available to him.

The second issue that the hon. Member for West Renfrewshire emphasised was concern about the working time directive. He asked for clarification from the Minister as to whether working time would include rest time that is part of the working day. That is a pertinent point, particularly with regard to a recent highly publicised judgment in the European Court that made it clear that, for the purposes of the working time directive, doctors are deemed to be working when they are on call. If that applies to lorry drivers, who are, in a sense, on call or waiting by their lorries while they are being unloaded, the already oppressive proposal contained in the directive would have an even greater impact on the competitiveness of our industry.

At the meeting of the road haulage forum to which I referred, both the Freight Transport Adjuster and the R.HA raised that issue. A report of that meeting says that the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport, wanted to be provided with some more information. I am surprised that he needed any more information, because the Centre for Economic and Business Research produced a formidable report in February this year for the RHA, which I am sure the Minister must have read if he is seriously interested in the issues. That report spelled out in the starkest terms not only that there would be a need for 60,000 additional drivers, as the hon. Member for West Renfrewshire mentioned, but that major additional costs to the UK economy would result directly from the working time directive.

The report also said that there would be a significant increase in congestion, which would largely be due to the difficulties of moving freight at night. Under the proposals, anyone working during the core period for night work, which is described as a four-hour period between midnight and 7 am, will be limited to working a maximum of 10 hours. That is likely to make it less economic for hauliers to use the opportunity presented by transport at night on roads that are less congested, and they will be forced to use the roads during peak times and in the working day to a greater extent than they do now.

Against the background that the hon. Gentleman has described—he has claimed that there should be parity with European legislation on fuel costs and so on, and that British hauliers should enjoy the same level of fuel tax as our European partners—will he state clearly whether a Tory Administration would implement the working time directive for transport workers and afford them the same rights as their European colleagues?

Unfortunately, as I think the hon. Gentleman realises, we as a Parliament have lost a lot of our sovereignty over such issues. If our power to opt out of that directive is not exercised now and the Government have already either lost or not fought the argument, the options open to an incoming Government will be restricted.

There is another example of that, which concerns speed limiters, and I hope that the Minister can address the issue. As I understand it, the European Commission has decided that the maximum speed for speed limiters for heavy goods vehicles should be reduced from 100 to 90 kph. The British representative in the discussions voted against the proposal, but it was carried by other European Union countries. As a result, it will now be imposed on the people of this country against our will.

That is another unacceptable example of how we are finding our sovereignty and power to decide being undermined by the European Union. The hon. Member for West Renfrewshire says that we are in favour of harmonisation, but I have said only that I am in favour of this Government taking action to remove the burden on our industry of uncompetitive taxes. We believe in the freedom of individual countries to decide their own tax rates and regulatory regimes in accordance with the principles of sovereignty, but that is being constantly undermined by the European Union.

It is inconsistent for the hon. Gentleman to argue that he is concerned about the working time directive without looking at the structure underlying such directives. That structure makes the European Union less competitive in global markets and, in particular, undermines the most enterprising parts of the European Union, especially the United Kingdom, which of course includes Scotland.

What has happened so far with the latest part of the working time directive? The original Labour party line was that it would never want the directive extended to the transport sector, but now we see that it will be extended. Labour has done nothing effective to resist it, and we are left with only the residual issue of the extent to which we can introduce regulations that are less oppressive in this country than elsewhere. The absurd result is that lorries will not be able to use the relatively empty roads at night, because their drivers would break the ludicrous regulations, which will add to congestion during the day.

The Minister should consider the CEBR report, which contains horrendous figures about the cost to the British economy of the working time directive, which is due to come into effect next year. It estimates that there could be a loss of £706 million from our GDP and an addition to both the retail prices index and base rates, simply as a result of that particular provision.

What will the directive achieve? Regulations on drivers' hours already exist, and there is no need to extend them and incorporate the working time directive. Working time has never been directly linked to health and safety, which we are all concerned about, but the European Commission has used the notion of health and safety as a ruse to introduce greater controls over individuals' lives. Unlike other parts of the working time directive, which have been introduced in other sectors, there is no opt-out for the haulage sector, which is a direct affront to the rights of individuals to work. There is a well-established right to work campaign in the United States, and I envisage such campaigns being replicated soon in this country if the European Union continues to impose mindless regulations on our workers.

Putting aside employee rights in the working time directive and employers' potential profitability, does the hon. Gentleman accept that drivers in Britain, whether British or foreign, regularly work some 60 to 70 hours, driving 40 or 60-tonne lorries through our communities? Does not that represent a threat to the safety of the British public?

Frankly, I do not believe that such a threat is borne out by the evidence. If the hon. Gentleman were to look at the statistics, he would find that the greatest incidence of accidents occurs shortly after people come on their shift. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is arguing in favour of the rigidities that will be imposed by the working time directive, but the concerns that he expresses are not borne out by the statistics. I have always been concerned about health and safety because I have always wanted health and safety rules to be based on facts and evidence rather than on supposition. The facts and evidence show that the greatest incidence of accidents involving drivers on the roads occurs soon after they start their shift, and the same is true of accidents at the workplace. That may be counter-intuitive; nevertheless, it is supported by evidence, which should drive our policy making.

I apologise for pushing the point, but the hon. Gentleman quotes statistics and facts. Could he advise us where they come from?

I do not have the documents before me at the moment. However, the hon. Gentleman may know that I have taken an interest in health and safety for a very long time and was privileged to serve as a member of the Health and Safety Commission for four or five years. The statistics are well established. I also recall that they were referred to during the RHA convention earlier this year, which I had the privilege of attending. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to avail himself of the information, I am sure that he will be able to do so using the facilities of the House of Commons Library. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the interest he shows in ensuring that policy making in this country is based on evidence rather than the prejudice that we come up against so often from the European Union.

In the time that remains, I wish to ask the Minister to deal with some of the other issues, perhaps finally finishing with the working time directive. When will the consultation process on it be complete? There is a lot of concern from those in the industry that they are being kept in the dark. They know that the working time directive will operate from next year, but they do not know the detail. Surely, they should be told about that.

Will the Minister answer some questions about the road haulage modernisation fund, which is relevant to the need for more drivers—attracting people into the profession—and training? At the time of the fuel duties dispute, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced with a flourish that he would set up a £100 million road haulage modernisation fund. We now learn that only a very small percentage of the money has been spent. Indeed, it was not a ring-fenced, identifiable sum but simply a notional sum that could be drawn down in the event of sufficient bids being made that qualified for the money.

Despite all their best efforts, the people involved in the road haulage industry have found it extremely difficult to get access to the money in that fund. That is because the money in the fund is not ring-fenced but must be provided by the Department for Transport at the expense of some of its other priorities. The Department for Transport is extremely reluctant to make money available from that "fund", which is not even operating at all in Northern Ireland.

The Government should make an open declaration that when the Chancellor said that there was going to be £100 million for a road haulage modernisation fund he meant what he said. That money should be available for training until such time as the whole of that money has been exhausted. What is on the cards at the moment is that a very small proportion of that money will be used and it will not be available for training, which was the original intention. That is another example of the Government pulling the wool over the electorate's eyes, effectively deceiving the electorate and the road haulage industry.

On training, I ask the hon. Gentleman a genuine question from a point of ignorance. Other industries have to make significant investments in the training of their own people—I am thinking of my own background in engineering, where individuals and private companies have to make significant investment in training. From his vast knowledge of the RHA and the road haulage industry, will he tell me how much they invest in the training of their drivers?

I do not have access to that figure, but I do know—and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman accepts this—that the Government made it clear when they set up the road haulage modernisation fund that they wished the fund to be used largely, if not exclusively, to promote training to attract more people into the industry. That was the Government's intention—or at least, that was what the Government said that they intended to do. In reality, every time bids have been made to draw down money out of that fund for training, they have been resisted. Only a small proportion of the money has found its way into training a fresh generation of lorry drivers and hauliers. The industry is suffering from a relatively high average age of operative, and there is every good reason to encourage a new generation of younger people to become involved. That will not be possible if the Government do not release the money that they promised for the road haulage modernisation fund.

Has the Minister been able to get the information that was promised to the director general of the RHA at the recent meeting of the road haulage forum about the contrast in the number of continental hauliers being prosecuted for traffic offences in this country as opposed to the very high number of UK vehicles being stopped and being made subject to checks and prosecution? That is a cause of immense resentment among British lorry drivers, who are for the most part law-abiding. They find that they are being picked on when more than 10,000 foreign vehicles travelling on UK roads every day seem to be regarded by the enforcement authorities as too big a problem to address. From our own experience of driving on British roads we know of many examples of lorries with foreign number plates being driven in a way that falls far below the standards that we expect of our own road users, and they seem to be doing so with impunity. The Minister assured the RHA that he would look into that matter, and I should be grateful if the Minister present today will let us know the results that flowed from that.

There is also the movement of abnormal loads. From 1 October, which is not far away, regional police authorities will no longer be in a position to escort certain categories of load. The police expect operators to use self-escorting or private escorting for a great number of those movements. It is still not clear what the national guidelines for such movements are. Such things include escort vehicle specification, the qualifications or experience of attendants, and, most important, which loads can be moved under self-escort. The matter was raised at the meeting of the forum and I understand that the Minister himself was surprised that there were no guidelines in place. I ask the Minister present today to say whether those guidelines are now in place so that people involved in road haulage will know where they stand on the movement of abnormal loads from 1 October.

I hope that the Minister will take advantage of the 35 minutes or so that we have left to address the issues in detail and demonstrate to those present and to a much wider audience outside this place that the Government really are committed to supporting the British road haulage industry and to ensuring that it is internationally competitive and is not undermined by uncompetitive practices from the continent, aided and abetted by unfair burdens placed on it by taxation and regulation. If the Minister addresses those issues, I am sure that the low esteem in which the Government are held by most people involved in the road haulage industry may rise somewhat. I look forward to hearing the Minister's comments.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire (Jim Sheridan) on securing this important debate. He outlined the concerns of many in the road haulage industry with clarity and some force and cogency—his was not like the last contribution. I am grateful for this opportunity to discuss some of the details that he raised. If I have time, I may refer to some of the obtuse political points raised by the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope), but they are not terribly worthy in terms of a detailed and substantive discussion of the problems faced by the road haulage industry.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of road haulage to our economy. The freight and logistics sector accounts for about 4 per cent. of GDP and 3.5 per cent. of total employment, and the road haulage sector represents a sizeable proportion of that. However, as Members know, it is far more important than that in terms of its interconnectedness, its support for the rest of industry and the relaying of materials. It is a massively important industry.

Will the Minister give way?

No, not at the moment. I have just started, thanks very much.

Wider industry depends on efficient freight transport and to a great extent that is what it gets from the road transport sector. I say to the hon. Member for Christchurch that this is principally a Back Benchers' debate and I shall address the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire, as I said barely 30 seconds ago. If I have time, I will come on to some of the hon. Gentleman's more obtuse points, made between the anti-EU invective.

The road haulage industry is an important sector. The Government maintain a regular dialogue with the Road Haulage Association, especially through the road haulage forum and its sub-groups, so we are well aware of the concerns of its membership, which have been more than adequately articulated by my hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire. In many areas, we are working with the RHA and other parts of the industry to address the concerns.

Members know that it is not always appropriate for the Government to intervene, but we do have legitimate interests in how the industry operates. First and foremost, we want a safe industry. That requires rules and proper enforcement. The notion, which was alluded to by my hon. Friend, that a past member of the Health and Safety Commission should think that the working time directive has little to do with health and safety—that it is appropriate for lorry drivers, among others, to work however many hours they choose in a given week, taking larger and larger loads around the country—simply defies belief. The anti-EU rant got in the way of logic.

We will continue to work to ensure that where we regulate we do so proportionately. In some cases, such as the working time directive for road hauliers, regulation is established on an EU-wide basis, but the directive allows a degree of discretion in its detailed application.

My hon. Friend asked when we will consult on the implementation of the road transport directive for work. We aim to launch the consultation process and document by the turn of the month. In the context of the directive, he mentioned the need to recruit more drivers. We share the concern of the industry to broaden the recruitment base to include women and ethnic minorities, and we are working with the industry to achieve that.

The hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) asked what constitutes working time. The directive allows some flexibility on that point, but the issue is complex. Our definition of working time in the context of our derogation will be covered in the consultation. That consultation will be accompanied, as ever, by a regulatory impact assessment providing our assessment of the costs of implementation.

On what constitutes working time, mandatory breaks and periods of availability do not count as part of the driver's working time in the context raised by my hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire. The consultation will begin at the turn of the month and a degree of leeway and flexibility will be reflected in those consultation papers.

There are other areas where we are keen to work on a voluntary basis with the industry, as our objectives complement each other: haulage companies want to maximise profits; we want to see safe operators offering good-value services with minimum damage to the environment. That is consistent with the thinking behind the road haulage modernisation fund, which is devolved throughout the United Kingdom and was announced by the Chancellor in November 2000. The fund will close in 2004. Take-up has not been what he hoped for—far from it—but the scheme has achieved some valuable results.

The hon. Member for Christchurch dwelt on the paucity of take-up, but he did not dwell on the substance of that take-up, whether it is clean-up, fuel economy advisers, the modernising operator scheme pilots or enforcement in Great Britain. Limited funds have been spent on training schemes, but that needs to be seen in the light of other projects—as he well knows, given the answer that he received to a parliamentary question. The driver development scheme, the driver simulator project, the respect for people scheme, the careers website and the modernising operator scheme have been established and there is clearly a lot more to do.

If the scheme is so worth while, why are the Government not carrying on with it until the whole £100 million guaranteed by the Chancellor has been spent?

The scheme has been proved effective and successful in substance in those areas where it has been taken up, but given that it is coming to the natural end of its initial three years it must be reviewed in the pot, along with all other priorities, as a draw on public funds. There was not £100 million for ever; there was £100 million to respond to the needs of the industry. It was always subject to take-up. So, the notion put about by the hon. Gentleman, among others, that there has been only such-and-such a take-up, which means that all the rest is available for some other purpose, is wrong. He knows that it is wrong, but it makes a nice little political point for him, along with all the other obtuse political points that he makes.

There will be a review of the processes that have worked and of the efficacy or otherwise of the fund in all its assorted parts, and we will move forward. Take-up has been less than anticipated, not least because of the working time directive. More generally, there needs to be a clear examination and review of recruitment and retention issues and training in the industry. I must say that, at least in part, the implementation of the working time directive may attract to the industry people who have not previously found it appealing.

The fund has delivered some valuable results. For example, we have funded a driver development project to train drivers to drive in a safer and more fuel-efficient way. We are training not only drivers but trainers, who will hopefully embed best practice in the industry. Early results suggest that some drivers can reduce their fuel consumption by more than 10 per cent. If an average lorry consumes £25,000 of fuel each year, such a reduction represents a significant saving, which will go straight to a company's bottom line. It also means a reduction in damaging emissions.

We are funding a project to help companies adopt best practice in their operations. Some 3,000 seminars, which are backed up by our ongoing research programme, are being run around the country to help haulage companies understand that simple steps can improve fuel efficiency. For example, setting the right gap between the cab and the trailer improves aerodynamics and can save up to 4 per cent. on the fuel bill. The modernisation fund also supports the fitting of particulate traps, which have so far been installed on 600 vehicles.

We support training initiatives to encourage young people into the profession. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire said, we share the industry's desire to broaden the recruitment base beyond the traditional white male section of the community. The Government have been active, but the industry must also play its part. Many hauliers, especially the bigger ones, have made their operations more efficient and the challenge, as in other industries, is for small and medium-sized companies to do the same.

We understand that there are resource constraints. In the smallest companies, the owner is invariably also a driver who will not want to spend all evening staring at figures after a day on the road, but the biggest gains, both for the industry and for the wider community, can be made in such companies. We continue to put a lot of effort into getting the message across. We also continue to encourage everyone in the industry to take advantage of the help that is still available.

My hon. Friend also raised the question of fuel duties. As he said, it is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. Unless I missed it, I did not hear an articulation of current Conservative policy on fuel duty during the deliberations of the hon. Member for Christchurch, but I am happy to give way if he wants to elaborate. He knows that Treasury Ministers attend the road haulage forum and that they are more than aware of the industry's concerns. It is not for me to comment further, not because the matter is the responsibility of the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson), but because I do not job share and have a job as a Treasury Minister as well as being a Transport Minister.

We accept that a threat hangs over the haulage industry. If the Government believe in joined-up government, they should immediately clarify the situation. The Minister is a member of a supposedly joined-up Government. If he cannot tell us whether the answer is yes or no, can he tell us when an announcement will be made?

What I can do is reinforce what the Chancellor said at the last Budget—the hon. Gentleman is more than aware of this. There will be an announcement in October, so, given that we are barely halfway through September, he is being slightly premature. The announcement will be made by the Chancellor, not by a Transport Minister, and funnily enough October means October.

Given where we were in April, the Chancellor felt that it was not appropriate to consider such matters, not least in view of the international context. Rather than making a decision then, he left it until October, which is the normal time at which we return to do business. It is not in anyone's interest for him to rush between now and 1 October to get a decision, whatever it may be, into the public domain, given that we return, as I understand it, on 18 October. That more than fulfils the Chancellor's obligation, as he said that he would make a further statement in October. [Interruption.] That was probably the most obtuse of all the hon. Gentleman's points, but if he wishes to persist I will give way by all means.

I am grateful to the Minister for that. Is he saying that the Chancellor will make his announcement to the House of Commons after it returns in October, rather than between 1 October and when the House returns?

I am saying that how and when my right hon. Friend the Chancellor makes that announcement is entirely a matter for him. I was referring only to the hon. Gentleman's point that because my right hon. Friend referred to October in the Budget there has to be urgency between now and 1 October to determine the matter. That is not the case at all, as the hon. Gentleman well knows. My right hon. Friend will make whatever statement he chooses, in the context of his April statement on fuel duties, in October. Given the Government's integrity and enormous respect for the House of Commons, I do not doubt that the House will be party, through the appropriate channels, to such an announcement or statement. That is the end of my role in the matter.

I am sad to say to my hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire that I cannot offer any comment on the terms under which the oil companies supply fuel to hauliers, although I am concerned about the anecdotes that he has relayed today. I will ensure that they are relayed to Ministers from the Department of Trade and Industry, who are more appropriate to respond.

I welcome my hon. Friend's support for our plans to introduce lorry road-user charges. As he said, that will ensure that all hauliers of whatever nationality pay their fair share towards the cost of using our roads. We have already made it clear that the new scheme will be cost neutral for the UK haulage industry as a whole, as there will be an offsetting reduction in fuel duties. The hon. Member for Twickenham asked about the compatibility of lorry road-user charges with European Union legislation. The European Commission has just proposed changes to the rules that govern tolls and charges for lorries. Its proposals are broadly compatible with what we want to do, but we shall work during the coming months to negotiate a satisfactory outcome between the two. I understand that there are no deal breakers, to use the vernacular. We just need to arrive at a position of compatibility.

The hon. Gentleman asked how the technology is developing. Details of what technology will be used to operate and manage the charging scheme still need to be worked out in partnership with the private sector, which has the expertise to design the equipment. The technology will probably involve a combination of satellite positioning and mobile communications systems. Measures to ensure confidentiality and to combat fraud and evasion will also need to be developed, as he suggested.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire asked whether the charging could be introduced before 2006. I am sorry to disappoint him and the haulage industry, but 2006 is probably the earliest date for introduction, given the complexity of the project and the technology behind it. We want to get it right from the start, rather than introduce it in a hurry, and that takes time.

From the Conservative Front Bench, we have had no policy on fuel taxation, no apparent policy on the working time directive other than to recognise that it has absolutely nothing to do with health and safety, and no real policy that I could discern on lorry road-user charging. We did have almost a condemnation of every police force in the country—they are somehow all abusing their enforcement powers over offences committed by all these foreign lorry drivers who are far more prone to getting away with offences on our roads than British lorry drivers. I know that there is some exasperation in the industry with that, but not in such sweeping terms.

Concerns have been expressed and articulated by the RHA, but to couch them in quite the terms that the hon. Member for Christchurch did is demeaning to him, if I may say so, as is his rant against various aspects of anything remotely European. We have come to expect such rants but, unlike the expression of concern by my hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire, this one did not put in context the real concerns of the RHA with any credit to the hon. Gentleman.

I listened keenly to my hon. Friend when he discussed the issues concerning the haulage industry, and I congratulate him again on securing this important debate. In conclusion—

I thank the Minister for giving way, because, obviously, another quarter of an hour is available if he wants to say more about the Government's view of the road haulage industry.

On vehicle stoppages, the Minister has not explained why he is replying to this debate instead of his colleague the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport, who serves on the freight forum. At that meeting, that Minister seemed to be concerned about the differential enforcement of the regulations. Today, this Minister seems to be dismissing that as anti-European invective, which it is not. There is a question whether there should be consistent and even enforcement. Will the Minister say how far his investigations have gone in trying to get to the bottom of the matter?

The first thing the hon. Gentleman should not do is put words in my mouth. What I characterised as anti-European invective was how he pursued and articulated the very real concerns—as I think I said on at least two occasions—of the industry, which my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport is taking seriously and considering in some detail. The concerns expressed by the industry do not fall in the context of the anti-European invective that characterised the speech of the hon. Member for Christchurch today. That is what I clearly said. I did not dismiss or belittle the real concerns of the industry. I said that it will not have a particularly useful or articulate champion in the hon. Gentleman if he constantly pursues the matter with anti-European invective, as he does and which anyone who reads the record will see clearly.

I say again to my hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire and colleagues who have had to leave that the substance and manner of their raising of the issue are to their credit.

Will the Minister give way?

Once more, and once only.

I am grateful to the Minister. In the time remaining, will he address the issue of speed limiters and the EU's proposal to reduce the maximum speed for lorries with speed limiters? Will he explain the Government's approach to that, because I understand that they voted against the proposal? Why did they fail to carry the day and the argument?

That is a fair point, but I am unable to deal with it. However, I shall ensure that my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport writes to the hon. Gentleman about the matter. I am more than happy to say that I cannot respond and the hon. Gentleman may use whatever political guile he wants to make something of that, as he is trying to do about my presence here instead of my hon. Friend.

The way in which the issue has been raised is important and I assure my hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrewshire that I shall maintain a keen interest in the matter, as will my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport on the matters to which I cannot respond. I am heartened by the 10-year plan and the overall thrust of the Government's transport policy. The FTA said in Freight magazine that it

"will continue to monitor the government's progress in keeping to its promises. While it is gratifying that it is at last beginning to take some of the industry's concerns on board, there is a long way to go before the infrastructure situation can be stabilised, let alone any long term improvements."

I agree with that. In the context of all that we are seeking to do on transport policy for a vibrant and successful haulage industry, we need to tackle the neglect, despair and disinvestment in the overall transport infrastructure. That is what we are trying to do in the 10-year plan. I am grateful that the FTA welcomes that in some regards, although I am not surprised that such a significant body maintains a watching brief over us in terms of broad transport policy and, specifically, the road haulage industry.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." So begins one of the greatest works in English literature. In her first sentence, Jane Austen plays on the uncomfortable truth that the eligibility of a future wife or husband depends not only on their character, sense of humour and facial symmetry but also on what material comforts and prospects will result from the marriage.

That "universal truth" has not changed during the past 200 years. All other things being equal, the rich and well connected will rarely lack for suitors. Wealth is, of course, relative and the poverty of 18th-century Britain no longer exists in the United Kingdom. However, it is still seen and experienced in much of the world, and a British citizen or a person with indefinite leave to remain in Britain, whatever his or her other qualities, has a significantly enhanced attraction as a marriage partner for those in many other countries.

I represent the diverse and cosmopolitan constituency of Cardiff, Central, which has two universities and a significant Pakistani and Bangladeshi population. Over the past 11 years I have helped hundreds of constituents to obtain visas for their foreign spouses and, as far as I am aware, most of those marriages have been successful. However, some of them are not, and evidence from my constituency suggests that that proportion is increasing.

The typical case that comes to my surgery is that of a young Asian constituent accompanied by one or more senior male members of his or her family. When the foreign spouse has obtained their visa I usually hear no more of the case. However, in an increasing number of instances, the young British Asian comes to see me several months later to complain about the behaviour of their spouse and to ask me to get them sent back. Such complaints are almost always made by young women, who usually come to the surgery alone or accompanied by a sister or friend. Often the young woman will be very anxious that other older members of her family are not informed of the complaint.

My experience suggests that in those cases there is great social pressure on many young Asians to agree to foreign marriages and that the foreign spouse's interest in the marriage is often primarily in gaining access to Britain.

Two recent cases have crystallised my concerns about how the system is working. I cannot mention any names but shall give the specifics of those cases.

Mr. S, whom I know quite well, and his daughter came to see me last year to ask my help in getting his prospective son-in-law into the country. I gave what help I could. However, two months after the marriage the son-in-law absconded. That led to the break-up of Mr. S's family, as the daughter blamed his advice and left home. Somewhat unusually, Mr. S was racked with guilt over his part in the matter and resolved to track down the errant son-in law. He went to India to see the man's family, and through them he eventually tracked him down to an address in London. He phoned the immigration and nationality directorate of the Home Office and told the directorate where the man was. However, nothing seemed to happen, so he went to the nearest police station. The police, contrary to what they should do, looked up the errant son-in-law in their files, and said that they had no information on his immigration status. They had, however, arrested him and he had been prosecuted for shoplifting. Mr. S was perplexed and at a loss to know how the system was supposed to work when the police and the immigration department seemed to have no contact with each other and no one seemed to care that this man, with the marriage a failure, was now in the country—he believed, illegally.

On behalf of Mr. S, I wrote to the Home Secretary, who replied that the issue of whether his marriage persisted would not be pertinent until the end of the probationary period. As that period was now two years, the Home Office was saying, in effect, that it would not care if the marriage had broken down until 22 months after it had done so, and that this man would be in this country legally until then. I was at a loss to explain to Mr. S how this was a sensible way of running a visa system.

The second case is more complicated and involves two families: the J family from Cardiff, with one brother, Mr. J, and two sisters, Ms J1 and Ms J2; and the Y family from Pakistan, with one brother, Mr. Y1, a sister, Ms Y, and a cousin, Mr. Y2. The three members of the J family married the three members of the Y family. All those marriages broke down acrimoniously, and all but one of those people contacted me independently of each other.

Ms Jl came to me complaining of domestic violence and saying that her husband, Mr. Yl, should be deported. Mr. J complained that Ms Y had married him only for immigration purposes and should be deported. Ms J2 complained to me that her husband should also be deported. However, Mr. Y1 and Ms Y—although not Mr. Y2, who, as far as know, is still in the country illegally—obtained indefinite leave to remain. Both have been back to see me asking me to help them to marry new people from Pakistan and bring them into this country.

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this very difficult subject, which I know takes some courage. In many of the cases that are referred to me, the person who entered the country for permanent settlement as a spouse has left his wife within days of receiving indefinite leave to remain, and has attempted to obtain a separation or a divorce. Within weeks, that person has often applied to act as a sponsor for bringing in another wife—usually, in my constituency, from Pakistan. In the case of someone who has entered the country as a spouse in order to be granted permanent settlement and has obtained indefinite leave to remain, I suggest that the law could be changed so that he cannot act as a sponsor until he has received citizenship. If it could, the person would have to wait for another three years before acting as a sponsor. That would not entirely stop the abuse of our immigration laws, about which we are hearing, but it might deter a few young men from such action.

The point made by my hon. Friend relates precisely to members of the Y family, who, I am told, have successfully brought new spouses into the country.

This complicated position is extraordinarily difficult to disentangle. I would not be surprised if you were rather confused at the moment, Mr. Conway. The situation is confusing—all the more so because I owe a duty of confidentiality to each of these people and cannot discuss each person's case with any of the others. Whenever I write to the immigration department to inquire about the immigration status of one or another of the spouses, it refuses to answer due to its code of practice on Government information. It is therefore very difficult to understand exactly what has happened.

The cases highlight a number of problems in the system. There is no periodic checking of whether marriages persist during the probationary period, and even when the individuals inform the department that their marriages have broken down, there is no action until the end of the probationary period. There are no checks at the end of the probationary period to ensure that the marriage has persisted, unless there is either an application for leave to remain or a complaint. Many people are just allowed to disappear, and no effort seems to be made to find them. There is no joined-up information sharing on such matters between different agencies, including the police. There is no control on people doing the bare minimum to obtain indefinite leave to remain, divorcing and immediately applying to have spouses come from foreign countries to join them, which was the very point that my hon. Friend has made. Although the point is sensitive, there are insufficient safeguards to ensure that young girls in this country know what they are doing when they enter marriages with men from abroad, and that they are not coming under undue family pressure.

I wrote to the Minister in June with my concern over those cases, and made a number of proposals. I suggested that a computer-generated list of expiring visas could be produced, and letters sent to the sponsor to check whether the marriage subsists and ask whether they will support an application for the spouse to stay. If not, measures can be taken to ensure that the person is sent home. Consideration should also be given to raising the minimum age for a sponsor to 21, in order to encourage more mature relationships, where pressure from families would play a smaller part, to ensure that the sponsor had more control over the choice of partner, and to encourage more marriages between families residing in Britain between people of similar upbringing. Also, I believe that either there should be some sort of delay between the granting of indefinite leave to remain and a person being able to sponsor a new spouse, or only British citizens should be able to sponsor spouses.

In August I wrote to the Department, and I received a reply from the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart). The only argument against my proposals that she could muster was that checking marriages would put more pressure on non-genuine applicants, who might in turn pressurise their sponsors to go along with their proposals, thus perhaps increasing domestic violence. However, I counter that by pointing out that since checking marriages would reduce and shorten the number of sham marriages, the argument is not convincing.

Such difficult and sensitive issues are, for understandable reasons, rarely discussed openly in public, or even within the families and communities concerned; but I have seen too many distraught and heartbroken young constituents in my surgeries to keep quiet about the situation any longer.

First, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, Central (Mr. Jones) for raising the issue and for using the opportunity of an Adjournment debate to do so. I also thank both him and my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mrs. Cryer) for the work that they have done on the topic. She talked about courage, and both my hon. Friends, with sizable populations of minority ethnic groups in their constituencies, are raising some important but difficult issues; I am grateful to them for doing so.

The whole question of how we enforce the law relating to potential abuse in marriage cases is at the heart of the issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, Central raised today, together with the question of what other measures the Government might take to crack down on that route for abuse of the immigration system. I should like at the outset to say something about what we are doing on enforcement at the moment. First, as my hon. Friends know, where a person marries after the commencement of enforcement action, for example, as an illegal entrant, an overstayer or a deportee, we seek to enforce their removal. Secondly, as a general rule, where a person who is liable to enforcement action has a genuine and subsisting marriage to a settled spouse that existed for two years before any enforcement action was taken and where it is unreasonable for the spouse to accompany their partner on removal, we would grant a period of leave. That discretionary leave is now made up of three blocks of two years, with indefinite leave to remain not being granted until the end of a six-year probation period. That restricts the benefits for people who enter, or try to enter, into a sham marriage, because it requires couples to show after two, four and six years that the marriage subsists.

Thirdly, in the immigration service there are teams with the task of investigating the links, which frequently exist, between organised crime, identity fraud and multiple marriages. As my hon. Friends have implied, such links are an attempt at very big business.

Will my hon. Friend deal with other sham marriages that are entirely fraudulent, including one that I have drawn to her attention involving a constituent of mine, who married a woman whom he met at the wedding ceremony? The sum of £14,000 changed hands a year after the marriage. The woman had been refused admission to, or been deported from, this country five times. A racket is being run in which brides, nearly all from eastern Europe, are advertised freely on the internet. Agents, mainly solicitors, are used to ensure that the money changes hands. It is a criminal activity.

It certainly is. I cannot comment on the particular case that my hon. Friend has raised, but I am happy to give him information about the work being carried out jointly by the Passport and Records Agency, the immigration service and the police. A considerable number of quite big busts have happened, with many people being arrested at once, as the result of long-term investigations in which false identities are picked up and traced back to identify those engaged in the sort of business that my hon. Friend described. I do not know whether the case that he cited was affected by one of those investigations, but activity is certainly under way to break those networks.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, Central raised a couple of examples that clearly suggested that we could do more about enforcement and, particularly in relation to his first example, inter-agency cooperation. I do not find those instances acceptable; I am happy to say publicly that, notwithstanding the many calls on the enforcement teams, if information is put forward about a particular case, and the person in question has been prosecuted for an offence, we should be able to act on it. I shall certainly take up the issue.

My hon. Friend raised a second case, about the J and Y families, which was more about the potential organised abuse of the system. I and my officials are grateful for the information that he has given us. There is a suggestion of anomalies, at least, at this stage, and an investigation is now being carried out.

I should like to give my hon. Friend an example of some of the work that is being done.

I know that it is difficult to do so, but will my hon. Friend find a way to provide MPs with information about a person's immigration status when they request it, having received relevant information from someone else? As long as they give guarantees that they will not disclose the information to third parties, MPs should be given it; otherwise, it is impossible for them to understand whether they are being lied to, and whether the Department is carrying out its duty effectively.

I understand the dilemma for my colleagues, and I hate signing the letters in question. I do not know whether it will be of any comfort to my hon. Friend to know that I also receive them. When I take up cases and another Minister replies to me, I am told the same. I have looked into the matter, but there are great difficulties: unless we can guarantee confidentiality there is a prospect that Ministers or officials could be subject to judicial review in the courts. It is not only a code of practice that defines the parameters of the information that we can give out, but human rights legislation, and a range of other legislation, by which we are bound. I understand the point that he made, and I will look into it again.

I will give an example of a case involving an immigration service visit to a British spouse to investigate a potential case of obtaining indefinite leave to remain by deception. Our officials' suspicions were aroused when an immigration officer recognised the family name of a British spouse whose sister was being investigated for contracting two marriages. Further checks were made with the assistance of the marriage section of the Office for National Statistics. An in-depth, two-year investigation took place, which, as I implied earlier, involved a lot of tracking and careful collection of evidence. Finally, the two sisters were prosecuted for marrying 29 foreign nationals between them. They were convicted of bigamy and defrauding the Secretary of State, and received prison sentences of three and two years respectively. Some of the foreign spouses had become naturalised citizens during the investigation, but others were trapped on the immigration service's computerised warning system and were removed as people who had been granted leave to remain by deception.

There will always be cases in which we could have done more, but I assure colleagues that there are also cases in which we vigorously pursue enforcement. We try to focus on cases, such as the one that I described, in which we can achieve a big result in cutting through an organised practice that is highly abusive of the immigration system.

My hon. Friends put forward proposals to which I want to refer. I was asked whether, in the case of those who are given indefinite leave to remain as a spouse, we could delay or require them to have citizenship before they could sponsor other people entering as potential or actual marriage partners. I will investigate, although I will no doubt be told, as I am often told, that such proposals are contrary to the right to human life under article 8 of the European convention on human rights. None the less, I will investigate those possibilities because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley rightly said, they might not stop abuse but they would be a deterrent and a block in the system.

I have replied to the confidentiality issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, Central, but he also raised the possibility of periodically, or at the end of the period of probationary leave, checking everyone who has obtained leave on a temporary basis to remain as a spouse. He has suggested before that we might be able to check using computerised identification of applications. I share his reaction to arguments that that could criticise genuine marriages and lead to domestic violence—I do not think that that would happen.

However, there are practical problems with the current capacity of information technology and the scale of the enterprise. If possible, we would like to use the same system to check that those on student visas and other temporary forms of application, not just relating to marriage, were returning, but there are practical problems with that. Although we are updating the computer system for marriages, we cannot put a "bring forward date" of two years on a particular case—the system does not have that capacity. We can try to address that, but we cannot do so at the moment within the limits of the technology. There are also other practical difficulties about the scale of that exercise.

As we try to strengthen our response to abuse of the immigration system—and the related issues of illegal entry and working—an identity card system for foreign and British nationals could be helpful. That would enable us to have an embarkation control, which would be effective and, because it would be electronic, would not delay people leaving the country and cause queues at our ports. If we can get to that point—no decision has yet been taken—many issues can begin to be addressed without dealing piecemeal with marriage, student visas and so on. Before I finish—

I am encouraged by what the Minister has said about ID cards. I raised the matter in the House 18 or more months ago. If she will tell me and my hon. Friends which of her Cabinet colleagues are causing the problem, I promise that we shall do our utmost to get at them.

My hon. Friend will not be surprised to hear that I would not say that any Cabinet colleague is causing a problem. However, it is right that the detail of a scheme that is massive in terms of technological issues, time scale—probably six to 10 years—and cost should be debated. If the Government do decide to proceed, we can do so with confidence that problems that have been identified can be overcome. It will be a significant step in terms of practicality, technology and cost.

Hon. Members will know that our desire to tackle marriage abuse has been strong. On 1 April, the Home Secretary introduced changes to the immigration rules aimed at tackling the growing menace of fraudulent marriages. The measures included increasing the probationary period from one to two years, introducing a no-switching policy into marriage provision for those coming to the UK for a period of six months or less, removing the "legally unable to marry requirement" preventing a fiancé under 16 from applying for leave to enter and preventing persons under 18 from acting as the sponsor in a marriage application.

I very much welcome the approach of hon. Members, who have spoken on the basis of experience in their constituencies. None the less, my colleague the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Slough, and I still come under considerable pressure from many other colleagues who write to us, despite our changes to the rules to tackle abuse, arguing that a particular constituent or sponsored spouse of a constituent should not have to abide by the rules and should be granted leave to remain for marriage on an exceptional basis. To some extent, one can understand that. However, we need to take a clear view that we have introduced rules to prevent people from abusing the system. In fairness to everyone, we should apply them equitably across the board.

Hon. Members will also know the other side of the coin. We have reviewed our position on domestic violence. That concession was introduced in June 1999, and as a result of our review of it, we decided that the range of types of evidence acceptable to meet the terms of the concession should be widened. That was done specifically to help some of the women caught in marriages, whether or not they were abusive of immigration rules, who, having got here, found themselves subject to abuse.

It has also been suggested, although not during this debate, that we raise the age of sponsorship to 21.

I suggested it today.

I beg my hon. Friend's pardon; I did not remember his having specifically mentioned that. He knows that on 1 April we raised the age of sponsorship to 18. A lot of views were expressed and we decided that 18 was right in the first instance. However, we shall monitor the effect of the change, and the higher age that is used in some countries, and if we think that we need to alter it, we will.

I am pleased to have secured this debate. The subject is of deep concern to many right hon. and hon. Members, especially in the current financial year when many schools are facing significant funding crises. I raised the issue in this Chamber on 2 April at column 309 of Hansard. The Minister for School Standards responded to that debate, which was entitled "Education Funding (Cornwall)". Our forthcoming 90-minute debate will give us the opportunity to consider more wide-ranging issues, and I have no doubt that other hon. Members will wish to ask questions about schools in their constituencies.

I know that it is customary for debates in this Chamber to descend towards a party political spat, but I want at least to set the right tone. Now that the problem has been acknowledged, I hope that our debate can be constructive and conciliatory. I say that for three reasons.

First, I must congratulate the Government on having achieved many of the outcomes that we want for our schools. For example, the school building programme is at an unprecedented level of improvement and development. Wendron school in my constituency has just had a new school and, after many years of pleading, Bodriggy school is now coming on to one site of the school in Hayle. Many other building programmes have been needed for a long time, and developments such as general investment, identification of need and promotion of teacher training are much appreciated.

In a wholly conciliatory and constructive sense, may I ask whether the hon. Gentleman agrees with my identification of one of the greatest tragedies of the schools funding crisis this year? Schools have shifted money, earmarked for capital projects, to revenue budgets to keep the staff on which they depend to educate their children.

I acknowledge that problem; in fact, I shall be referring to it in a moment.

I come now to the second reason why our debate should be constructive and conciliatory. I noted that, in the live online webcast prior to the commencement of the present academic year, the Secretary of State for Education and Skills admitted that the Department had made a mistake. I could not cope with a live online webcast, but I am told that that is what he said via that medium, which is beyond the wit of someone as IT challenged as myself.

Thirdly, the Secretary of State announced his intention to deal with the problems that he now acknowledges exist in many schools with the addition of £800 million from departmental resources over the next two years. Earlier this year we were promised a likely settlement for school budgets in the next financial year.

In the same spirit—I have to be honest—I, too, must apologise for having got my predictions on 2 April rather wrong. I said that

"many schools that I have visited recently face the stark choice of sacking staff and increasing class sizes or going into debt. They may not go into debt this year but they will do so next year".—[Official Report, Westminster Hall, 2 April 2003; Vol. 402. c. 310WH.]

I failed to get that right; in fact, the situation was worse than I said it was, because some schools are going into debt this year. Many classroom assistants have already lost their jobs—something that I did not mention on that occasion—and the impact is deeply felt.

The hon. Gentleman just touched on classroom assistants. One of the problems in the present crisis—certainly in London, and perhaps in Cornwall, too—is that, increasingly, classroom assistants are being employed instead of real teachers, often even when a supply teacher is available.

I have always understood that the purpose of classroom assistants is to assist the teacher. When classroom assistants are employed effectively, and provided that the classroom can cope, I am reassured, although my concern about large class sizes does not totally evaporate.

In the spirit of constructive information, may I ask whether the hon. Gentleman is aware that in January 1999 Cornish schools had 3,570 full-time equivalent teachers, and that by January this year, the number had leapt to 4,020? We need to remember that when talking about any changes in numbers.

There are statistics and statistics. The local education authority has told me about both compulsory and hard-fought voluntary redundancies. In a moment, I will go through some of the extremely difficult circumstances in which many schools have found themselves this year; they are not congratulating the Government on teacher recruitment. The hon. Lady made a brave attempt, but I am not sure that her comment was entirely in the spirit of what the Secretary of State said. He has admitted that there is a serious crisis. All parties accept that, and we cannot simply put a veneer on the situation by the selective use of statistics.

The Secretary of State and the Department have accepted that, in Cornwall, the LEA has passported more money than the Government intended it to. In fact, the agreed figure is 105 per cent. Therefore, some of the claims that the Department made in spring and early summer about LEAs not passporting money to schools were simply not true; in Cornwall, the LEA had gone over the top. Obviously, debates ensued, although my debate came earlier than some of the others. I certainly made it clear that national insurance contributions, teacher pensions, performance-related pay and other matters, all of which arose in one year, clearly increased costs for many schools. Many of them could not cope with those factors within their budgets from the Government.

There was eventual acceptance by the Department for Education and Skills that its model was insufficient; it did not take into account those additional costs. The Secretary of State apologised, which was much appreciated, and the Dept promised to work to find a solution.

I have kept in close contact with the Department and my schools since that debate. In a letter of 11 June, the Minister for School Standards, with whom I have corresponded on a number of occasions, helpfully said:

"LEAs and schools would be given flexibility to use their devolved formula capital funding"—

which the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) mentioned earlier—

"to support their revenue budgets, where failure to do so would lead to excessive instability within the school."

However, having made those concessions, he went on to say:

"It is now for LEAs, with their schools, to take matters forward locally and to sort out remaining problems."

I am pleased to say that, since June, the Department's position has shifted, and it is prepared, quite rightly, to get more involved in tackling many of the problems that a lot of schools face.

I have kept regularly in touch with schools. In the last few days I have heard from the following primary junior schools: Bodriggy, Connor Downs, Coverack, Grade-Ruan, Gulval, Leedstown, Marazion, Mousehole, Mullion, Nansloe, Newlyn, Parc Eglos, Pendeen, Penpol, St. Erth, St. Ives infants, St. Levan, St. Uny and Wendron. I have also heard from secondary schools: Humphry Davy and Mounts Bay schools in Penzance, and Mullion and St. Ives school. A picture emerges from that ad hoc collection of data. I will quote from some of the examples because it is important that people understand the impact that this year's budget settlement is having on some of the schools.

Mary Holloway, the head teacher of Grade-Ruan Church of England school, telephoned my office just yesterday. Grade-Ruan is a successful school, which achieved beacon status two years ago; I was proud to be there on the day that that was announced and presented. Mary Holloway said that the school has had a really tight year; all reserves have now been used up and, in January 2004, redundancy procedures will be issued for August. That means that one full-time teacher out of the current four will be made redundant, resulting in increased class sizes across mixed school years. That will affect standards because it is a village school.

Rod James, a relatively new and very enthusiastic head teacher from Humphrey Davy secondary school, told me in an e-mail yesterday:

"What we set appeared to be a balanced budget. It also appears that we have not made anyone redundant. However

(1)We did not replace at least 1.5 staff that resigned.

(2)We have not replaced 2.5 learning support assistants that resigned.

(3)We have had to draw down all of our devolved capital money to make the staffing budget balance.

(4)We have had to raid the small reserves we had, the committed pension fund, almost all the staff training budget, the repairs and maintenance, and the capital projects planned.

(5)Capitation to departments was reduced to an unsustainable level.

(6)The only way I can continue refurbishment is by committing 2004–5 and 2005–6 devolved capital.

(7)The cracks are now appearing in the budget as we say no to everything that staff propose including new books for new courses.

(8)We will be in deficit before the end of the year.

(9)Some of this reduction was planned because we knew that we would reduce by about 15 pupils.

(10)The crunch will be in the 2004–2005 budgets. Although we will start to grow again, we will have no carryover, reserves, devolved capital, a back log of repairs and expectations.

(11)To create a budget with these funding levels we will have to cut staffing by at least two teaching staff and three non teaching staff.

(12)This is at a time when I have a legal requirement to introduce the workload agreement and when 22 of my staff will expect to move to threshold three, a cost of more than £25,000, which the government will not fund.

This is all set at a school that the government should be proud of. A school that works in one of the most deprived communities in Britain, and yet like other Penwith schools achieves above national levels at GCSE, and key stage 3 … A school that works hard to be highly inclusive, taking a truly comprehensive intake and being successful with them."

Roger Bunt, the head teacher at Mullion community primary school, where I used to go, told me that a special needs teacher has been made redundant, that there has had to be a

"change from 5 classes to 4 for part of the week",

and that the

"Head is teaching for 3 days rather than 2."

Paul Hodson, the head teacher at Penpol school in Hayle, the primary school that my children attended, said this to me about the standards funds:

"It is sad to think that the government spent so much money on these very good schemes, designed to be delivered by Teaching Assistants, only to cut funding with so many schools now laying off the very people who were to lead them. At Penpol we have decided to keep everyone in post and try to bring in as much new money as possible. I bring in around £5,000 a year to the school working as an Ofsted inspector and I will plan to double my number of inspections this year."

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Does he agree that in the individual cases that he describes one of the common patterns revealed by the comments of head teachers and teaching staff generally is that the many and varied funding streams complicate the issue, they have clearly upset Government funding and they are working against schools being able to plan properly for the future?

I am sure that schools, head teachers and their governors do not wish to reject the additional money that has been made available through various standards funds, funds to reduce infant classes and so forth, although they may sometimes find the strings attached to those funds irksome and bureaucratic. However, we have learned over the past year that when funds are withdrawn at the same time as significant additional costs are placed on a school, that has a significant impact on the school.

If standards funds are to be reduced, that needs to be planned. The reduction must be achieved in a way that does not result in many schools being left high and dry in the current financial year—which they have told me is the situation. Richard Zolkiewicz, the head teacher at St. Ives secondary school, told me that that is hard to quantify, but that this year there is a

"Huge deficit of the order of approximately £100,000."

Schools are being deeply affected.

I have given the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education advance notice of some of my questions. I hope that that was helpful, and that he will have enough time to answer them.

I apologise for intervening in the first few minutes of this interesting exposition, but I have to attend a statutory instrument Committee, so I shall not be present for long.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that two specific things have gone wrong this year? First, because Gloucestershire has now been included in the area cost adjustment, it has done significantly better this year than previously—we used to moan like hell about those who got it and those who did not. However, I presume that Cornwall is still outwith the area cost adjustment, and that has a significant impact. I have always argued that the area cost adjustment should be removed. Secondly, until we grasp the nettle of preparation for early retirement and redundancy throughout the entire public sector, there will inevitably be a cost implication. We must be open and honest with teachers and other public sector workers about the fact that retirement at 60 is the likelihood rather than the exception.

I am grateful for that intervention. Time is moving on so I shall try to be brief, and I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman will not be present for the entire debate. The Minister has heard the point that he made about teacher pensions and redundancy ages, and I have some sympathy with it. It is important that the Government, LEAs and teacher unions reflect on that matter.

With regard to the area cost adjustment and local government settlements, the hon. Gentleman is right to assume that Cornwall always seems to get the rum end of any deal for formula funding. Schoolchildren in Cornwall seem to be given significantly less per head than is the average for England. The area cost adjustment has not worked out well for Cornwall, because there are low wages. In fact, it results in Cornwall getting significantly less than we should.

Perhaps the Minister will tell me how the announced extra £800 million for the next two years will be spent. That sum was mentioned earlier. Will there be a formula for that? When will LEAs and schools be told about it? Will his Department make it clear that it will support schools that have no alternative other than to go into budget deficit? When will the LEAs be told the indicative budget for the next financial year? How much of next year's funding for schools will need to be found by council tax payers? Will the guidelines on teachers' performance-related pay change, because those increases are not 100 per cent. centrally funded?

What are schools supposed to do to stop making teachers and support staff redundant? How can secondary schools applying for specialist school status meet the criteria for sound financial management, if, through no fault of their own, they are unable to live within their budgets this year? I understand that that is one of the criteria on the basis of which a hid may proceed.

Perhaps the Government will accept that current demographic trends, as is widely predicted, mean that primary school rolls will decrease. If so, does the Minister agree that that would provide an opportunity to consolidate and build capacity and resources, thus achieving a reduction in class sizes, rather than an opportunity to reduce the number of primary school teachers? I believe that the Department has a prediction that by 2010 the reduction could result in the loss of as many as 6,000 teachers. This is a golden opportunity that the Government could grasp.

What is an appropriate level for school reserves? What are schools supposed to do to maintain standards, particularly in learning support and special educational needs? What plans has the Department for the standards funds? The original plan was that they be removed in the next financial year and the year after that. Will they remain, and if so, are they to be used for the same purpose? What assessment has been made of the flexible use of devolved formula capital in building improvements and developments?

Despite a previous debate and an exchange of correspondence with the Minister for School Standards, many difficulties remain in Cornwall. Will the Minister commit his colleague to meeting me, together with representatives of schools in my area, to go through some of the issues that I have mentioned today? There are, of course, many more issues remaining. I am grateful for the forbearance of hon. Members. I look forward to hearing the Minister's reply.

I congratulate the hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) on securing the debate, not least because I, too, am from his part of the world originally. This is a vital and timely debate, because it deals with something that is strongly represented in my postbag and of great concern for many parents in my constituency.

Moving a little further east of Cornwall, in Hertfordshire the problem of funding our schools this year is severe—that is the word used by many secondary school head teachers in my area. Indeed, according to the Hertfordshire Association of Secondary School Headteachers, which has conducted a survey, 95 per cent. of Hertfordshire's secondary schools have had to make significant cuts this year, including more than 70 teaching posts. Some 90 per cent. of those schools expect that they will be in deficit, despite having already raided their reserves. The average deficit in the county is expected to be £63,400 per school—a total of £4.8 million throughout the whole county. That is a significant sum.

I am delighted to see that the Minister is with us today. However, I am sure that he will understand that it would have been equally pleasant for us if the Minister for Schools Standards had attended. Perhaps, having made notes, this Minister will tell us at the end of the debate how those deficit figures compare with the national average.

On 14 July I met with the heads and deputy heads of the schools in Hertford and Ware. Indeed, I have met heads and deputies in Bishop's Stortford and Sawbridgeworth, too. We are lucky because in our county we have many excellent professionals working in schools. However, in all honesty, I have never known them to be more anxious about their schools' future or more depressed about their own. They have explained to me that, although this year is difficult, they fear that the worst is yet to come.

As Members know, our schools face a raft of changes to the standards fund, the EFSS—the education formula spending share—and the Learning and Skills Council. We have had deep cuts in area cost allowances, and there is a continuingly significant gap between what the Government promise on employment costs and what the money provides. In many ways, the Government have failed to think through or cost properly the combined effect of the many changes. Individual changes may not be welcome, but for some schools they are manageable. However, together the changes are confusing. The financial impact means that many schools in my constituency in east Hertfordshire and across the county will face even larger shortfalls in the years to come.

That leads me on to a broader point that I sought to raise briefly with the hon. Member for St. Ives. The complexity of initiatives, proposals and announcements as well as the small streams of funding and the hypothecation of money means that head teachers spend more time chasing little pots of money than undertaking the job for which they were trained. Many of them would welcome what my own party is looking at and what others with expertise in the field have suggested—namely, sweeping away the complexity and giving our schools genuine flexibility to meet the needs and priorities of their areas. I hope that the Minister will address that broader point. The danger in discussing school funding is that, if we look solely at which area does slightly better or slightly worse than any other, we ignore the crucial and fundamental way in which the Government have sought to skew education funding.

I want to look to the next year in detail. For Hertfordshire, the gap between what the county requires and what it has stands at £15.2 million—that is based on the Government's own formula. That is bad enough, yet it could swell to a black hole of £25 million if, as seems likely, schools are yet again unable to draw on their reserves. Over the past year, schools in Hertfordshire, many of which have been putting money to one side to bid for things such as the specialist school status that the Government have been promoting, have had to raid their reserves. We have seen £10 million of that money put into current expenditure to ensure that schools can cope this year. That could mean, in the coming year, a gap of £25 million across the county.

What does that mean in real terms? In human terms, almost 600 teachers in our county alone could see their jobs go. That is bad enough, but the impact for some schools could be even worse. Subjects would have to be curtailed, options for GCSEs and higher levels would have to be cut, and classes would have to be missed. The impact of that would further demoralise remaining staff. They will find, yet again, that they are being asked by the Government to do more with less.

I wrote to the Secretary of State for Education and Skills about those problems on 17 July, highlighting all the fears and raising specific questions. Sadly, I did not get any answers. I merely received a standard letter from the Minister for School Standards, who obviously has something more important to do today. In that response, he sought to pass the buck by implying that the local education authority should share the blame. I cannot speak for other areas, but I can tell this Minister that the view in Hertfordshire is not that the LEA is in any way responsible. I asked my local schools, and not one reported any money being withheld by the county council. Indeed, the chairman of the Hertfordshire Association of Secondary School Headteachers went further. In his letter to the Secretary of State on 6 June, Mr. Alan Gray stated:

"We have worked closely with Hertfordshire LEA and are confident the LEA has passported funds to schools as you require."

The fault lies firmly in Whitehall, not in Hertford. I hope that when the Secretary of State meets with the all-party—I stress that—delegation from Hertfordshire next month he listens and responds accordingly.

Will the Minister assure me that all the changes in employment costs for the forthcoming year will be matched? Will he undertake to ensure that when our schools face particular problems from the combined effect of differing schemes the Government will be open to reconsidering whether the combined effect is detrimental to certain types of school in certain types of area? Are the Government prepared to recalculate the net effects of those changes? Will he ask his colleague the Minister for School Standards to ensure that when he responds to Members in future, he does so according to the concerns that they have raised about their LEAs and does not merely issue a standard letter? Frankly, that letter was irrelevant and somewhat insulting to those people I am trying to represent—that is the crucial part.

All we seek is a fair deal for our schools. However, unless there is a significant move from the Government to match the funding of the many initiatives that they promote and unless they ensure that the combined effect of departmental plans is properly accounted for, the danger in Hertfordshire is that many teachers will be lost and many of our pupils left behind.

I thank the hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) for securing this timely debate. In Coventry, the Government have done much about class sizes and funding. Nevertheless, there is a problem. Last Friday, the three local Coventry MPs met the director of the local education authority. The LEA raised a number of issues with us. It wants those issues to receive Ministers' attention and it wants to receive some answers. Prior to that, we met the trade unions. They also voiced concern about the arrangements for this and future years.

The view of Coventry's education authority is that there have been problems in relation to the transition to a new system for education and local government finance. The LEA says that the underestimation of the cost of national insurance, pensions and salaries is another factor that has been giving it many concerns. It has also expressed concern about standards fund changes and I hope that the Minister will consider that. Although Coventry recognises that it has done reasonably well, it still has problems of that type.

This is the second time that I have spoken in a debate about education funding, and particularly about school amalgamations and closures. I initiated a debate two years ago. Coventry is going through the same exercise this year and will be going through it next year. Let me highlight some of the problems. Sixteen schools have had to use capital and convert it into revenue—something that the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) mentioned earlier. Another three schools needed loans, which demonstrates that we have some serious problems. There is pressure to pull back in budgetary terms to cover the shortfalls. There are probably at least 43 teaching jobs that are at stake and could go, plus 27 support jobs.

Although Coventry recognises, as most people do, the extent of the Government's investment in education, there are still problems that must be addressed. I understand that the cuts to the standards fund will be deferred from 2004–05 to 2005–06. However, we do not have much detail, so may we have more detail about what will happen?

There is funding for changes, which can give rise to concern about industrial relations. That is a big concern for Coventry, but money may have been allocated for that.

In conclusion, some hon. Members who spoke before me have covered some of the concerns and I do not want to go over them again, but I have highlighted the concerns of Coventry's education authority about the impact that the changes may have. The problem is that while we recognise that the Government have attempted to raise standards and done a lot for education, all that good work could be undone if the problems are widespread throughout the country. I hope that the Minister can give some assurances on that. Members of Parliament and trade unions in Coventry would certainly like to talk to him about those problems.

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) on bringing this issue once more to the House's attention. It is part of a long-running saga for all Members present and many others. Members for Surrey constituencies always seem to be standing up pleading for special treatment, or we are treated by the Government as if we are. That is not the case. In Surrey we are experiencing the same problems as those that have been so eloquently described by my hon. Friend and by the hon. Members for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Prisk) and for Coventry, South (Mr. Cunningham). We are struggling with our schools.

Ours is a tale of despair. We have all been closely in touch with our schools and have talked to our head teachers. The Government wrote to me with a list of schools that received school achievement awards, and although they have been controversial, the Minister suggested that I should go and congratulate those schools' staff. I was delighted to take the opportunity to thank all the staff at those schools for the tremendous work that they have done to get those awards.

As is the nature of such occasions, I asked to stay behind for coffee so that I could have a chat with the teachers, classroom assistants, teaching assistants, dinner ladies and everybody else, because giving them a chance to talk to us is part of the day. What did they talk about? A teacher who had changed career in her late 20s said to me, "I love teaching in this school but I am not staying because I cannot afford anywhere to live. I've done living in bedsits all my life and now I need to move forward." A head teacher said to me, "My struggle is holding on to staff at all, yet we have been developing the role of teaching assistants. They look, quite reasonably, for a pay rise and career development, some hoping to train as teachers, but I cannot pay them any more."

One problem is the 25 per cent. turnover of teachers, year after year. There are schools in Surrey where hardly one teacher stays for the length of a child's course through school, so that child will not have the same teachers at the end of school life as at the beginning. We have problems recruiting head teachers. One of the few ways in which we are fortunate in Surrey is that we often attract extremely good teachers by virtue of the fact that they are married to a much higher earner in the county. That takes us back to the days when a teaching job was a second profession in Surrey.

The hon. Lady has described the difficulties that her schools have in retaining their head teachers. Does she share my concern that many leave because they do not feel able to carry out their professional job? They are constantly having to chase lots of little pots of money rather than having the professional freedom to do the job for which they were trained. Does she agree?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He is absolutely right. A disproportionate amount of time is spent chasing money, not only by heads, but by chairs of governors and other teachers. They are constantly chasing initiatives and recasting budgets. One result of the Government having left our schools so short of money has been a huge stress on the governing bodies and non-teaching staff—those responsible for managing budgets. They should be managing budgets to go forward, but at the moment they are managing budgets to survive. We have a problem because career aspirations are stunted—if someone wants to get on, they move away from Surrey.

A further aspect of this tale of woe is that the director of education for Surrey has been in close contact with the Government at every opportunity to explain to them the fact that Surrey passported its money through and to show that the finances are completely transparent. We received visits from the Minister for School Standards and, surprisingly, the Minister for Local Government, Regional Governance and Fire on 17 July. On that morning, Surrey MPs and members of the Surrey education department met the Minister and, with the charming smile that he knows how to do, he said, "I can't tell you what this news is, but I am sure you're going to be pleased." We listened to the announcement and more money was on the table, but it was not all the money we needed to stop the rot.

The announcement said that there was to be a minimum per-pupil guarantee for schools. That has taken away the freedom of counties to juggle in such impossible situations to make the sums balance, which is a problem. This is not an addition to the current funding received by schools. There is no additional money to pay for the per-pupil allowance. Teachers still have to be paid for and the money has to be found—Surrey had one of the highest council tax increases this year to make good Government shortfalls, not extra spending. There is no more money in the pot from the council tax.

Schools' balances have been reduced by £12 million. Of Surrey's schools, 66 will have deficits totalling £7.5 million and 17 are seeking licensed deficits from the county council because their deficits will exceed 5 per cent. Indeed, Guildford county school in my constituency wants permission to go into the red by more than £170,000 each year for the next two years, with overspending continuing until 2008. That school's annual budget is £2.6 million. How are those schools that are going into deficit going to repay that debt? In future years, are we going to see a cycle of money being spent on servicing that debt rather than on what it should be spent on? How is the debt to be managed and how will schools plan their budget?

As has been alluded to by other Members, there is a real threat to the quality of the curriculum, the teaching staff and the courses that will be offered in our schools. Guildford county school is planning teacher redundancies, although it hopes not to have to make any redundant. However, teachers are not being replaced. We have a major problem, which is one that the Government knew was going to happen. They had endless information, and delegation after delegation told them what was happening in Surrey schools. There is no comfort in saying that Surrey is an affluent county. They could be cynical and say, "If they are so rich in Surrey, they could pay for private education." Many do, but many others cannot afford it—the housing costs in Surrey take care of that. Disposable income is no higher than anywhere else in some families.

My concern is for the Minister to recognise where the knife has cut too deeply. He needs to understand that no extra money will come from council taxes—our pensioners are struggling as it is to meet the current increases. He must understand that we need to operate in a debt-free environment, and that we need to move on from that to encourage our schools and ensure that they do not have to take money from the school fabric fund, which has been badly raided, to pay for teaching salaries. We should give real hope, encouragement and fair reward to the people who serve our children so well.

This has been an excellent debate, although sadly it has been attended by far too few hon. Members, given the importance of the subject. I would like to start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) on raising the subject again. As my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Sue Doughty) said, it is of fairly widespread concern across the country. It has affected Members throughout England, and I have no doubt to some extent in Scotland and Wales, although their funding for education is very different. In this country, there has been an enormous problem throughout a large part of local education authorities. It is good that we have the chance to debate the subject again, although it has been debated this year on different occasions.

It is interesting how the debate has changed during that time. The Government refused to accept any blame when the problems first became apparent. They were prepared to blame almost everyone except themselves: the LEAs for not passing on the money that they were given, the head teachers for not managing their budgets properly, and the governors for not running the schools efficiently. That was at the start when the Government were perhaps not showing any humility.

Later on, as my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives pointed out, the good news was that the Government began to accept part of the blame. In July, the Secretary of State admitted that mistakes were made in his Department, and that they had led to a serious shortfall in funding for schools. "Mistakes" barely brings out the extent of what had happened given the catalogue of incompetence and evasion that characterised the Department's handling of the matter. Nevertheless, I honour the Secretary of State for admitting that. It was brave because few Secretaries of State are prepared to accept that there have been problems in their Department's handling of anything. It was a welcome admission from him.

When the Secretary of State made his statement to the House, I was able to catch the Speaker's eye and ask a question. As a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I pointed out that, when permanent secretaries come before the Committee as witnesses and we find out that things have gone wrong, we often ask them whether anyone has been held to account, and whether anyone has lost their job, which they might have done had such mistakes occurred in the private sector. Sadly, it was no great surprise to hear—we have heard it again and again in Committee—that no one had been held to account, and that no one had lost or would lose their job. That is not a party political point; it is a point raised by all members of the Committee, regardless of party.

We treat people very differently in the public sector, and sometimes—this may sound terribly Tory, which is not something that I like to do—there are occasions when the public sector does not hold people to account sufficiently for their failures. It treats people much more leniently than they would be treated if they made the same errors in the private sector, which is a pity.

Without wishing to interrupt the hon. Gentleman while he is being terribly Tory, does he therefore feel that someone should have lost their job over that?

The question that I asked was whether anyone lost their job, and the answer from the Secretary of State was, "No, no one has lost their job." I hope that my question indicated the serious point that so often when such problems arise in the public sector, no one loses their job. It is time that the public sector thought about that. That point is made time and again by Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative members of the Public Accounts Committee. There is a clear difference in how public sector workers are treated when they are shown to have failed catastrophically.

The Government failed to take account of several issues when they set up the funding system for schools this year, which has led to problems. They failed to take account of the extra costs that schools were facing, which have now become clearer with increased national insurance contributions, the costs of teachers pensions and their pay settlement, and the impact of the local government funding arrangement.

The Government failed, importantly, to model how those changes would affect individual schools. My local authority, West Berkshire, sent a delegation to the Department for Education and Skills, where it pointed out that it had fully modelled how the changes would affect its schools. The Department told the delegation that it was the only LEA in the country—let alone the Department itself—to have gone through such an exercise. I found it extraordinary that the Government had not made any attempt to model how those changes would affect schools.

The Government also misled schools about what to expect. Stories said that there would be a growth of about 7 per cent. in funding and that it would be the best sustained rise in education spending for at least a generation. The Chancellor was saying that, and his language was mistakenly repeated by DFES Ministers at the time—the Minister present today has not been in his position for that long, so he can perhaps be absolved of blame for that. However, Ministers throughout the DFES were saying that there would be a huge rise in the grants given to schools, without taking into account that costs would rise by more than that—as much as 10 per cent.

Many schools were left with not only no real-terms increase but a decrease in their funding for the year, with the result that teachers are now being made redundant. As mentioned already, support staff are also being made redundant, with all the difficulties that that entails for the new school system in which support staff are expected to take on more responsibility. Some schools have even been forced to cut aspects of their budget such as capital funding, and we have already alluded to the difficulty that that causes given the underspending on capital funding over many years.

On 29 August, The Times Educational Supplement estimated that 700 teachers had been made redundant and a further 2,700 were not being replaced because of the funding crisis this year. I understand that the net increase in the number of secondary school teachers this year is just 89, while rolls are rising by about 25,000. That is set against the background that the number of fully qualified—I emphasise fully qualified—teachers has fallen since 1977.

I want to raise another point that has so far not been discussed. What has happened to the local authorities that suffered the worst underfunding in the past? The Government's new funding formula for local authorities has led to significant rises in some cases. Those are inevitably for the areas that the Government believe have received less funds than they should have, as that is what the formula means. Having proved that those areas are underfunded, the formula has raised the funds but, unfortunately, in many cases those funds have hit a ceiling.

I understand why the Government have introduced floors and ceilings into the formula. It is important not to allow cash falls and to set a floor to prevent the situation becoming impossible for certain local authorities. However, the fact that they have paid for that by introducing a ceiling in other areas means that the local authorities that were underfunded in the past are not receiving as much as the Government's own formula calculates that they should.

Those areas face a particular difficulty. They have been underfunded and so have deficits to make up. There may be a backlog of work in their schools, a lack of library books or funding for special needs, and various other deficiencies resulting from underfunding. Now, although the funds are theoretically supposed to come through, the ceilings mean that they are not doing so.

Does my hon. Friend agree that his statement presupposes that the Government's new funding formula properly reflects the requirements of a local authority area? In my area, for example, secondary school pupils receive about £126 a year less than the average, while primary school pupils receive £220 a year less. Does he agree that, in areas where there are additional costs because of peripherality, rurality and higher transport expenses, the formula may not reflect genuine need across the country?

Of course I accept what my hon. Friend said about the difficulty of getting the formula right. There will always be arguments over exactly what the formula should be, but I was merely making the point that the Government are failing to meet their current funding estimate. I am taking their point of view. I have taken the Tory party's point of view, and there is no reason why I should not take the Labour party's point of view for a while—I like to be even-handed whenever I can.

According to the Government's formula, areas that have been underfunded in the past are being further underfunded in the present, and are therefore unable to make up for the underfunding in the past. I hope that the Government will take that into account. When my authority went to see the Department for Education and Skills, it was told that it could have no more funding for this year, in spite of the fact that the Government's formula says that it should have more funding.

There has been a lack of transparency and openness in how the Government have handled funding for schools this year, which has undoubtedly damaged some schools. Sadly, it has also done little for the reputation of politics and politicians in general. Councils have been left to pick up the pieces. In many cases, they have been forced to increase council tax to make up for this year's lack of Government funding. There is still a mismatch between assessments of local need and the sums that local councils are given to spend. It is the old story of the Government retaining their grip on the purse strings while local councils are asked to accept accountability without responsibility.

I congratulate the hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) on securing the debate and on his consistency, because he previously raised the matter in this Chamber on 2 April. I am always concerned when Members say that they will be entirely constructive and conciliatory, but he did open the debate constructively.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) for taking a slightly more party political stance, even though he spoke as both a Conservative and a socialist. None the less, I hope that that absolves me of any blame that might be attributed for beginning a descent into party political wrangling, which I would never seek to do. We have discussed this important issue on many occasions, but, for reasons that I shall go into shortly, this is a crucial moment in the ongoing saga of school funding.

I should also like to welcome the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education. He is one of the more persuasive Ministers, which is why he picks up all the impossible briefs. He has already been saddled with the task of defending the Government's policy on tuition fees, and now he has been asked to come here to defend their gross betrayal of parents, pupils and schools the length and breadth of the country.

The hon. Member for St. Ives gave credit to the Secretary of State for Education and Skills for accepting his Department's incompetence in dealing with the school funding situation this year. It would have been so much better if he had taken that stance much earlier. When he spoke to the Secondary Heads Association in the new year, he uttered the memorable words:

"It just floods straight over my head. I don't listen to what you say quite frankly".

That was not a perfect illustration of listening government or of a Government who are prepared to accept their failings. Perhaps we have made a little progress in the months since then.

The hon. Member for St. Ives raised concerns about classroom assistants, worries about redundancies for existing support staff and the implications of the proposed teacher work load changes. The latter is one of the crucial problems faced by the DFES. The Department has put yet another burden on schools and their budgets; they have to try to cope with teacher work load changes this year and, more particularly, next year, when those costs will kick in. The Department has made those changes against the backdrop of this year's funding crisis, which has left many schools with a budget deficit from which to deal with expanding costs.

The gravity of the situation was highlighted by the hon. Gentleman when he referred to a small local school having to make one of its four teachers redundant, which is clearly a serious problem for that school. Such problems have been reflected and picked up by hon. Members from all parties and from different parts of the country. The hon. Member for Coventry, South (Mr. Cunningham) referred to 43 teaching and 70 support staff posts being lost. The hon. Member for Guildford (Sue Doughty) spoke about the problem of attracting and retaining staff, and she referred to the experience of a local school that had received a school achievement award. A few months ago that award was hailed by Ministers as crucial in motivating staff, but it is now being quietly dropped as an inconvenient complication in the arrangements for paying teachers and rewarding them for success.

The hon. Member for Newbury went on to talk about one of the shabbiest parts of the whole episode: the Government's preoccupation throughout this year with shifting the blame for what has gone wrong instead of tackling the root cause of the problem. They tried to blame head teachers and local government, but eventually they were left with that blame; they have been caught fairly and squarely for what they have done wrong. The hon. Gentleman also spoke about proper accountability in dealing with errors in the public sector.

I do not want to rehearse in detail the causes of the crisis, which we have discussed many times here and in the main Chamber in recent months, but they include the increase in national insurance contributions, the removal of elements of the standards fund and the cost of increased superannuation contributions from schools. That is effectively an additional tax take because the pension scheme is not funded, and the Treasury decided to increase the contributions from teachers' employers towards the cost of paying pensions. There has also been a failure in successive years fully to fund the teachers' pay settlement. All that together has created a serious situation in schools throughout the country.

What steps have the Government taken? Reference has been made to most of them during this debate. Flexibility for capital funds is very welcome for schools in a crisis which are faced with the possibility of making redundancies among valued teaching and support staff. However, head teachers are put in an impossible position, which was memorably expressed by one of the leaders of a teachers union as having to choose between having the boiler fixed in the middle of winter and retaining the deputy head teacher. The flexibility for capital funding does not solve such impossible dilemmas.

The Government have made a U-turn on their decision to withdraw elements of the standards fund, and if that money finds its way to the right schools in the right way, that will help. The rules on deficit budgets have been relaxed, and that was covered earlier in the debate. However, schools that have had to go into deficit this year face an ongoing problem in trying to climb back out of deficit without a reduction in the costs that they face. In addition, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Prisk) made clear, there is the problem of further increases in employment costs occurring this year.

Measures are being taken in the Local Government Bill, which was debated on the Floor of the House on Monday, and it is proposed to bring forward the timetable for school budgets to the end of December. I shall comment briefly on that, as I did on Monday. It is rather sad that those measures could have been taken much sooner. They may help, but they, or measures very like them, were offered to the Government in January 2002 by the Standing Committee on the Education Bill. There have been constant warnings of the coming problems from Members and from people outside the House who are involved in education. That was yet another occasion—nearly two years ago, in that instance—when Ministers were told that difficulties were approaching, and they were offered a solution that they were too arrogant and intransigent to accept. Now, rather belatedly, they are trying to pick up the pieces in a crisis.

On 17 July, the Secretary of State promised a minimum-per-pupil funding increase for schools, but as yet we have no details of what that will mean. We do not know the percentage increase and, more worrying, we do not know what it will be based on. However, there has been a development. On Monday last week, I received a written answer to a question that I had asked which will be very instructive to Government and Opposition Members. I have with me only one of two volumes that give per pupil funding for every school in the country for the current financial year. I also asked for that information for the previous financial year.

The hon. Member for St. Ives gave a long list of schools in his constituency. I could not look up all of them in this volume, but I have found two schools that I assume are in his constituency. St. Ives infants appears to have per pupil funding of £2,360, and St. Ives junior school has per pupil funding of £1,993. I know that Members are looking forward to getting their hands on this mine of information.

If the promise of a minimum-per-pupil funding increase is to mean anything, it must start from the baseline of current per pupil funding. Until we have an absolute guarantee from the Minister and his colleagues that that is the case, we will all look with a rather sceptical eye at what the Government are promising.

We also need to know what will happen in the instance, acknowledged by the Secretary of State as far back as 17 July, of LEAs not passporting 100 per cent. of education funds to schools. He admitted that that would be possible in exceptional circumstances, but he has not been prepared to define them. If there are situations in which money is not passported to schools, how will the Government ensure that schools get their minimum per pupil funding increase? Will it be made by direct payments, thereby circumventing the LEA, or by some other means?

My hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford spoke of the 95 per cent. of secondary schools in his constituency which face significant loss of teaching posts, and of the average school deficit of some £63,000. He said that head teachers in his constituency had never been more anxious about their own future and that of their schools. That is a picture that we all see wherever we go visiting schools. I hope that the Minister is now prepared to listen to those concerns, which demonstrate the gravity of the situation that the Government have created.

My hon. Friend went on to call for a simpler funding system. One of my concerns is that the Government are now creating, instead of a simple funding system, an utter mess. Effectively, we will have a local funding system that is controlled from the centre—the worst possible combination of factors. The LEA will be responsible for the distribution of funds but that will be prescribed in great detail by Ministers who will not, as they claim, have all the levers to control the expenditure. It is not entirely clear what the mechanism will be for delivering a minimum-per-pupil funding increase.

I hope that the Minister will answer some key questions. I hope that he will give a simple, straightforward guarantee that the minimum increase promised will be worked out from the baseline of existing per pupil funding. I also hope that, as my hon. Friend requested, the Minister will confirm that that will mean a net increase above costs for this year. What hurt schools and teachers most last year was that they were promised so much and then the Government took away more with one hand than they gave with the other. Will the Government also guarantee that we will have the provisional local government finance settlement by mid-November?

In conclusion, schools throughout the UK have had a dreadful year. Head teachers have been forced to contemplate and begin a process of redundancies of staff whom they value and need to teach our children well. It would be unacceptable to have another year in which those sorts of problems are inflicted on our schools. If that were to happen, Ministers could not avoid responsibility by seeking scapegoats or otherwise shifting the blame, and they would not be forgiven for it. We all look forward to the Minister's usual persuasive response, but we need more than that. Real and effective action is needed in the coming year, because all the schools, parents and pupils in the country are watching.

I congratulate the hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) on securing this important debate, to which I am pleased to have the opportunity to respond, although it has not been as constructive as the hon. Gentleman might have wanted. I have dealt with him on many occasions, and he tries hard, in his own words, to be "constructive and conciliatory." However, after he had finished speaking, those principles disappeared, so it would be remiss of me not to put some balance back into the debate.

I agree that there have been problems, some of which were highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South (Mr. Cunningham). I am not trying to understate those problems, but I am attempting to put a bit of balance back into the debate.

I had some close dealings with the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Prisk) when he first came into the House. He was such a pleasant and rational human being at that time that it makes me wonder what happens to people when they have been in this place for a while. The hon. Gentleman commented on the fact that the Minister for School Standards was not present. However, he should know that my hon. Friend has another parliamentary commitment on the Committee Corridor—he is currently strutting his stuff on a statutory instrument Committee. He would have loved to have been here—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is now going through the whole ministerial team, but his point was about the Minister for School Standards, and I hope that he now accepts that my hon. Friend's absence is not an insult to him or anyone else who has taken part in the debate.

I understand the interest of hon. Members in the impact of this year's funding changes on schools, not just in Cornwall, but throughout the UK. I shall say something about Cornwall and then about the national situation. I shall then try hard to answer the 13 questions put to me by the hon. Member for St. Ives; since it is his debate, he deserves a response.

I shall begin by discussing the performance of schools in Cornwall. When we in the House speak about education, it is important, as several hon. Members pointed out, that we recognise the outstanding work that is done in our schools. Teaching numbers in Cornwall have increased by 11 per cent., from 3,610 in January 1997 to 4,020 in 2003. Over the same period, the number of school support staff working in the county has risen from 1,600 to 2,490, while the teacher vacancy rate remains at 0.1 per cent. I would like to put on record my gratitude for the work of the teachers in Cornwall who have been responsible for significant improvements in the quality of education in the county, and I will give some examples of their achievements.

I fully acknowledge the investment and the increased numbers, but that comes against a backdrop of steeply increasing pupil numbers. The point that I was trying to make in response to an earlier intervention by the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Ms Atherton) was that although the record is good, we are still having problems this year with some compulsory and many voluntary redundancies.

If I have a few minutes at the end, I will come on to that, but it would be remiss of me not to put the points into context; indeed, people would drop to the floor in amazement if I did not.

Returning to the achievements of teachers and support staff in Cornwall, I can tell the Chamber that the percentage of pupils leaving primary schools in the county who are doing well in English has risen from 66 per cent. in 1998 to 74 per cent. in 2003. Over the same period, the figures for those doing well in maths and in science have increased from 62 to 71 per cent. and from 74 to 86 per cent. respectively. I am sure that hon. Members will agree that that represents outstanding work in the county's primary schools.

In the early years of secondary education in Cornwall, there is impressive evidence of improvement with pupils reaching level 5 at age 14. Results are up from 65 to 69 per cent. in English, from 65 to 70 per cent. in maths and from 63 to 72 per cent. in science. We all hope that that can be translated into continued rising achievement in GCSEs, A-levels and vocational qualifications.

I do not know about Cornwall, but I know that when Ministers have claimed increases in figures for some other areas, it has turned out that staff increases have not been in fully trained and qualified teachers. Will the Minister assure us that the increases that he mentioned are in fully trained and qualified teachers?

I have not got on to teachers properly yet, but I will later. The increase has been in fully trained teachers. Opposition Members have made the point that some of the teachers come from overseas, but they are fully trained. I have more to say on teacher numbers, which will please the hon. Gentleman, who in his own words is being "terribly Tory" today.

It is also worth reflecting on the increases in funding that Cornwall has received since this Government came to power. The hon. Member for St. Ives mentioned that and congratulated us on it, and I will put some flesh on that skeleton. From 1997–98 to 2003–04, Cornwall's total funding per pupil has increased by almost £1,100—an increase of 46 per cent. over five years. The hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford, who was so balanced when he first came into the House, neglected today to mention that funding per pupil in Hertfordshire in the same period has increased by 40 per cent.

Capital investment has also greatly increased in Cornwall. In 1997–98, capital funding in Cornwall was £8.1 million. By 2002–03, it had risen to £23.9 million, and this year, taking into account private finance initiative projects worth £71 million, it is more than £99 million. That jump in capital investment should be mentioned in a debate on school funding. Nationally, there has been a record £2.7 billion increase in funding for schools this year. That will go up by another £4.1 billion in 2004–05 and by a further £2.1 billion in 2005–06, which will mean a total cash increase over three years of more than £6 billion.

Do those figures take into account the element of capital funding that the Department has urged schools to transfer to support revenue deficits?

I am not entirely sure, but I guess that the figures do. I will come on to that point, because it was raised by the hon. Member for St. Ives.

We recognise that local authorities and schools have had to contend with significant changes in funding arrangements this year, and we are aware that schools have faced tremendous difficulties with their budgets. The responsibility for the funding of schools is, of course, shared between central and local government, and we recognise that the challenge this year has been to manage the interaction of complex changes—the introduction of the new formula funding system, the transfer of funding to reflect teachers' increased pensions, the working through of the teachers' pay settlement and the end of a substantial body of ring-fenced grants from the Department's standards fund. Although there have been large cash increases in education this year, cost pressures have been substantial and have varied at school and authority level, depending on cost structures and local deployment of resources.

The Minister talks of the important shared responsibility between Government and local authorities. The authorities need to have information from Government in order to play their part. Can he explain why the information relating to performance-related pay—a clear Government policy—was not provided to LEAs, which were therefore unable to work thoroughly through their budget considerations? That undermined their ability to do their job. Thankfully, in Hertfordshire, we passported all the money through. Why will the Government not give that information to LEAs?

In terms of learning lessons from what has happened this year, the Secretary of State has made it clear that we will try to ensure that some of the issues are raised next year. We accept that it is important for LEAs to receive information early enough. I shall come to that when I respond to the points raised by the hon. Member for St. Ives.

There have been problems, and we have sought to help local authorities to manage this year's changes by moderating the impact of the funding formula changes and, through additional grant, to ensure that all authorities have received an effective minimum increase of at least 3.2 per cent. per pupil. The increase for Cornwall is 4.1 per cent. That is on top of the transfer of £586 million to cover the teachers' pension increases, and the transfer of £500 million to cover the transfer of nursery education grant and infant class size grant.

In addition, the Secretary of State announced on 15 May flexible ways in which schools could use their budgets: for this year only, he has relaxed the regulations so that devolved capital can be used for revenue purposes; he has allowed schools to borrow from consolidated balances; and he has allowed LEAs to license schools to set deficit budgets. We consider those sensible measures that will avoid unnecessary redundancies.

I shall move swiftly through the hon. Gentleman's 13 questions, in no particular order, before turning to the general points. This might be a bit of a school test for me. I have been asked what schools are supposed to do to maintain their standards, particularly on learning support and special educational needs. The Secretary of State said on 17 July:

"This year most LEAs' spending on centrally funded pupil services, such as special educational needs … has increased significantly faster than their spending on budgets delegated to individual schools. It is essential that, in future … spending on such central items should rise no faster than spending on the individual schools budget."—[Official Report, 17 July 2003; Vol. 409, c. 456.]

We have, however, commissioned an investigation into SEN spending. With the support of the Local Government Association, the Audit Commission and the head teacher unions, the investigation will provide more detailed information about the ways in which money is spent on special educational needs.

The hon. Member for St. Ives asked what schools are supposed to do to avoid making teachers and support staff redundant. As I have mentioned, the Secretary of State made a statement on 15 May allowing schools to use their budgets flexibly this year—in particular, the formula on capital funding to support revenue spending—to borrow consolidated balances and to set deficit budgets. The appropriate level of school reserves is a local matter to be agreed between schools and LEAs. They are best placed to understand the situation on the ground.

The next question concerned whether the DFES would make it clear that it would support schools that had no alternative but to set a deficit budget. We appreciate that some schools have found it necessary to set deficit budgets this year by agreement with their LEAs. Some have found it necessary to spend from their reserves or devolved formula capital allocations. Schools and LEAs have the primary responsibility to manage the ongoing consequences of such decisions, including maintaining sound financial management and balancing budgets. We recognise that that could be beyond the capacity of individual schools and LEAs, and in those few cases, we will be prepared to consider limited, transitional support to avoid damage to children's education, where that is part of the recovery plan agreed locally by the LEA, schools and the Department. We shall discuss with heads and LEAs how best to provide such support.

We intend that the extra £800 million over two years will be provided without any strings attached for schools and that they should treat it precisely as a top-up to their budgets, just like the school standards grant. With our national partners, including LEA representatives, we are considering how best to ensure that we deliver that.

Does the Department intend simply to disburse that money per capita across the country, or will it use a more sophisticated method?

I am afraid that I, or the Minister for School Standards, will have to contact the hon. Gentleman because I do not have that information. [Interruption.] I will resist the temptation to repeat what the hon. Gentleman is saying from his sedentary position.

The hon. Gentleman asked me, as did the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady), when the LEAs will be told the indicative budget for the next financial year. We will announce the figures by the time of the provisional local government financial settlement in November, when we have completed the work with our education partners on the detailed analysis of cost pressures in the system. Once we have that analysis, we will be able to set the minimum percentage increase for 2004–05.

I was asked about the Department's plans for the standards funds, which were originally to be removed in 2004–05 and the following year; the question was whether those will remain and, if so, whether they will still be used for the same purpose. We intend to provide that new money—£400 million in each of the two years—without any strings attached, as I have already mentioned.

I will write to the hon. Member for St. Ives about what assessment has been made of the impact of the flexible use of devolved formula capital for building improvements and developments. As to how much of next year's school funding will have to be found by council tax payers, I remind hon. Members that council tax is an essential element of paying for local services. Providing funding for education is a shared responsibility, so it is appropriate that it should be met by both central and local taxation. There is no reason why any authority should need to increase its council tax excessively.

I will write to the hon. Gentleman about changing guidelines and teachers' performance-related pay. I am sure that the Minister for School Standards would be pleased to consider meeting a delegation from Cornwall, and I suggest that the hon. Member for St. Ives write to him directly. I am happy to assure the hon. Gentleman that schools facing deficit budgets this year will in no way be disadvantaged in their bids for specialist status. I will write to him also on the question of demographic trends.

I know that the funding situation this year has been difficult. I do not agree with the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West that this is a gross betrayal of parents and teachers. I have dealt with him a great deal over the years, and he has made some very flattering comments, but he is the man who put the hype into hyperbole. Let us get some rational balance in the debate. We provided additional help from the centre, and some authorities have provided more from their own resources.

Many authorities and schools have faced up to difficult decisions, and it is clearly vital that we continue to focus on the problems that we face and that we seek to resolve them. We have to look forward and learn quickly from this experience so that we can put in place better arrangements for next year. We have been working hard to do that. We have been working hard to do that, and we will shortly be making a further announcement that will cover many of the points raised by hon. Members from all parties about the necessary changes.

I hope that it will not be regarded as condescending if I welcome the Minister to the debate and say that I have always regarded him as one of the small band of sincere and committed MPs with independence and integrity. I was genuinely surprised when he was appointed to his position because I know that Governments of all parties do not like that kind of person in their outfit.

The Minister has a particularly difficult job, as he knows, because the situation in the Foreign Office now seems to be rather like that in Iran, where power is divided between a supreme leader and an elected President. We now seem to have two Foreign Offices: one in Whitehall and one in Downing street. I appreciate that the policy on Iran seems to have been changed in July by Downing street and that, for that reason, the Minister will probably be unable to give a very helpful reply to my arguments. My hope is that he will think carefully about the issues that I raise.

There is certainly no doubt about the change that has taken place. I could cite a multitude of reports of the Foreign Office's positive attitude to Iran. I have the report of a lovely speech by the present Leader of the House, which was made when he was a Foreign Office Minister, in which very positive things were said. However, things have changed and we must accept that.

I am very upset about the change because, given the many and complex problems over the war with Iraq, it must be obvious to the Government and the United States of America that we should be doing everything in our power to show encouragement and understanding to the more responsible, sensible and constructive nations in the middle east. The Minister will be aware that I was one of the small minority who did not support the policy in Iraq, for reasons that I explained in a debate on 18 March. We are in danger of making another huge error in our relations with Iran.

In the case of Iraq there was the 45-minute threat from the weapons of mass destruction. We have now placed a 45-day demand on Iran over its nuclear programme through the International Atomic Energy Agency following the surprise initiative with Australia, Canada and Japan. The demand has caused huge resentment in Iran, particularly as the Government there had been co-operating with the IAEA and had gained the impression that progress was being made. Of course, those could be treated as the pathetic arguments of a guilty nation. However, to my great surprise, I came across a document that had been handed out to the board of governors by the director general of that international authority. I read it through carefully and it mentions some of the problems and some of the ensuing issues. I could quote all kinds of positive things. The document was issued not last year, not two years ago, but on 26 August.

I will simply quote the last paragraph, although many things in the document are positive and encouraging. The last paragraph states:

"Since my last report was issued Iran has demonstrated an increased degree of co-operation in relation to the amount and detail of information provided to the Agency and in allowing access requested by the Agency to additional locations and the taking of associated environmental samples. The decision by Iran to start the negotiations with the Agency for the conclusion of an additional protocol is also a positive step".

The report indicates that, although there are and have been problems, Iran has been trying to help and to make things positive. The director general said that he would report further at the November meeting or earlier.

The report contains a huge number of positive and encouraging statements about Iran. For me, the fascinating one was in paragraph 25 where the board appeared to accept the Iranian argument that depleted uranium particles, which have caused so much concern, could have originated from the imported containers. When one looks at the report and considers what we have done in giving an instruction to Iran—the 45-day rule—it seems foolish and almost arrogant to upset, and cause unnecessary conflict with, a country that, if we dealt with it in the right way, could play a really positive role.

The whole business has caused huge anger in Iran, and my greatest fear is that its result will be seen in the parliamentary elections in March 2004. It is no secret that since democracy returned to Iran there has been a huge dispute between those referred to as the modernisers and those referred to as the traditionalists or conservatives. The Parliament and the President are both liberal in attitude, but the manner in which we are dealing with Iran seems almost designed to promote the strength of the negative fundamentalists. The Parliament is at present controlled by the modernisers and the President is very much a moderniser, but if we carry on in this way we are simply undermining good will. That will lead to more stone-throwing, shooting and the rest of it.

Notwithstanding what the hon. Gentleman has said, I wonder whether he shares the concern of members of the Baha'i faith about the fact that, since the commission on human rights decided to suspend international monitoring in Iran in April 2002, there has been a marked increase in persecution of members of the Baha'i faith in that country.

The hon. Gentleman has made an important point. I have met and talked to members of the Baha'i faith and people from Iran. I am told by the representative of the Iranian Government that members of the Baha'i faith are entitled to move in and out of the country without difficulty. There is a problem with attendance at university, which seems to relate to whether we regard the Baha'i as a faith or a sect. That type of problem will have to be resolved. I certainly hope that it can be, because when all religions, and branches of religions, are treated fairly it makes for a stronger country. I can only tell the hon. Gentleman that my impression is that, overall, religious tolerance is better in Iran than in many of the surrounding countries, but I fully accept that his point is important and significant. I hope that the Minister will raise the issue with the Iranian authorities if he is allowed to meet them or speak to them.

I have referred to my concerns about the 45-day notice, but there are a number of other issues that I hope the Minister will consider. First, there is the basic issue of whether we should show some humility in our dealings with Iran. Britain and the USA appear almost obsessed with arguing that we are fighting for the creation of democracy in the middle east. For example, we go around Iraq saying, "We want to make you free again and give you democracy." However, if I were Iranian, I would recall how only a few years ago Britain and its allies gave total and complete support to the hereditary Shah of Iran, who was elected by nobody and who was totally in charge of Iran. It seems that we only support democracy when it suits us.

When the Shah was replaced in the great revolution, the western powers, including Britain, appeared so concerned that we financed and armed an evil military despot in Iraq called Saddam Hussein so that he could invade Iran. There was a frightful war in which Iran survived only because of the determination of its people. There is no doubt about the weapons of mass destruction that were supplied to Saddam Hussein, because they are listed in the Reigle report, produced in America by the Senate. Of course, that is now rather difficult to get hold of, because circulation of such documents is not encouraged at present. However, the list is there, and it is clear and precise. The supply of those arms was in breach of the biological and toxic weapons convention, but I am told that such conventions are not meant to be applied to the nations of the west—according to the United States, anyway.

Then there was the dreadful destruction of the plane above the Persian gulf, which had 270 Iranians on it, almost all women and children. Not even an apology was given for that disaster. I make those points to explain that kindness and consideration has not always been shown to Iran, and we should bear that in mind when making fresh demands on the country.

What is the situation in Iran? There is no doubt that since the time of the Shah, Iran has introduced a form of democracy that enables the people to express their opinions in elections for their President and Parliament. In fairness, the power is shared to some degree between the supreme leadership and the President, but it is clear from all the recent elections that people are on the side of the liberal elements in society. Clearly, we should be encouraging them; instead we seem to be going out of our way to be negative in our dealings with Iran, thereby undermining the moderate and positive elements of Iranian society.

Has Iran helped or hindered in the battle against terrorism? We hear many reports about links with organisations, but we know that Iran was more than helpful in arguing for the release of persons detained in Lebanon and elsewhere, including Terry Waite. It was also helpful in the battle against the Taliban in Afghanistan. I understand that Iran would be glad to help in the battle against al-Qaeda, and it would be helpful if we could do something about those in Iraq who are causing troubles for Iran.

One of the recent, huge problems in Iraq, which the Prime Minister referred to at Question Time, is the shortage of public services. One such shortage, mentioned by the Prime Minister today, was that of electricity. Is it the case that the UK asked Iran to help with the provision of electricity to Iraq and that Iran gave a positive answer?

What are the Minister's views on Iran's attitude to women? Many of us have concerns about the extremists in the middle east and elsewhere who deprive women of their proper place in society and give them no rights or opportunities. Is it true that Iranian women are given greater opportunities and rights, and that more than half of the students in Iranian universities are women?

How do we respond? We still apply sanctions against Iran because of what we regard as defence matters—of course, the USA has more comprehensive sanctions. I am told that Iran's commercial and domestic airliners are terribly out of date and that there are huge safety problems as a consequence; will the Minister say whether that is right? The US declined to supply Iran with replacement aircraft, and I am told that negotiations for a fleet of Airbuses were suddenly and abruptly stopped. Is this the way to make friends? Do we treat Iran with dignity? It was reported in The Guardian on 4 September that the President of Iran had sent a letter to our Prime Minister assuring him that Iran was willing to meet its non-proliferation treaty obligations following a demand from the Government. However, the newspaper stated that no reply had been received.

Likewise, I would like an explanation from the Government on an issue that has caused huge concern in Iran: the arrest of Hade Soleimanpour—who was at one time Iran's ambassador in Argentina—at Durham university, where he was studying. The fact that he was an ambassador at the time of the alleged crime appeared to indicate that his arrest would be contrary to the Vienna convention. However, leaving that aside, it is known that he was not in Argentina at the time of the crime. As the Minister knows, the case was considered in court on 12 September and the High Court judge stated that there was no evidence that he was involved in the bomb attack nine years ago. In view of the fact that the whole business has caused huge concern in Iran, will the Government say why and how they acted as they did? Clearly there must be an explanation, and I would like to know what it is.

I could go on and on, but the one thing that most worries me is that there seem to be two separate foreign policies on Iran, as with so many other issues these days: one from the Foreign Office and one from No.10. The Foreign Office has shown some positive responses to Iran in the past and they were appreciated and produced results. However, it appears that since the July meeting, people have said that the Prime Minister has changed his mind and is now going to be negative towards Iran and that there has been a change of policy. I am not suggesting that some nations are perfect and others are disaster areas. I know that in Iran there are many problems, one of which, affecting the Baha'i, was referred to. However, I believe that Iran is a nation with a great history, which has sought to play a positive and meaningful role in the world, particularly in the middle east. Instead of trying to encourage and help it in its task, we seem now to be treating it with mere contempt.

My fear is that if we do not show a positive attitude to Iran, we shall probably be throwing away an opportunity to help to resolve the problems that exist in the middle east and which threaten the safety and security of the world. The Minister will know from contacts, from speaking to people and from listening to those in Iraq that the impression is that in the Arab world we are regarded, along with the Americans, as the enemies of Islam, and as killers and invaders. Although such allegations may be terribly untrue, we must get friends in the Arab world if we are to win that battle. We must look for people who can help and be positive, so that we can show that we are not on our own and that our particular interests are worth while.

I am not an expert on this subject—I have never been to the country—but I hope that the Government and the Minister will consider these issues. I have a high regard for the hon. Gentleman and, although I know that he is restricted in what he can say as a Minister, I hope that he will make a positive contribution.

I thank the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend, East (Sir Teddy Taylor) for his kind words about me. Integrity and independence are two words that I also associate with him. My elevation to Government might bode well for him in some future—distant future, I hope—Conservative Government.

I will jump straight in at the deep end. The hon. Gentleman has raised several issues. He asked whether we recognise the importance of Iran and of treating it with respect, and whether we understand that it is not a totalitarian dictatorship and that it has made great progress in some areas. He specifically raised Iran's nuclear programme; co-operation with it over Iraq and terrorism; human rights, including women's issues; our embargo on arms-related sales to Iran; the recent correspondence between President Khatami and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister; and the case of Mr. Soleimanpour. I will try to deal with those points in order.

We are in no doubt that Iran is a country of growing international importance. Its size, population, key strategic position and natural resources are plain for all to see, and we have a strong national interest in the policies pursued by its Government. We can and do co-operate with the Iranian Government on questions where we share a common interest. There are respects in which we have a strong interest in encouraging the reformist tendencies that are active in many areas of Iranian life. There are other areas where we continue to have considerable concerns about the policies that the Iranian Government are pursuing. Together with our partners in the EU, it is our policy to pursue a constructive—and, where necessary, critical—engagement. The areas of common interest on which we engage with Iran include the fight against drugs—which is a great concern for many of our constituents and a major problem in Iran—international support for the reconstruction of Afghanistan, and the effort to stabilise Iraq.

For many years, Iran has hosted more than 2 million refugees from both Afghanistan and Iraq. We have provided a great deal of support for that—we have given more than £4.3 million in the past three years for refugee programmes in Iran, and we have also agreed to fund several projects involving United Nations agencies and non-governmental organisations.

We regularly discuss Iraq with our Iranian counterparts, including the possibilities for practical co-operation. Like the UK, Iran is committed to the maintenance of Iraq's sovereignty and territorial integrity within its borders. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has visited Iran four times in the past year and he maintains an active dialogue from week to week with his Iranian opposite number, Dr. Kharrazi. Our relationship with Iran allows us to support reform while maintaining a robust dialogue on areas of mutual concern. This has been made possible only by the changes that have taken place in Iran since President Khatami was first elected in May 1997.

That brings me to the hon. Gentleman's third point, which is whether we understand that Iran is not a totalitarian dictatorship. We support President Khatami's objective of bringing about an Islamic civil society based on the rule of law. We welcomed his re-election in June 2001 with an increased share of the vote, which demonstrated the Iranian people's clear will for reform and gave him a strong mandate. However, as the hon. Gentleman knows, the complex political situation in Iran has created many obstacles to the President's efforts to pursue his policies of political and economic reform. We hope he succeeds and we wish him well with those.

Those are positive developments. It would, however, be wrong of me not to take this opportunity to set out for the record the areas of Iranian policy that concern us most. We are worried by Iran's human rights record and by continuing Iranian support for terrorist groups, including those involved in the Israel-Palestine conflict. We are particularly worried by reports that Iran is developing weapons of mass destruction and about the uncertainties surrounding its nuclear programme. I shall return to that subject in a few moments.

We welcome the efforts of the Iranian Government and Parliament to improve the human rights situation and the position of women. I acknowledge, as the hon. Gentleman asked me to, that the position of women in Iran is a great deal more advanced than in many other middle eastern societies. However, we regret that because of the political stand-off between reformers and their conservative opponents, including some members of the judiciary, there is still a long way to go.

We take every opportunity to press Iran on its approach to the middle east peace process—peace there is in everyone's interests, including those of Iran. We believe that the attitude of the Iranians to the peace process should be more constructive and that they should support efforts to resolve the differences between those involved. We are concerned about Iranian resources being used by Palestinian groups that carry out atrocious and unacceptable attacks on civilians in Israel. We might argue about the definition of terrorism, but attacks on civilians can never be justified, whether in Israel or Palestine, or by terrorist groups in Iran. On wider anti-terrorism co-operation, Iran has told us that it has arrested al-Qaeda figures and that it will cooperate with us against international terrorism. We are pressing Iran to do so.

The hon. Gentleman raised a number of questions on United States Government policy on Iran, including on sanctions. I hope he will forgive me if I say that it would probably be better if those were addressed to the Government of the United States. He was correct to state that there remains in place a national UK embargo on the sale of all military-listed items to Iran, including some dual-use items, but that does not affect the provision of medical supplies.

I should also like to reassure the hon. Gentleman that all letters from President Khatami to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister are treated with due respect. Replies are not necessarily sent according to a fixed time, but are sent after full consideration of both their content and the surrounding circumstances.

The hon. Gentleman asked whether, as a diplomat, Mr. Soleimanpour should have been immune from detention. The short answer is that he is not accredited as a diplomat here. He is a student at Durham university, and as such he enjoys no immunity in this country. The extradition process is currently a matter for the judicial authorities and I am sure that he will understand that the Government cannot interfere with that. It is therefore a matter of regret that some in Iran have consistently misrepresented the nature of the case and the role of the British Government. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will understand that I cannot comment further on a case that is now before the courts. However, I have something to say about some of the non-legal ramifications of that case.

I regret to say that on 14 September there was a further shooting incident outside one of the compounds of Her Majesty's embassy at Tehran. That was certainly the third, and perhaps the fourth, such shooting since the beginning of this month. We have protested strongly to the Iranian Government and have urged them to take the necessary measures to deal with the perpetrators to acknowledge that such systematic intimidation of an embassy is wrong, against Iranian law and will be met with the full force of the law, whoever is involved. We have also pressed them to ensure the full protection of our embassy, and we will continue to make these points strongly to the Iranian authorities. It is difficult to enjoy good relations with a country when some of its citizens are shooting at our embassy with apparent impunity.

I mentioned earlier that one of our particular concerns is Iran's nuclear programme. As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, the IAEA's governing board met in Vienna last week, and adopted by consensus a resolution setting specific steps that Iran should take to help restore international confidence in its nuclear intentions. We regret that ahead of that resolution Iran walked out of the meeting. The aim of the resolution was to set out a way for Iran to resolve outstanding issues with the IAEA, and walking out will not help achieve that. We call on Iran to comply with all the provisions of that resolution; doing so will provide the clearest possible demonstration of Iran's stated commitment to transparency and co-operation in this field.

In case there should be any misunderstanding, and as EU partners have repeatedly made clear, we recognise Iran's right to generate electricity by means of nuclear power, subject, of course, to the necessary international safeguards. However, ceasing to develop facilities by means of which fissile material could be produced indigenously, together with rapid implementation of an additional protocol to Iran's existing comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA, would be key confidence-building steps.

The requirements set out in the resolution are no more than would be expected of any country that was a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and about whose nuclear programmes there was continued uncertainty. The intention is to enable Iran to resolve its outstanding difficulties identified by the IAEA. I therefore welcome Iran's statement to the IAEA general conference on 16 September, reaffirming Iran's commitment to the non-proliferation treaty and to its safeguards agreement and its commitment to negotiate an additional protocol.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the issue of Iran. I know that he has a long-standing interest in this area. It is timely that he should have secured the debate now, given the events of the past few days—I do not suppose that they were on his mind when he requested the debate. I assure him and other hon. Members that the Foreign Office and the Government take Iran very seriously. There is the closest possible consultation between my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister. The Government are united in supporting a tough policy against terrorism and nuclear proliferation wherever it occurs, and we, together with our EU partners, will continue to do all we can to support the process of reform in Iran, launched by President Khatami in 1997. Engagement is a two-way process and we look forward to Iran's co-operation on the issues of concern that I have outlined.

Might we perhaps have some positive outcome from today's debate if the Minister and the Government agreed to try to co-operate to see whether we could sell Iran some Airbuses to replace the local aircraft that are falling apart? That would bring money and jobs to Europe and good will to Iran and might help to solve all the problems. Would that not be a sensible thing to do? Will the Minister discuss that with his colleagues?

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will not expect me to clinch a deal in the closing minutes of the debate, but I assure him that I shall take his point away and ensure that it is heard in appropriate quarters.

The Minister referred to the human rights situation in Iran, and I referred in my intervention to the persecution of the Baha'i. Can the Minister tell us whether, when such issues are drawn to the attention of Ministers, they are raised with counterparts in the Iranian Government, either face to face or through the European Union's human rights dialogue with that Government?

Yes, I can confirm that the issue of the treatment of the Baha'i, and of Christian minorities, has been raised repeatedly with the Iranian Government, who are well aware of our views on the subject. The Iranians are fully aware that we believe that the persecution of individuals on the grounds of their religious beliefs is completely unacceptable. While that situation carries on, they will continue to hear from us about it.

Unlike some other politicians in recent times, I start from the premise that there is such a thing as society. I want the Government to do for social behaviour what they have done so successfully for literacy and numeracy. That policy was an outstanding success in the first few years of the Government. I want them to consider whether they have a vision to take social behaviour to the same levels that have been so well achieved for literacy and numeracy.

We hear a lot about antisocial behaviour. I commend the work of local councils, the Government and our public services to combat the problem. During recent years, it has dominated the postbags of hon. Members throughout the parliamentary spectrum, regardless of party. It blights the lives of ever more of my constituents in Nottingham, North and no doubt in your constituency, too, Mr. Benton.

The campaign must be organised on two fronts. As well as doing what we have done so well in the Antisocial Behaviour Bill and the Criminal Justice Bill by attacking antisocial behaviour, we need to promote positive social behaviour so that the problem is tackled on both wings—the carrot and the stick. I am setting out on my learning curve for the campaign and I have no prescriptions for action, other than a strong sense that a statutory element is needed in the national curriculum up to seven years of age, just as we have citizenship in the national curriculum at secondary level. We need something measurable if we are to initiate the required extra necessary or remedial work at the earliest moment in a child's life. Beyond that, my mind is open. Building on personal, social and health education, developing emotional intelligence and the ability of children to relate to each other without violence can all help to create good, rounded people regardless of academic achievement, which cannot help but increase when more young people are mentally equipped to learn.

I have been greatly encouraged by the good will surrounding the concept. A few weeks ago, David Bell of Ofsted courageously raised the issue publicly. Along with the Minister for Children and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education, the Secretary of State for Education and Skills is already joining up Whitehall on such issues. He has suggested that I keep in touch with him on the agenda. Indeed, I wish to put it on the record that my right hon. Friend generously allowed me access to discussions with some helpful civil servants.

The former city council leader, Councillor Graham Chapman, is a constant inspiration to me when taking on the toughest issues in our local communities. The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) realises, as I do, that the issue transcends party politics. All parties, Ministers and shadow Ministers have a lot to swallow and much to think about, not least the life-academic balance in education. That is necessary to enable good social behaviour, not merely disable the systems of antisocial behaviour.

I am not suggesting that schools alone should take responsibility for inculcating social behaviour in our children. On the contrary, it requires a collective effort in which families and carers will play a leading part. However, the plain truth is that, day by day throughout the country, teachers are being forced to assume that task on their own. They are having to cope with children who have never learned how to communicate, how to express their feelings and manage their emotions, how to follow rules and routines or how to act in company with others—in other words, children who have never been socialised.

My right hon. Friend the Minister will know from his postbag—I have learned this during my brief time in the House—that an ever larger percentage of the trouble is caused by us having to skew our efforts to deal with the problems created by children who have not been properly socialised. If nothing else, putting social behaviour on the national curriculum would reward the teacher who succeeded, often against all the odds, in getting persistently disruptive children to stay still and be quiet during their lessons. It would also give teachers some guidance and support in what I would argue is a most important yet scarcely recognised aspect of their job.

I suggest that putting social behaviour on the national curriculum would help to define the required standards, and would force all departments and agencies to examine their input and decide what policies are necessary to achieve appropriate social behaviour. All of us, in our public lives and as private citizens, have to live with the cost of our collective failure to develop social behaviour—parents whose children's classes are disrupted; teachers who have to practice crowd control to the exclusion of teaching; heads who want to include but are made to go through the process of exclusion; truant and welfare officers; and, later in life, staff in social services and housing departments, councillors, those involved in drug rehabilitation, police officers, youth offending teams, magistrates courts and prisons. It adds up to a lifetime of expensive and time-consuming public service input.

Then there are the wider victims—bullied kids, frightened neighbours, repressed communities and victims of criminality—who in turn have their own children, who are often brought up to perpetuate and widen the antisocial cycle. We must not forget the greatest victims of all—the children, who massively fail to realise their human potential, sometimes arriving on their first day at primary school already emotionally disfigured and permanently hobbled by ignorance. I often think that it would be much easier for us to get a handle on the problem if it took a more physical form, and the children showed up at the school gate visibly gnarled and malformed. Thankfully, however, that does not happen.

Academic studies show that good parenting has a higher educational impact than schooling. I am grateful to the Minister for Children for supplying me with the information to support that proposition. It is not about blaming parents in general, many of whom do heroic things to ensure the best for their children's development. Parents must take responsibility for their children, and we should help and encourage them to do so. We should not hanker after a parental golden age—it never existed—nor should we return to the practice of giving children so-called discipline.

We should look instead to a time when all children can enjoy the right to a decent life, and they should have the social toolkit to make the best of themselves inside and outside school. That will not drop off the Christmas tree; we have to work for it. We have to prepare for that and implement our plans. I hope that the Government will continue the great work that has already been done to ensure that all children are able to prepare for school in the right way.

Much of the problem starts before school. The problems of an antisocial youth can be regressed to the first day at primary school. Head teachers, as hon. Members know from talking to them, can spot the children who are going to go wrong. However, we can and must take that regression back even further—if necessary, back to birth.

What role do we envisage for the health visitor in spotting those children who may be at risk of not receiving appropriate behavioural education? Should additional resources be devoted to them, at the earliest and probably most effective time? Should the Child Support Agency be involved at that point to ensure that the father's responsibility is not merely financial? Should a named local public service officer—this is about devolving responsibilities and making people accountable—be responsible for monitoring a dozen local families and charting their progress through life? A loving mother and/or father armed with the right knowledge at that point is the strongest antidote to the development of an antisocial child.

Parenting classes should be pre-natal as well as post-natal and, in an appropriate form, should be a thread throughout a child's life in the teaching of what could be called a social behaviour hour in the mandatory national curriculum. Parents could make links with the national curriculum through family learning. Parenting programmes are producing some very encouraging results, but they must be complemented by developing programmes to prevent antisocial behaviour in young children, not merely by reacting to misbehaviour when it has occurred, as has to happen.

I hope to work towards some of the answers when I convene a brains trust of primary heads in Nottingham, North next month. Perhaps I can suggest that, as a practical outcome of this debate, the Minister or one of his colleagues write to hon. Members of all parties to encourage them to do the same. We should engage Members of Parliament in this issue, and ask them to convene meetings of primary heads, educational welfare officers and local councillors to pool expertise and perhaps deliver answers, then send reports to the Minister or Secretary of State. The Secretary of State or Prime Minister might then consider giving the matter the political profile that it needs and initiate a genuine national debate. That is not an idea that I necessarily want the Minister to snap up today, but perhaps he could give it some thought.

There is so much brilliant and innovative best practice, not only at Government and local government level but on the ground in primary, pre-school and post-natal education. I know that for a fact from my constituency, where sure start and PSHE teaching are making a real impact; but we must go further. We must set out for the next term and the term after that a vision of what we want to achieve on this very sensitive matter. It is also politically sensitive. It concerns all our electors and all our constituencies. One thread must be making best practice universal.

I may appear to be contradicting myself, but I believe that anything included in the national curriculum on social behaviour must have flexibility. It does not have to be prescriptive. As my right hon. Friend knows, Nottingham, North has the ward with the lowest educational attainment in the United Kingdom: it has the fewest kids going to university of any constituency in the UK and five of the bottom 25 comprehensives in the UK. How social behaviour would be taught in my constituency need not necessarily be the model for everywhere. We may have something to teach other people, but they may have something to teach us. Anything put into the national curriculum should have the flexibility to allow for individual circumstances.

If the Government wish to think further on this important topic, which is all that I ask of the Minister today, I am sure that we in Nottingham will do all that we can to pilot and develop the idea. We—and society as a whole—have so much to gain if we take it seriously.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on securing the debate. I hope that I can reassure him in my response of the Government's strong commitment to ensuring that children and young people can contribute fully to society through the development of positive social behaviour. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Children would very much like to have been here for this debate, because she is passionate about the issue—almost as much so as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North. His is a really good idea, and changing the emphasis from antisocial behaviour to social behaviour has a parallel in social exclusion: we first started talking about social exclusion and then started to talk of social inclusion.

I want to outline the range of opportunities that is already available in the school curriculum for young people to learn about responsibilities, whether moral, social or parental, or those of citizens. I shall set out the work that we are doing to address antisocial behaviour in and out of schools before it becomes problematic, and shall refer to a variety of initiatives that support effective parenting and improve family functioning. Finally, I shall outline the plans set out in the recent Green Paper, "Every Child Matters", both to review family policy and to ensure that we have a coherent account of the work across Government that affects families. My hon. Friend's campaign, which we were at the launch of today, will be an important part of those deliberations.

The national curriculum ensures that schools provide a broad and balanced education for all pupils, and social behaviour is taught throughout the curriculum; however, citizenship, and personal, social and health education are the most important subjects for many schools. Giving pupils opportunities to learn about responsibilities is central to citizenship education, which is compulsory for all those between the ages of 11 and 16. My hon. Friend made the point about moving that range back, which we should consider. The programmes of study for citizenship ensure that pupils will learn about the rights and responsibilities that underpin society. Studying citizenship complements the framework of PSHE, which provides for pupils in both primary and secondary schools to be taught about relationships, including marriage and those between friends and families, and to develop the skills to be effective in relationships. The framework also provides for those pupils to be taught about the role and feelings of parents and carers, the value of family life, the nature and importance of marriage for family life and bringing up children, the role and responsibilities of a parent, and the qualities of good parenting and its value to family life.

We want schools to have the freedom to explore with young people a broad range of issues, in relation to which we would all want them to behave responsibly as adults. We believe that PSHE and citizenship provide opportunities to teach about social behaviour in the curriculum and the responsibilities of parenthood and family life. The non-statutory nature of the PSHE framework means that teachers have the flexibility to deliver the subject in ways that best meet the needs of their pupils. Teaching beyond the curriculum, however, is just as important. The Robin Hood primary school in Nottinghamshire, for example, had concerns about poor standards of behaviour, which led to an extensive programme of out-of-hours learning, including football clubs. That built self-esteem and improved results.

It is crucial that good standards of behaviour are promoted and that any problem behaviour is identified and tackled quickly. However, surveys show that the vast majority of teachers consider pupil behaviour to be generally good, with a majority believing that standards are improving, although poor behaviour is of course a serious problem where it occurs. It has an impact not just on the individual pupil, but on the whole class. We are committed to raising standards further still and are investing almost £470 million over the next three years to do so. This September every LEA is being funded to appoint expert behaviour and attendance consultants, in order to help schools maintain and secure high levels of positive behaviour and attendance, and tackle bullying wherever it occurs. In addition, senior staff in all secondary and middle schools are being trained to use audits to identify current strengths and weaknesses in behaviour and attendance, and to draw up action plans.

It is crucial that we instil good standards of behaviour in children from an early age. This month we are rolling out a two-year attendance and behaviour pilot in primary schools in 25 LEAs. The pilot will test new social and emotional behaviour teaching materials developed in line with literacy and numeracy strategies for primary schools, so there is a link there with the points made by my hon. Friend. That will develop a model for supporting school improvement where behaviour and attendance are key issues, which could lead to a social behaviour hour, or a part of the day dedicated to that subject.

Some pupils have greater difficulties that impact on their behaviour and we have developed a range of support measures for those pupils, their families and teachers. They include multi-agency behaviour and educational support teams, which have proved highly effective by providing early professional intervention for pupils and their families to help them deal with behaviour issues and prevent problems from escalating. We are currently funding 93 of those teams in 36 local education authorities, and that will be extended to a further 27 LEAs early next year.

Learning support units are helping to minimise disruption in the classroom and reduce the number of exclusions by removing pupils with behavioural difficulties from mainstream classes. Such units provide a setting to educate those pupils and address their behavioural difficulties within the school so that they can be effectively reintegrated at the earliest opportunity.

Involving parents at an early stage of their child's antisocial behaviour helps prevent it from becoming entrenched. That is why we are proposing in the Antisocial Behaviour Bill that youth offending teams will have a statutory power to make parenting contracts with parents of children who are engaging, or are likely to engage, in offending or antisocial behaviour in the community. The introduction of parenting contracts will give youth offending teams an additional tool to tackle antisocial behaviour effectively, and give them some authority with the parents to whom they are offered.

I am very pleased to hear what the Minister has said so far. Aside from the cultural aim of ensuring that our estates return to a decent level of social behaviour, I appeal to him economically. He will be aware that given the amount of money that has to be spent on one disruptive child who may then encounter the criminal justice system or drug rehab, public service is paying for a lifetime of getting it wrong instead of spending a couple of thousand pounds on intervention early on in life. That is an economic argument; I know that the Minister is keen to expand the provision for education post-16 and perhaps he may be able to corner a little money if he gets the issue of social behaviour right too.

I agree that there is an economic case for early intervention and preventing the problems from arising in the first place. That is a very important part of the Green Paper that I shall mention in just a second.

Recent research commissioned by my Department highlights the crucial role of parenting in children's education. That is the nub of the debate this afternoon. In particular, it highlights the crucial role of parenting for primary age children. That is why our strong commitment to supporting families is central to our vision. Strong families are at the heart of strong communities, and successful and confident parenting is essential to help to create healthy families.

Our role as a Government is to enable parents to do the best they can for their children. Most parents strive to do so, but how they do that will vary according to individual parents' own experiences. An effective means of providing direct support in parenting is through the voluntary sector. For example, the new parenting fund will provide £25 million over three years for voluntary and community sector initiatives to help parents improve their parenting skills. Sure start children's centres—one of the most, if not the most successful initiative of this Government—will also have an important role to play. Integrated support programmes provide services such as outreach support, home visits, community support, child minding networks, counselling and parenting classes.

Finally, it is important to identify areas in which more joined-up policy development may be necessary to ensure that work is as effective as possible. I am sure that my hon. Friend recognises that the creation of the department in the Department for Education and Skills, which under my right hon. Friend the Minister for Children is taking in all the various children's issues from other Government Departments, is a step in the right direction.

A review led by the family policy unit will map current Government work and provide a coherent account of what the Government are doing to support children and their families. The Green Paper, "Every Child Matters" did not receive much press coverage, but was an important document in this whole sphere and for education. In it, we set out our aim to ensure that every child has the chance to fulfil their potential. We described our proposals for building on the progress already made and the main areas for further action to improve children's lives. They include improving parenting and family support, and early intervention when problems are identified.

The range of measures that I have described to support the teaching of social behaviour in the classroom provides a firm foundation on which to build. Some of the suggestions made by my hon. Friend are important in taking that forward. We have the foundations and we now need to build on them.

I sense that my right hon. Friend is coming to the end of his comments and I want to draw him further on a couple of matters. As well as being a distinguished Minister, my right hon. Friend is a Member of Parliament for an area not dissimilar to mine. He must have seen the consequences of antisocial behaviour, weekend after weekend at his surgeries. He knows what it means to our electorate.

Will my right hon. Friend take back to our right hon. Friend the Minister for Children the idea of involving Members of Parliament as a sounding board on the possibilities that I have outlined today? Will he also take back to her the possibility of convening a group of Members of Parliament of all parties with an interest in the matter and using it as her own focus group or brains trust to try to bring forward some ideas from the very good practice that exists across the United Kingdom?

I certainly take that suggestion on board. It would be good for parliamentarians and Parliament to play such a co-ordinating role. I cannot think of any other person in a community better placed than the local Member of Parliament to galvanise action in that direction. I am sure that when my hon. Friend has his meeting with primary school heads in Nottingham, North shortly they will turn up in droves, as I am sure they would in west Hull and Bootle. My ministerial colleague will be very interested in that suggestion and in my hon. Friend's point that this is a cross-party issue with huge support throughout the House. Again, it will benefit Parliament to be seen to be acting in a cross-party way on such issues.

We have laid the foundations. Equally important is the range of initiatives to support parents in their role as children's first educators and enduring role models. Most of the social divisions in society and educational attainment problems are embedded by the age of three, which is why sure start was such an important initiative. Those measures and the proposals in the Green Paper to provide better early identification of problems are important.

In the last few seconds, could my right hon. Friend outline—he could write to me if he cannot answer immediately—the co-ordination that takes place, in addition to that through our right hon. Friend the Minister for Children, which is very welcome, at Cabinet and Cabinet Committee levels to ensure that social services and work and pensions issues are joined up throughout Whitehall? Everyone has an interest in the matter.

My right hon. Friend will write to my hon. Friend. She is very keen for it to work properly throughout Whitehall and the result will be more coherent support for the social development of every child, the result of which will be a better society.