What representations he has received on the provision of affordable housing in Wales; and what discussions he has had on this with the First Secretary of the National Assembly for Wales.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales and I receive representations from time to time on this subject. It and other matters are discussed regularly with Ministers in the National Assembly.

I thank the Minister for that less than illuminating reply. He will know that in the debate in the Welsh Grand Committee this morning there was considerable consensus on the problems of affordable housing in Wales. Is he prepared to meet colleagues and me, as well as Members from other political parties, to discuss that important issue and see whether we can come up with answers to this serious problem?

I welcome the comments that the hon. Gentleman made to me in the Welsh Grand Committee and, I believe, his support for what the Government are trying to do as a result of the Barker report, which was published last week. The Government have already introduced an exemption from stamp duty on property transactions under £150,000 in designated areas, which benefits 363 disadvantaged areas in Wales. The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill, when enacted, will require local planning authorities to take on board community views when they prepare local development plans. A number of initiatives are in the pipeline, but it would be beneficial to have a widespread discussion about how to overcome that difficulty in Wales.

Does my hon. Friend appreciate the fact that in a constituency such as mine the cost of housing is high, and every effort should be made to encourage housing associations to help people who do not necessarily want to rent to part-rent, part-buy. Such initiatives by, for example, the Gwerin housing association are most welcome. Can my hon. Friend speak with the First Minister to see how such schemes can be encouraged?

I welcome the point that my hon. Friend makes, and commend the homebuy scheme produced by the National Assembly. There is no limit on the proportion of resources that local authorities can spend on homebuy schemes, and rural authorities have allocated £2.6 million to them this year. Such initiatives are important, because we must try to make sure that more people can access affordable housing; and I believe that they will be beneficial.

What discussions he has had with the Home Secretary on the number of special constables in Wales.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have regular discussions with ministerial colleagues about matters affecting Wales. Together with police officers and community safety officers, special constables play an important part in modern-day policing, and the Government have recently announced plans to increase their numbers.

The Minister will know that there is great concern among the public about the lack of visibility of those responsible for law enforcement in this country. In view of that, and the fact that the number of Welsh special constables has been cut by 50 per cent. since 1997, is the Minister content? If he is not, what are he and his Department doing about it?

The Government have launched a national television campaign to recruit extra specials, but in Wales we have a record number of police constables, and we also have 126 community support officers. We are pushing forward with a recruitment drive for specials, as I said, but it ill behoves an Opposition Member to comment on police numbers, because when the leader of his party was Home Secretary, police numbers declined by 1,000.

Representing a Welsh constituency, and knowing what goes on in Wales, may I ask whether my hon. Friend is aware of the successful launch of an initiative by North Wales police to recruit more special constables? Its target is 25 new recruits a year, and is he aware that it is on target to meet that figure?

Yes, I am aware of the efforts made by North Wales police. Specials play a key role in representing their local communities in the police service, gathering important community intelligence to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour. In addition to 588 specials, we now have 7,366 police officers in Wales, together with 125 community safety officers, which is a record.

There are only 588 special constables in the whole of Wales, and I was disappointed by the Minister's rather complacent answer. Is he still prepared to maintain that nobody in his Department did anything to prompt the letter from the chief constable to me from which he quoted last time we had Welsh questions—nobody?

That is a grave and serious allegation, and there is no basis at all for it. I made the point to the hon. Gentleman in the last Welsh questions that my right hon. Friend had nothing to do with the letter from the chief constable, and I reiterate that that letter had nothing to do with the Wales Office. I urge him to withdraw that remark immediately.

Can I withdraw a question, Mr. Speaker? The Minister for Crime Reduction, Policing and Community Safety admitted that the views of the chief constable of North Wales were contrary to Government policy. The wife of the deputy chief constable of North Wales has called for a Home Office inquiry into the way in which the chief constable handled allegations against her husband that may have led to his suicide attempt. Will the Minister support her call—

Order. That has nothing to do with the question before us.

The issue of special constables was raised by a very able young constituent of mine called Alistair during a recent visit by Baroness Scotland to Pencoed school, as part of the big conversation. While I applaud the work that is now going on to recruit special constables, will my hon. Friend join me in stressing the element of partnership? It is not only special constables but community support officers, the increasing numbers of police and the community who have a role in making the sort of communities that we all want.

As I have travelled around Wales, I have been greatly encouraged by community activities involving the police service and other organisations, community groups in particular, aimed at building stronger and better communities and overcoming some of the types of antisocial behaviour that many of our communities face. I pay tribute to the police service for the important part they play in that.

Special constables in my area are aware of the greater burden being put on them with very little reward. That is not surprising, considering the appalling financial settlement that Dyfed-Powys police received in the latest police financial settlement. Will the Minister comment on that?

I do not believe that Dyfed-Powys had a bad settlement at all. Funding for the police properly remains a top priority for the Government, and there has been an increase of £403 million, or 4.2 per cent. in cash terms, for 2004–05. The police service faces considerable demands on its work force in terms of the responsibilities they carry out, but the Government, working in partnership with our colleagues in the Assembly and with local authorities, have made sure that the police service is well funded.

If he will discuss with the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry the establishment in north Wales of a research centre for the manufacture of renewable energy products.

I will certainly raise that with ministerial colleagues, because the Government are committed to their target of producing a far greater proportion of the UK's energy supply from renewable sources, with north Wales making a key contribution to that goal.

In the past fortnight my right hon. Friend visited the Sharp manufacturing plant in my constituency, where photovoltaic cells for the whole of Europe are to be produced. Is he aware that in Germany more than 130,000 jobs in the manufacture of photovoltaic cells have been created in the past five years? As we are looking forward to more house-building projects in the UK, is not the time right for seizing the initiative on photovoltaic cells, developing research and providing the infrastructure to make sure that when new houses are built, they are supplied with renewable energy sources constructed in Wales?

I agree with my hon. Friend. May I say how impressed I was with Sharp's new investment, creating 90 jobs, to build photovoltaic cells in Wrexham, when I visited the plant with him? It is a path-breaking initiative which, I hope, will create a centre of excellence in north Wales of the kind that he describes. He is right that we should find a way—this was raised in the energy White Paper of last year—of designing into new-build housing projects photovoltaic solar energy and other renewable energy sources.

In Germany, a price was set for the sale of renewable energy into the market. That is not the case in this country, and we do not even have net metering to allow householders to generate their own electricity, if necessary, from small-scale embedded renewable energy. As a former Energy Minister, what is the Secretary of State doing in discussions on the Energy Bill, which is shortly to come before the House, to ensure that we have opportunities for job creation in Wales for wind generation, tide and wave generation and the very useful photovoltaic cells being produced?

I welcome the point that the hon. Gentleman makes. I know that he has taken a close and informed interest in these matters. We want Wales to become a centre for green energy. We need to focus on the issues that he raises, which is why the Government have made available nearly £350 million for support for renewable energy projects right across Britain. Wales should claim its share of that.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned wind power. It is important that there be greater support from local communities and local authorities for planning consent to take forward wind power projects. Wales has a great deal to offer if we are to take a lead in renewable energy in that way.

Does the Secretary of State recognise the mounting concern that the Government will not meet their own renewable energy targets? Does he share the concern that not enough investment is being made in that industry, and admit that far too great an emphasis is being placed on wind farms to generate electricity, rather than any other form of new technology?

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that complementing wind power are biomass, photovoltaics and solar energy. An exciting new initiative called wave dragon is being developed around Milford Haven, involving a partnership between a Welsh company and a Danish company, which seeks to harness the power around the coasts of Wales using the newest technology. There are many different renewable energy opportunities in which the Government are providing a lead. May I say, in the nicest possible fashion, that the shadow Chancellor plans to cut support for renewable energy and other such programmes in the Department of Trade and Industry?

What discussions he has had with the (a) National Assembly for Wales Government and (b) Cabinet colleagues on the effects of Sure Start in Wales. [162545]

I regularly meet Cabinet colleagues and National Assembly Ministers to discuss a range of areas, including programmes such as Sure Start, which are helping to secure better outcomes for children, parents and communities.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that investment in the early years is the key to the future for children? Does he further agree that Cymorth, the umbrella organisation that includes Sure Start in Wales, is doing a really good job of reaching the most deprived children, and, together with Assembly policies such as free breakfasts for school children, is making a significant difference?

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. Support for that age group is crucial to opportunities later in life, and that is why the Assembly Government are funding Cymorth to the tune of £42 4 million during the coming year, a figure increased year upon year. It is interesting that, although the Opposition would apparently ring-fence the schools budget, the shadow Chancellor's plans, which I am sure that my hon. Friend will join me in condemning, will result in savage cuts to precisely the programmes, such as Sure Start, that are providing life-chance opportunities for many of our poorer children.

Why then is the level of Sure Start funding per child in Wales half that in England, even though Wales has a higher rate of child poverty? Does the Secretary of State think that we should match the Chancellor's commitment in England and build a children's centre in each of the most deprived 20 per cent. of wards in Wales?

Clearly, Wales wants to do at least as well as England in every area of policy, and the National Assembly will want to consider the hon. Gentleman's points, but I do not think that he can take away from the Welsh Assembly Government the record investment that has gone into Cymorth in supporting pre-school children, in terms of educational opportunities and in other ways. That programme needs to be taken forward, and it will be, under Labour.

What discussions he has had regarding the provision of air ambulance services in Wales; and if he will make a statement. [162546]

I regularly meet the Assembly Minister for Health and Social Services to discuss a range of issues.

Air ambulance services have been provided in Wales since March 2001. Since 1 December 2003 the service has increased its coverage across the whole of Wales to seven days a week.

Should not this vital life-saving and successful service he publicly funded, as is the case in Scotland, or does the Minister agree with the Health Minister in Cardiff, Jane Hutt, who told me in a letter that we should be following

"the regions of England and depending on charitable giving".

I am aware of the correspondence that the hon. Gentleman has had with my colleague, the Assembly Health Minister, in Cardiff, but the Scottish ambulance service includes the provision of aeroplanes and helicopters and is centrally funded, as he says; and it has been built up over the last 40 years, recognising the need of island populations that have no health services and where air transport is the only way to get to hospital. It is estimated that some 75 per cent. of all air ambulance missions in Scotland involve patients being air-lifted from islands off the Scottish mainland. The same situation does not apply in Wales.

As for the operation of the air ambulance service, I could not put it better than the hon. Gentleman did in a recent press release when he said:

"The air ambulance has been a tremendous success and I pay tribute to the efforts of all those concerned in its operation."

But would the Minister not accept that there is great rurality in Wales and it is sometimes difficult to get people to hospital in time to save their lives. Had it existed, the air ambulance would probably have been able to save the life of Councillor Hugh Taylor from Welshpool, who died a few years ago. Would he be willing at least to discuss the prospect of greater financial support from the Government to ensure that people do not die simply as a result of lack of access to fast transport to hospital?

In March 2003, the Assembly announced the provision of £100,000 for the cost of air ambulance staff in Wales in 2003–04, and funding for future years will also come from the national health service. My colleague, the Assembly Minister in Cardiff, has made clear how she will take the issue forward.

I pay tribute to the work of the air ambulance, which must come as a great relief to those who are in pain on mountainsides in Wales and other rural areas. Can the Minister examine the point that charitable money is available only to fund the air ambulance and not paramedics? People like to give money to charity, and the point needs a great deal of attention.

I note the hon. Gentleman's point, but I understand that paramedics are a matter for the Assembly.

What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of police community support officers in Wales. [162547]

CSOs have been warmly welcomed by the communities they serve and the police officers with whom they work. The Government are carrying out an ongoing programme of research into the effectiveness of CSOs throughout England and Wales, and a summary assessment will be published shortly.

CSOs are doing a great job throughout Wales and a tremendous job in my constituency, and they undoubtedly contribute hugely to cracking down on antisocial behaviour. Has the Minister received representations on what would happen to the police budget in Wales and CSOs if certain plans, which were mentioned earlier, came about?

Order. If the hon. Gentleman is talking about the policies of Her Majesty's Opposition, it is not for the Minister to reply.

In my constituency, CSOs have been a resounding success. There are plans under which communities can make a 50:50 contribution with the police towards CSOs. Will the Minister explore the extension and improvement of that idea so that we get more CSOs, which would be welcome in my village of Cefn Cribwr?

CSOs provide public reassurance through visible patrols and free up police officers to do the job that they are trained for, and there are currently 126 of them in Wales. It is important to extend the CSO scheme, which was piloted in my local police division, Caerphilly, where it was hugely successful. I will certainly explore my hon. Friend's point. The Government are determined to defend and invest in the police service, and will not allow it to be subjected to the cuts proposed by the Conservative party.

If he will make a statement on the effectiveness of present arrangements in relation to enacting primary legislation affecting Wales. [162548]

The arrangements have been working well. The partnership between the Wales Office and the Assembly Government has delivered 24 legislative measures that have given the National Assembly additional powers.

My right hon. Friend describes the effective partnership between the Government and the National Assembly. Does he agree that good reasons would need to be advanced to overturn the current arrangements, which were endorsed by the people of Wales in a referendum?

I accept my hon. Friend's point that a persuasive case would need to be made, but I am sure that he will join me in saying that if it were made, we would examine it properly and sympathetically. We will all read and digest the Richard report when it is published next week.

What percentage of the population are in full-time employment in Wales; and if he will make a statement. [162549]

During September to November 2003, 74 per cent. of the working population in Wales was employed on a full-time basis. The labour market in Wales continues to perform well, and better than the average for the UK economic regions.

Does the Secretary of State agree that part of the wonderful success story of employment in Wales has been the relocation of civil service jobs from the south-east of England to Newport, where the Patent Office, the UK Passport Service and the Office for National Statistics have all settled happily? The move has also improved efficiency by reducing costs. Does he agree that if jobs are lost in the Newport area as a result of the changes announced in the Budget, they should be replaced by new jobs, as recommended in the Lyons report, which states that the relocation to Newport is a model that should be copied by other areas?

I agree with my hon. Friend. Newport is a centre of employment excellence that offers great opportunities, not only for public sector jobs, of which he described many good ones, but for jobs that may be transferred in future as a result of the Lyons review. It is important that we continue to build up the employment base of areas such as Newport in both the public and private sectors, and that is exactly what the Government are doing.

Has my right hon. Friend noted that between the beginning of 2002 and last autumn, unemployment in Newport fell by nearly 18.5 per cent.? Is it not the case that under this Government we have been seeing the creation not only of higher levels of employment, but of more diversified and sustainable patterns of employment, giving new hope and opportunity to all too many people who in the past saw few prospects for themselves?

Indeed. Our record in Wales on employment and on the economy generally compares extremely favourably with that of our predecessors. At that time, unemployment reached 160,000—now, it is well down to around 40,000. With employment rising all the time, economic inactivity rates coming down and average earnings going up, Wales is a good place in which to invest, to work and to achieve greater prosperity.

If he will make a statement on recent employment trends in the private sector in Wales. [162550]

The latest figures show that 75 per cent. of the employment increase in Wales over the past year was in the private sector.

I am rather surprised by that complacent reply, considering that jobs in the manufacturing sector in Wales fell by 3,000 during the past year. Is not that a result of the Government's over-burdensome regulation of businesses in Wales, where 3,990 new regulations were introduced in the past year? That over-regulation is destroying jobs and livelihoods in Wales. When are the Government going to deregulate?

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that in February 2004 the private sector economy in Wales expanded for the 11 th month in a row. Recent announcements of jobs created in Wales include: 90 at Sharp in Wrexham; 41 at Quotations Software in Holyhead; 100 at Brecon Pharmaceuticals; 700 in construction and 50 permanent at Exxon Mobil in Milford Haven; 40 at Bemis Global in Swansea; 700 at Logica in Bridgend; and 400 in aerospace in Blackwood and Cwmbran. We will take no lessons from the Conservatives, who said that unemployment was a price worth paying. Across the United Kingdom, unemployment under Labour is 3 per cent.; when the hon. Gentleman's party was in government, it was 3 million—not once, but twice.

While we are on the subject of employment trends in Wales, does my right hon. Friend agree that it is important to remind the House that at one time—when the Leader of the Opposition was Employment Secretary—unemployment in Wales went up from 80,000 to 120,000? Now, it is down to 40,000—a third of that level.

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Thanks to this Government's efforts and successful management of the economy, investment has progressed, employment has increased, and record numbers of people are in work. There is a determination in Wales not to return to boom and bust and to the destruction that we had in Wales when the Conservative party—some of whose members want to return to their Thatcherite principles—delivered mass unemployment, wrecked much of our industry, put thousands of miners out of work, and destroyed local economies. We will not return to that.

If he will make a statement on dredging in the Dee estuary. [162551]

Following completion of the environmental assessment, further discussions are taking place between the regulators and the port of Mostyn to establish whether there are alternative solutions that will meet the needs of Airbus. If none is found, consideration can be given to allowing the dredging to proceed if there is an overriding public interest.

Does my right hon. Friend agree with the Environment Agency for Wales that misleading reports are abroad about this issue? Although I defer to no one in my recognition of the importance of Airbus, the Dee estuary is a vastly important habitat and ecological site which dredging has the potential to damage. Does my right hon. Friend agree that all aspects of the argument must be taken into consideration when decisions are made, and that those decisions must be based on facts, not misinformation?

Of course I agree that environmental issues must be taken into account, especially in the light of the habitats directive. I am sure that my hon. Friend will accept, however, that Airbus is a vital local manufacturer in his part of the world—and one of the best in Europe—and it must succeed in the future. The wings that it makes, which are transported to Toulouse, are a vital part of the A380 world-beating aeroplane. Airbus will go from strength to strength, and these problems need to be resolved as soon as possible.

If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 24 March.

I am delighted to have been asked to reply. As the House will know, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is in Madrid today. He is attending the memorial service to pay tribute to all those who lost their lives. As the House will know, I represented this country in Madrid last Friday with other European leaders, to join the Spanish people in their protest against the terrorist outrage. I witnessed their grief and anger, and I expressed our solidarity with them. I am sure that the whole House would wish to do so again today.

I welcome the Government's plans to protect workers who lose their jobs after April next year because their company has gone out of business, leaving them with a pension fund without enough money in it. The Deputy Prime Minister will know, however, that 60,000 workers are already in that position and have few or no pension rights. Does he believe that we should also support the people who lose out before the Government scheme comes in, and will he put pressure on the rest of the Government to ensure that that happens?

The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the great concern over this matter, which has been discussed in the House. Some of the issues involved are before the courts. We have made it clear that the difficulty in these situations is that we need greater regulatory control, and we have taken action on that. We are also taking steps to improve the protection of workers' pensions in existing funds. In regard to those who have lost out at this stage, discussions are continuing with my right hon. Friends, and we shall take into account the views expressed by the hon. Gentleman.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that most people find it difficult to understand what is objectionable about having to prove that they are who they say they are? Given the problems that we have with organised crime and terrorism, is it not time for us to have an identity card scheme, so that many Conservative Members will be able to prove that they are who they say they are?

I shall avoid the temptation to define who people in the House are. ID cards are a matter of controversy. The idea has caught the attention of the House in debates over a decade or so, and I can assure hon. Members that the controversies and discussions continue. The Government have made it clear that they would work towards a compulsory card system, and we shall be doing that in stages. We shall also give the House every opportunity to vote on the issue. It is clear that ID cards can play a part in our campaign against the acts of terrorism that we must act against.

We fully appreciate that the Prime Minister cannot be in the House today, and we join him in paying tribute to the people of Spain at this time of great grief. I understand, however, that, astonishingly, he will then go on to visit Colonel Gaddafi. That visit is highly questionable, and its timing even more so. This country has suffered especially from Libya's support for terrorism, in the form of the murder of Yvonne Fletcher, Libya's supply of arms to the IRA and its complicity in the murder of more than 200 people over Lockerbie. Welcome though Libya's commitment to disarmament is, we should never forget the victims of Gaddafi's sponsorship of terrorism. Does the right hon. Gentleman at least agree that, if the Prime Minister meets Gaddafi, he should sup with a very long spoon?

I note the right hon. and learned Gentleman's comments on that serious issue, but I think that he, like me, recognises that it is right to continue discussions. It was a British initiative that got one country to begin to take steps to renounce weapons of mass destruction, and as I understand it, he welcomes that. All other issues to do with talking with that country are a matter for judgment, and I think that the judgment that we talk to these people is an important one. I note that a representative of the families of those who were killed in the Lockerbie bombing has welcomed the fact that talks are taking place. I might add that the previous Administration began talks with the IRA, which eventually led to a reduction in deaths and terrorist actions. We have to strike a balance, and the Prime Minister has got the balance right.

As I said, we welcome the move towards disarmament, but that does not mean that we should forget what happened in the past or what is happening now. Can the Deputy Prime Minister guarantee that the Prime Minister will raise Colonel Gaddafi's financial backing for President Mugabe's evil regime in Zimbabwe and make it clear that such support is totally unacceptable?

Again, I think I understand the concerns that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has expressed, but the original deal on Zimbabwe came from the Lancaster House agreement in the 1980s between Prime Minister Thatcher and Mugabe. That has some connection here. The only point I want to make about that is that it is still absolutely essential to try to secure agreement by talking. Acts of violence do not help, whichever part of the world they might take place in, whether it is Ireland or Libya. We have to keep the peace, talk and talk, and eventually get an agreement. To a certain extent, that has been achieved in Ireland, preventing additions to the kind of horrific death toll that cost 3,000 lives. The answer must be to keep on talking while at the same time maintaining a robust defence against terrorists and their deadly actions.

In this year's spending review, will the Government show that they really are at the forefront of tackling global poverty by setting a timetable to achieve the United Nations target of spending 0.7 per cent. of GDP on international aid? If Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands have been doing that for 20 years, why cannot we?

My hon. Friend makes a serious point about how much aid we give to developing countries. We have increased the amount, I understand, from about 0.2 per cent. to 0.4 per cent. That does not reach the target, but it is going in the right direction. We must also take into account the resources and help that we have given in reducing the debt problems of the third world. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor has worked extremely hard to get international agreement on that. While it is right to say, "Keep on pressing", because this is an important responsibility for us, we have to take into account what would be likely to happen to that programme in view of the Tories' announcements on budget spend and cuts. They mean that that programme would take a nosedive, not increase, as it is doing under this Government.

I believe that the thoughts of us all are with the people of Spain today. On the matter of Libya, we on the Liberal Democrat Benches certainly support the Prime Minister's visit.

Does the Deputy Prime Minister recall that a year ago, when the House of Commons was persuaded to endorse military action against Iraq, the Government welcomed the publication of the road map and committed themselves actively to work for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. What is his assessment of the prospects for that road map today?

I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for his supportive remarks; I think he is absolutely right. The talks that are to take place in Israel are the only way forward to find agreement, and it is important to get co-operation with our European partners. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has made it absolutely clear that we deplore the action by the Israeli Government, but let us make it clear that the road map is the only way forward. We have to keep hoping that the parties who are signed up to it will agree to it and begin to implement it. The recent announcement by the Israeli Government that they will remove themselves from the Gaza strip is very welcome, but we need to look at the conditions. It is the only way forward, as indeed I would say the Good Friday agreement is still the only way forward in Northern Ireland—talking and talking.

The whole House can accept that Israel is entitled to live at peace within secure and recognised borders. But when the Government's view is that settlements and the so-called security fence, when built on Palestinian land, are illegal under international law, and when the Foreign Secretary, in his trenchant opinion of yesterday, asserts that the assassination of Sheikh Yassin was unlawful, unacceptable and unjustified, what concrete steps are they prepared to take to persuade Israel to comply with international law?

Again, the point is well made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman. That matter has concerned an awful lot of people in the House. The assassination to which he referred has been denounced by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, who has made it clear that it was an illegal act, which should not have taken place and which will make the situation much worse, as we can see today. The wall itself was a unilateral measure that will not provide lasting security for people in Israel, which we all recognise. At the end of the day, there must be a negotiated settlement, which is always the more difficult way, and acts of violence or such unilateral actions will not help. The situation is escalating from day to day. Talking at the table is still the only solution, and in talking with other leaders in Europe, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will seek again to try to get discussions and negotiation under way on the road map.

Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming the 42 per cent. drop in unemployment in my constituency? Does he realise that the most important factor, particularly for those on lower wages, is the rise in the national minimum wage? Can he tell me when that will go up to £5 an hour?

I am grateful for the remarks about the drop in unemployment, which is sometimes ignored by the general public. I came into politics to reduce unemployment. Under the Tories, it went up to 3 million. We have seen a reduction in that, and connecting that drop to the minimum wage, as my hon. Friend does, reminds us that the current Leader of the Opposition said that introducing the minimum wage would increase unemployment by 1 million. In fact, the opposite happened: we had the minimum wage, millions of people benefited from it, and we increased employment. Throughout the period of Labour Government, we have seen employment increasing by a quarter of a million in every year we have been in office. At the same time, we have increased the minimum wage and have recently announced the new date for the minimum wage increase.

What are the Government planning to do to help the Plain English Campaign celebrate its 25th anniversary later this year? What will the Deputy Prime Minister do personally to help it wage its war on gobbledegook?

The hon. Gentleman, from time to time, may get his grammar right, but his thinking on politics and his common sense are often missing. And to that we can add the sketch writers as well. But I will not be addressing the conference.

May I tell my right hon. Friend that 250 young people in my constituency have not been offered a secondary school place owing to failings of administration by Kent county council? That is causing huge problems not only for the young people involved but for their parents, because the county council has not even managed to run its own scheme in an efficient manner. Will he use his good offices with the Secretary of State for Education and Skills to ensure that Kent county council gets its act together for next year, even if it cannot sort out the problems this year, so that young people can be given a decent place, near where they live, at a school they want to go to, so that they can get the education they deserve?

I am quite shocked to hear that Kent county council is not providing what it has a legal obligation to provide—places for children in its area. It seems to spend more time thinking about the 11-plus than about providing places. The resources provided by this Government for education are unsurpassed, and that is why we are getting better standards and more places, in newer schools. We must face the fact that, even with the £8.5 million that has been promised by the Chancellor, on top of the increase in investment, the Conservative party voted in the Lobby last night against such an increase for education. Perhaps the Tories could explain that to Kent county council.

Last week the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that the Government were to cut 40,000 civil servants' jobs. Can the Deputy Prime Minister tell us how many extra civil servants the Government have hired in the last three years?

I cannot give the answer, quite frankly, but I will write to the right hon. and learned Gentleman as soon as possible. I ask him to bear in mind that changes take place in the work force in a number of areas, which is natural in a growing and thriving economy. As I said earlier, we have increased the number of jobs offered by a quarter of a million each year. That means well over a million—nearly a million and a half—new jobs. The announcement made by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor in the name of efficiency—I thought that the Opposition were calling for efficiency from Government, and an end to waste—should be seen against the background of the growth in jobs that he and this Government have created.

Like the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister has not answered the question. The only difference is that the Prime Minister doesn't answer because he won't, while the Deputy Prime Minister doesn't answer because he can't. Let me help him. I asked how many extra civil servants the Government had appointed over the last three years. The answer is 40,000. Now they are cutting 40,000. First they hire them, then they fire thern. That is not exactly competent government.

Can the Deputy Prime Minister answer this question? What percentage of the Government's spending is being wasted?

The immediate answer is that we have cut the percentage of GDP that goes into administration. The figures were given by the Chancellor in his Budget statement, and I noticed at the time that there were no comments, cheers or shouts from the Opposition, because my right hon. Friend had shot most of their foxes in the lead-up to the Budget.

Even the 40,000 figure that the right hon. and learned Gentleman mentioned, which I believe is correct, must be seen against the creation of a quarter of a million jobs each year—something that could not be achieved by the Opposition. Just think of the increase in the number of doctors, nurses and teachers that has taken place under this Government. There is no doubt that all those people face having their jobs cut simply because of the Opposition's commitment to cutting public expenditure by £18 billion in two years. It is just hypocrisy for the right hon. and learned Gentleman to go on about waste, administration and unemployment.

Let me help the Deputy Prime Minister again. He says it is hypocrisy to talk about waste. Even the Government's own report says that up to £20 billion—almost 5 per cent.—is wasted.

Let me try asking the Deputy Prime Minister about tax. At least we may get an answer this time. The Government are borrowing more than £140 billion over the next five years. The ITEM Club, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Monetary Fund have all warned of further tax rises under Labour. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree with them?

We will take no lectures from the Opposition about borrowing. When they were in government, they borrowed nearly as much in a single year as the amount that the right hon. and learned Gentleman says will be borrowed over five years. The fundamental criticism is that whereas we borrowed to invest, he borrowed to keep people on the dole because of the failure of his economic policies.

If the right hon. and learned Gentleman wants to see the benefits of what we did, he should look at his own constituency, where long-time unemployment has fallen by 96 per cent. As for education, there is an extra £660 for pupils. Crime has fallen, and there is more than £90 million for the primary care trust. Those are the benefits for the right hon. and learned Gentleman's constituents from this Government's policy. Perhaps he would explain to them why he wants to cut the amounts.

Once again, the Deputy Prime Minister has not answered the question I put to him. I asked whether expert economists were right in saying that there would be further tax increases under Labour. I cannot understand why the Deputy Prime Minister is being so evasive. The Prime Minister is not watching him. Has he not finally got what he has campaigned for throughout his political life—more taxes, more borrowing, more bureaucrats? After seven years of embarrassingly having to mouth new Labour slogans, why can he not just be happy that he has got what he wanted?

In fact, there is now less tax, more employment and more investment, and we have reduced the bands of tax, which was never achieved under the Conservative Government. There is no doubt that the argument at the coming election will be whether money should be raised to pay for public services or to pay for tax cuts. We have no promise of cuts from the Opposition—they say that they will look at that, and that they might do it, but they will not commit to it. All that we can be sure of, as promised by the Leader of the Opposition, is that they will cut investment in public services. That is the choice that we will have at the coming election, and the Leader of the Opposition will have to answer for it, just as anyone else would.

I realise that there are some questions that the Deputy Prime Minister cannot answer in detail, for obvious reasons of security, but I personally find the prospect of a 30 ft-high concrete wall topped off with razor wire surrounding the Palace of Westminster utterly grotesque, and it would probably be ineffective. What is the Deputy Prime Minister's view?

That is another piece of speculation that I would put down to press prattle. There is no substance in it.

Will the Deputy Prime Minister personally intervene to ensure that the chaotic mess in our post office system is sorted out? He might not be aware of this, but last week, the main post office in Romford was closed at only four days notice. Coupled with that, a number of local sub-post offices are threatened with closure. When will he restore order to this vital public service?

There will be a debate on that matter later, but we have discussed it at Question Time and during debates, and the Prime Minister has always made it clear that £400 million has been put in to develop the post office system and to prevent closures. That closures are continuing has been admitted from this Dispatch Box, but that amount of money has been put in to modernise and to help, and it has prevented a lot of closures. That has been going on for a long time. We have made it clear that pension payments can be made through a post office or a bank, and we are trying to find a good way of operating that will keep as many post offices as possible in existence. Many more would have closed had it not been for the financial support that this Government have given.

My right hon. Friend will know that even in my constituency, which is in a borough where housing is relatively cheap by London standards, it is becoming virtually impossible for someone on an average income to get into the housing market or to find property to rent. I appreciate the steps that my right hon. Friend has taken this week to help key workers to buy, but does he accept that that does not really address the problem of the overall supply of affordable housing? What does he intend to do to deal with that problem in London?

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments on the announcement yesterday of the £670 million programme for houses for key workers in London and the south-east. He probably knows that English Partnerships will today announce a further £150 million programme for 2,000 homes for key workers to be built on in-fill brownfield sites in London. I believe that one of those is in my hon. Friend's constituency. He refers to affordable homes, and the Housing Corporation will announce today a £3.3 billion budget for a programme of 67,000 affordable homes in England. That contribution will take housing investment to a level that is double what we inherited in 1997. That contrasts, yet again, with the cuts in housing proposed in recent Opposition plans.

The Deputy Prime Minister's decision to overrule all the statutory planning authorities, including his own inspector, in their approval of development schemes in Ellesmere has provoked a petition signed by more than 85 per cent. of the town's electorate. Will he agree to meet a delegation of those people?

The hon. Gentleman knows that everyone with responsibility for planning who stands at this Dispatch Box has to wait until the full planning procedures have been completed, and I am not sure whether they have been in the case that he refers to. Ministers are always available to discuss these matters, but they will reserve their judgment on planning issues. No Minister has ever been in doubt about that. I cannot give a yes or a no in this case, because I do not know what stage planning is at.

The right hon. Gentleman overruled it.

Thousands upon thousands of planning decisions are taken, usually in my name. I often pick up a newspaper and find that it tells me—[Interruption.]

Order. When a Minister answers, I expect hon. Members to be quiet.

I will consider what the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson) has said and will write to him about it.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is normally fairly ludicrous when the non-elected Chamber lectures this elected Chamber on democracy, and that it is not merely ludicrous but dangerous and despicable when the official spokespersons of the major Opposition parties deliberately block the planned pilot schemes for postal votes in the European and local elections for the north-west and elsewhere, put party political advantage to the fore and leave a door wide open for the British National party?

My hon. Friend makes a very serious point, and Lords amendments to the legislation in question will be debated later today. I find it completely unacceptable that the Lords should make judgments on the planning and procedures for the European parliamentary and local elections; it should not be up to unelected people to take such decisions. We have greater moral authority to take decisions on such planning, and we have said that four regions will be involved.

The Opposition and their spokesperson in the House of Lords implied that they oppose postal ballots because they feel that such a system is a bit too convenient for voters. The Leader of the Opposition was asked in an interview for theYorkshire Post whether he would accept the result of the referendum if people decided to vote for regional government. He said:

"We wouldn't necessarily regard ourselves as being bound by that kind of majority."

I hear a lot of talk about referendums, but the Leader of the Opposition is telling us that they might not accept the judgment of the electorate in this referendum. It has been suggested in this place and in the House of Lords that such ballots might have more to do with the convenience of the electorate than with getting the greater turnout that all-postal ballot pilots have already achieved. Let us have more democracy and participation, and less hypocrisy from the Opposition.

What are the qualities that the Deputy Prime Minister looks for in a European Commissioner, and does the right hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson) possess any of them?

I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson) would be well able to do the job, and the same is true of a lot of other Labour Members. I read in the press that I am backing certain people. The press have got it wrong again, but I do not want to get into personalities. The Labour Benches are so full of talent that the decision will be a difficult one for the Prime Minister.

My right hon. Friend will be aware that the Department of Health has published a very important document today, entitled "Winning The War On Heart Disease." As chairman of the all-party group on heart disease, I welcome that document, but what extra measures can we adopt to ensure that we build on the successes that we have achieved to date?

I am pleased that my hon. Friend has drawn attention to that document, which points out that we are making some remarkable advances in respect of heart operations. That is welcome news, and to be fair, the Opposition spokesman on the national health service has also welcomed it, saying:

"No one welcomes those improvements more than I do. It is excellent news that progress has indeed been made".—[Official Report, 22 March 2004; Vol. 419, c. 597.]

We want to build on that progress, and I should have thought that Members on both sides of the House would take the view that the national health service does a wonderful job and that we want to do all that we can to improve it. We have made our position clear, which is that billions of pounds in resources have to be put into the health service, whereas the Opposition have decided that, basically, they want to reduce resources. That will provide a clear choice. I have often heard it said that there might be some more money for health and education, but I should like to see their proposals.

I concede that the Opposition have said that they would not subject health and education to the kind of cuts that they are prepared to implement elsewhere, but I shall wait to see exactly what that means. An £18 billion cut in the first two years of a Tory Administration would mean that nearly everyone would he open to such attacks. If the Opposition want to say that the cuts would affect only defence, housing and other such areas, then okay, let them be clear about it. But on health, we have the success story of winning the battle against heart disease. All Members will welcome the fact that death rates are down by 23 per cent., and our target is to deliver 6,000 extra operations one year earlier.

Will the Solicitor-General make a statement on her Department's wrongful disclosure of court papers to the Minister for Children?

This question relates to the case of Re B, a minor, who was the subject of a care order on the ground that the child had been harmed by the mother, who was suffering from Munchausen's syndrome by proxy. The House will remember that I made a statement on 20 January after the Court of Appeal gave its judgment in the case of Angela Cannings. That was a criminal case where the mother was alleged to have been suffering from Munchausen's syndrome by proxy, but she was freed by the Court of Appeal.

The House will remember that I announced that we had set up a review to establish whether there were any other cases where the expert evidence had been central to the conviction and that such cases would be reexamined by the Director of Public Prosecutions and, if necessary, by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

In answer to questions and expressions of concern about injustices that might have happened, not in the criminal courts but in the family courts, I told the House that the Minister for Children would be responsible for considering the implications of the Cannings case for cases involving care proceedings in the family jurisdiction. That statement in the House received widespread media coverage, which was understood by some to be an announcement that the Minister for Children was herself going to review individual family cases.

On 23 February, the Minister for Children made a statement to this House explaining that she was issuing guidance about how local authorities should proceed to review care cases where the basis of the evidence was expert testimony that the mother was suffering from Munchausen's syndrome by proxy. After the reporting of my statement to the House, I had a number of discussions with people raising the question of reviewing cases involving care proceedings. That includes, for example, discussions with some hon. Members and with the director of social services for Southwark, in my own constituency.

I was told by a solicitor, who happened to be my sister, that she was considering what action to take in respect of a client of hers who was seeking to challenge an order of the High Court taking the child into care. Part of the evidence had been that the mother was suffering from Munchausen's syndrome by proxy, about which I had been liaising closely with the Minister for Children. The solicitor in the case of Re B, a minor, sent me a copy of the High Court judgment, which I read. The names had been blanked out, so I did not, and do not, know the name of the child or the family. I simply looked at the court judgment.

I formed the view, on reading it, that it was likely to form the basis of a ruling by the Court of Appeal that could assist local authorities and others in understanding whether the issues raised in the Cannings case—a criminal case, of course—had any implications for care cases in the family jurisdiction. I thought that the Minister for Children should be aware of the judgment.

I understand that, subsequently, the Court of Appeal had itself notified the Minister for Children of the judgment in Re B, a minor, and offered to send her a copy of that judgment and all the papers, and invited her to consider whether she wanted to intervene in that case. It gave leave for the judgment and associated papers to be sent to her. Before I sent the judgment—without the names—to the Minister for Children, I sought legal advice from my office. I was advised that there was no prohibition on my doing so because the names had all been blanked out, and subject only to checking with the solicitor that there was no specific ruling in the case that prohibited disclosure. Having checked with the solicitor, I then sent the judgment to the Minister for Children.

When the local authority responsible for the care proceedings challenged my sending the judgment to the Minister for Children, the lawyer in my office who advised me reconsidered the question and decided that he probably was wrong, and that I should not have sent the judgment to the Minister for Children without a court order.

However, I can reassure the House that I acted on legal advice. I did not identify the child: I could not do so, in any event, as I did not know the child's identity. Also, in any event, the Court of Appeal subsequently asked the Minister for Children to consider whether she wanted to intervene in the case and gave leave for the disclosure to her of all the papers in this case on 23 February.

I thank the Solicitor-General for her statement, which has certainly helped to clarify what appeared in the press this morning. Does she agree, however, that it is an extremely unfortunate state of affairs when the Law Officers Department, which after all is supposed to advise the Government on the law, does not know the rules covering contempt of court and the confidentiality of documents? Does she also agree that, in such cases, it is not appropriate for Law Officers to pass responsibility on to those to whom they turn for advice, as their role and function must require them to take responsibility for their own actions in respect of documents that come into their possession? Will the Solicitor-General assure the House that the case is not another example of the gradual erosion of the principle of the confidentiality of documents, or of the Government taking the view that they have a right to anything that comes into their possession? That must be one of the inferences that could be drawn from how the documentation was handled.

A second question relates to the handling of cases involving Munchausen's syndrome by proxy under civil proceedings. The Solicitor-General will confirm that we were told that the matter would be reviewed by local authorities, according to guidelines set out by the Minister for Children. However, does not this episode highlight the fact that that system does not appear to be working properly? The Solicitor-General has, at least, intervened to pass documents to the Minister for Children that would allow her to intervene against a decision made by a local authority. Can the right hon. and learned Lady reassure the House about how the process is working in practice? Are there other examples of local authorities being unwilling to co-operate or to act according to the guidelines laid down by her and the Minister for Children?

These are important issues. I hope that the Solicitor-General can provide some proper reassurance.

I am sure that I can give the hon. Gentleman that reassurance. It is not a question of not knowing the rules. I am very clear that I take responsibility for my actions in the case, and I remind the hon. Gentleman what the rules are. They state that it is a breach of the Children Act 1989 to do anything that identifies, or which would tend to identify, any child involved in any proceedings. I think that I have made it absolutely clear that it was not the case that I breached those rules.

Under the Administration of Justice Act 1985, a second prohibition prohibits some publications of proceedings in private. The question that arises at that point has to do with what constitutes a publication. The hon. Gentleman will know that that has been the subject of some considerable consideration by the courts. Therefore, this is not an open-and-shut case, in which the only question is whether the action taken was in breach of the rules. It is a question of how far the rules extend, but it is certainly absolutely clear that I was fully aware of the provisions of the Children Act 1989. I did not breach them and I did not identify the child involved.

One approach that I could have adopted, but did not, was to argue before the court that to send one copy of the judgment to a fellow Minister did not amount to publication within the meaning of the Administration of Justice Act 1985. That was an approach that I could have taken, but I left it. I am happy to accept responsibility, and I hope that I have made that clear.

The hon. Gentleman's second point concerned any erosion of the principle of confidentiality. There was no erosion of that principle, or of any other principle. The hon. Gentleman also made a wider point and implied that because I had discussions with my right hon. Friend the Minister for Children the system had not worked and that somehow I had intervened. The system did work. I became aware that a judgment by the Court of Appeal was forthcoming. As it happens, I took the same view as the Court of Appeal. It became aware that it was about to make a judgment that would have implications for the review by the Minister for Children. It thought that she should know about the case and it wrote to her. I became aware that the Court of Appeal was about to consider a case that might have implications for the review by the Minister for Children. I thought that she needed to know about it and, having taken legal advice and considered the legal issues myself, I sent her information about that case.

The hon. Gentleman would have more justification if he had said that on this important issue of the crossover between the civil and criminal jurisdictions, in cases involving Munchausen's syndrome by proxy, the left hand of Government does not know what the right hand is doing. One Minister considered the criminal issues and another considered the family issues. All such cases involve a lack of confidence in and a fresh consideration of Munchausen's syndrome by proxy and, therefore, the primary responsibility for the family jurisdiction lies with my right hon. Friend the Minister for Children. I thought that it was right that she should see the case, and the Court of Appeal thought the same, separately. On that issue, it was a case of great minds thinking alike.

I am grateful to the Solicitor-General for the clarity of her reply. It is a misfortune that the solicitor in the case in question is her sister, but let us set that aside. Let us also recognise that whatever she may have done in the court system is a matter for the courts, not for the House. We need to consider what the Solicitor-General has done.

I find it difficult to reconcile what the Solicitor-General has told us today—that the paper passed was an anonymised judgment—and what Mr. Justice Munby is reported as having said, which was that a Department had no right to see a family division file. He said that it needed leave from a judge to do so and found that a contempt had been committed in this case. I do not doubt the good intentions of the Solicitor-General in this important and difficult area of public policy. However, given that her ministerial responsibilities include civil litigation and advice on civil law matters, including charity and family law issues, and that her secretariat is intended to provide high-grade legal advice, it is a matter for concern that matters were got wrong in this instance, because that undermines confidence in her Department.

Does the Solicitor-General agree that wider issues still need to be resolved? I suggest that one is the quality of advice available to families who have been involved in a case of Munchausen's syndrome by proxy. It should be possible to gather information in a way that does not conflict with court rules to inform Government policy on the issue. She is right to say that we need an effective crossover between civil and criminal practice in that area. Does she accept that, in this instance, she did not choose the right way to go about it?

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that Mr. Justice Munby says that a Minister has no right to see a family court file, but, of course, I do have the right to see family court files in some cases because I have a responsibility to intervene to assist the courts in family cases.

The right is limited.

The right hon. Gentleman assists me by saying that the right is limited. Perhaps I can just make it absolutely clear to the House that I want to do my job properly. I want to assist with the administration of justice. I want to abide by the rules. I want to be absolutely clear that that is the case. Obviously, I shall consider how the different Acts of Parliament—the Children Act 1989 and the Administration of Justice Act 1985—and the different jurisdictions with which I have some involvement intersect. I will make the position clear, and perhaps that will assist the House. The quality of the advice that is available to people who challenge care rulings in respect of their families is a matter for the Department for Constitutional Affairs and the Law Society.

On the point about gathering information, there is an issue about how we can discuss cases in principle and how the law is working in principle when there is an absolute prohibition on discussing the circumstances of individual cases, but that is a wider point about which the House has been concerned.

My right hon. and learned Friend will be more aware than most of the excellent work that Sarah Harman—the solicitor in this case—has done over recent years. She takes on some of the most difficult and, frankly, unpopular cases. She is held in the highest esteem, not just in east Kent but right across the country. However, does my right hon. and learned Friend share my additional concern that Friday's judgment could effectively deny MPs access to papers and documents that could be crucial in their assisting with certain casework? Frankly, some of that casework involves the most difficult and sensitive subjects that ever come to visit us in our surgeries.

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments about Sarah Harman, and I wish to take up the additional point that he raises, which is important for the whole House. There can be very few hon. Members on either side of the House who have not had a man come into their surgeries saying, "There has been an injustice. I'm not allowed to see my children." That is the background of the case, and it is what the court has said. There can be very few hon. Members who have not experienced a woman coming to their surgeries saying, "The council has got a court order to take my children into care, and this is wrong and an injustice." That happens regularly. There is a question about where the correct response lies because Parliament must perhaps provide an avenue, a safety valve, an opportunity for those who feel that they have suffered an injustice to come to speak to their MP. Perhaps that is the right position; or perhaps the right position is that, because of the laws that we have passed in the House and their interpretation by the judges, we should tell those constituents, "Don't speak to me about this. By speaking to me, you are in contempt. Please go away. I'm not even going to talk to you."

On the point raised by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve)—I do not know whether he has had the opportunity to see the full judgment—we need to be clear exactly how the situation lies, so that we can protect the interests of children, the administration of justice in the family division and the opportunity for the House to be a safety valve for our constituents who feel that they have suffered an injustice, rather than seeing them dress up as Spiderman and climb up on to a crane.

Is it not regrettable that the Solicitor-General thought it appropriate to refer us to the internal workings of her Department in mentioning another lawyer's advice? It is her advice as the Solicitor-General that is important, and not the internal advice that she may have received from her lawyers in the Department. She is here as the Solicitor-General and is accountable to us in that guise. Surely, the matter is all the more regrettable when one considers her involvement in the law of disclosure. She will remember, 25 years or so ago, the case of Harriet Harman v. the Home Office, which related to improper disclosure of documents. It seems to me that her conduct over the past few days in this matter, although understandable, is regrettable.

The hon. and learned Gentleman raised the question of the case of Harman v. the Home Office, but what he omitted to say was that it was subsequently decided that I had not acted improperly. Perhaps I could remind the House, for those who cannot remember this case of 25 years ago, that it was decided I had not acted improperly in that case. I should like to set the record straight on that, in case anybody is putting two and two together and making five.

On the question of the internal workings of the Department, the local authority in question wrote to me and sought information about exactly what had happened prior to my being sent the judgment and after my having been sent the judgment. I responded to it, and copied this into the court. Having written to the local authority and sent a copy to the court, I do not think that it is right to give a partial version to this House. Therefore, I am giving the House the information in as full a form as that in which I gave it to the local authority and the court. It was in that spirit that I gave that information.

As former Law Officers will know, it is not at all unusual for Law Officers to take a preliminary view and then ask for a lawyer in their Department to give it further consideration. Indeed, leading counsel will often take a preliminary view and ask junior counsel to check it out. I am not resiling from or trying to shed responsibility

You are.

No, I am not trying to shed responsibility. I am trying to explain the procedures. I hope that they will lead the House to reflect on and accept the fact that I acted in good faith and with due diligence, and that the interests of the child were not harmed, although there are some further issues that we need to consider in relation to the contempt proceedings and the relationship between Members of this House and our constituents.

I am sorry for any personal embarrassment that has been caused to my right hon. and learned Friend, as she does an excellent job in her post, and long may that continue. However, it occurs to me that the review of the criminal cases and the investigations of the decided family cases that are going on at the moment will put a lot of Departments and other organisations into a position of some conflict and doubt about whether to respond to the requests for information for the review and investigation, and about their duties under contempt of court rules. I wonder what the position is in terms of the Government requesting information or somebody else, such as the courts, giving some absolute advice to people so that that can be clear. Beyond that, I wonder whether this is a passing phase to do with the investigations following the Cannings decision or whether, bearing in mind that the Children Bill has just started its progress in the other place, a more general application needs to be considered for inclusion in that Bill before it makes it on to the statute book.

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. There are more general issues that need reflection and consideration. Whether they need a statutory amendment to children's legislation is not at all clear, but I think that further consideration is needed. He is right that we want to be sure that Ministers in other Departments and, indeed, Members of this House are in no doubt about the position when people come to see them, particularly if they have seen reports of such judgments. We do not want anybody to be in any doubt about whether they can carry out their duties by proceeding to discuss a case, or whether they would be in breach of contempt rules.

I hope that the House will find it helpful if I offer to consider how we think about clarifying the situation. It is an issue not only for Ministers, but for Members in general. Perhaps, as I am fully respectful of the long years of experience of the shadow Attorney-General, I will offer to consult him, and he can help us to ensure that we have an agreed position that everybody in this House can be clear about, as they should be able to feel certain of their duties to their constituents and their duty to obey the law.

Does the Solicitor-General accept the traditional doctrine of ministerial responsibility, under which Ministers are responsible for the advice that they take and are therefore obliged and have an incentive to probe, question and validate that advice? Or is she joining the long list of Ministers who seem to be enunciating a new doctrine under which, if the advice proves correct and successful, Ministers take responsibility, but if it does not do so, they invoke an official and point the finger at them?

I have never been in any doubt—and I think that the Law Officers are in a particular position on this—that responsibility lies not with the adviser, even where that adviser is the Law Officer, but with the person who is taking the decision. In this case, the person who was taking the decision was me, and I take responsibility for it. I simply described to the House, in the way in which I described it to the local authority and the court, what the process was.

I want to be clear that I take responsibility for the actions that I took. There was nothing improper about the actions that I took. The court has no criticism of me or of the actions that I took, and I do take responsibility for them. I do not want the House to be left with the idea that my explanation of the background to my actions was somehow a denial of responsibility. I accept responsibility, and no harm was done.

One of the things that I would be very concerned about and would regret would be if the excellent work of the legal secretariat to the Law Officers, which has served Law Officers down the decades excellently and with a high degree of professionalism, somehow was criticised as a result of what has happened. The Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, and I value most highly the work of the legal secretariat of the Law Officers, which is recognised throughout the profession as providing the highest quality legal advice.

Although I am rather late in the day, may I congratulate the Solicitor-General on the blow that she struck 25 years ago by breaking the barrier of contempt of court, which was a real obstacle to freedom of information in those days? I congratulate her on that and I am sorry not to have done so earlier.

May I also congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on her wisdom in taking a second opinion and not relying solely on her own legal advice in making the decision? May I deplore the criticism that has been levelled at her when she has asked to come to the House and explain how the decision was taken? If she did not explain that she had taken advice and how it turned out, she would have been heavily criticised for not mentioning it. No doubt, she would also have been belaboured for taking the decision on her own. May I congratulate her, as she did absolutely the right thing?

May I express very briefly my sympathy with anyone who finds themselves in the complicated, multi-layered depths of contempt of court? It is often very hard to know where the public interest lies in that sector, and frankly that whole area of law needs urgent review.

Further to the comments of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), I have certainly seen a letter from the Law Society suggesting that it is considering writing to all its family practitioners inviting them to review their files to see whether there is a case to be brought out and put into this whole area of review. Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that the Law Society is going to write to all family solicitors inviting them to submit cases for review, and is that being done with the encouragement of her Department or the Minister for Children?

I thank my hon. and learned Friend for the points that she made. Issues have arisen around the edges of the case that require further review, and I am aware of those that the Solicitors Family Law Association and the Law Society have been looking at.

The Solicitor-General suggested that we should broaden consideration of the problem, particularly as a reference in the press suggested that a Member of Parliament could be in contempt of court if a constituent brings an issue to him. In reality, as she said, most Members of Parliament will deal with cases, from both men and women, which go on to the family division. I dealt with one case in which fighting had been going on for two years—not with the courts but with the evidence given by social services to the courts. Ultimately, a guardian ad litem was appointed for court proceedings, which confirms that the guidance I was given was correct. It is important that the right of the citizen to see their Member of Parliament as an ombudsman is maintained.

I am sure that we all want to be reassured that citizens maintain the right to meet their Members of Parliament, tell them what has been going on in a case that affects their life profoundly and, if they want the opportunity, to protest to them and ask for something to be done. Of course, we all want to be absolutely clear that we are sticking to the letter of the law. I suspect that custom and practice operates when a Member writes to social services on behalf of a constituent, as the hon. Gentleman may have done, and asks for background to the case. However, if such information consists of issues that have formed the background to court proceedings that custom and practice may not be within the strict letter of the law. We have to be absolutely sure about that—we do not want to invite social services to break the law in communicating with MPs; we do not want to give comfort to constituents but at the same time breach the law; and we do not want to break the law in anything that we do in the House or debates. We need to discuss the issues of principle and we need to support our constituents. When we discuss those issues, it will assist us to have an understanding of the way in which the courts deal with those issues in practice

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. This afternoon, in Prime Minister's questions, the Deputy Prime Minister accused the deputy Leader of the Opposition of hypocrisy. May I draw your attention to column 1603 of theOfficial Report on 10 March 2004? In a debate on the Justice (Northern Ireland) Bill, one of my hon. Friends was called to order by the Deputy Speaker for accusing another hon. Member of hypocrisy. I know that you wish to protect and uphold the rights of Back Benchers, and would not wish to have two sets of rules in the House for Front Benchers and Back Benchers. Will you therefore give a ruling on whether it is unparliamentary for one hon. Member to accuse another of hypocrisy, regardless of whether they are a Front-Bench or Back-Bench Member of Parliament?

I always say to the House that temperate language should be used at all times, and it is unfortunate if it is not. Whether Members are Front Benchers or Back Benchers, all are hon. Members and are treated the same. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows that I have no fear about whether the Member concerned holds high office—they will abide by the rules of the House.

Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. In that case, the Back-Bench Member was asked to withdraw their comments, but today the Front-Bench Member was not.

Perhaps the Deputy Speaker was more attentive than I was today, but the hon. Gentleman will know that Prime Minister's Question Time—whether questions are fielded by the Prime Minister or by the Deputy Prime Minister—is a heated time of the week and I have many things to watch out for. I would put it down to that.

Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is there not a distinction between referring directly to an hon. Member and accusing them of being a hypocrite, which you would rightly rule out of order, and making a general criticism that the Opposition's position is hypocritical?

That is not the case.

Order. Let me deal with the point made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr. McCabe). I have been able to answer the other points of order. There is a distinction—he is quite right—[Interruption.] Order. I know what hon. Members are asking, and I think that I have given as good an explanation as I can.

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make new provision about establishing the existence of byways open to all traffic.

I want to make it clear at the outset that the Bill is not about banning things but about clarification of the law. Many in the House relish the countryside and its beauty. I have two areas of outstanding natural beauty in my constituency: the Dorset AONB and Cranborne Chase, and West Wiltshire Downs AONB, which also covers the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key), who is present. My Bill is about co-existence in the countryside. I have been accused of being anti-biker and anti-four-wheel drive, but it is not my intention in the Bill to be anti-anything of that nature. I want to defend the rights of horse-riders, walkers, hikers, and genuine users of the countryside—people who have traditionally used it in certain ways, particularly those who have experienced peaceful enjoyment along green lanes, bridleways and footpaths.

There is still room in the countryside for people who want to ride their motorbikes and trailbikes, and who want to drive their four-wheel vehicles. Yesterday, I discussed the Bill with someone outside the House who asked, "What about the new souped-up tractors that people are driving in the countryside?" Some of the Bill's provisions will cover that, as it would create a framework for co-existence in the countryside.

The Government have already issued a consultation document on the subject, "The Use of Mechanically Propelled Vehicles on Rights of Way". I am delighted that the Minister for Rural Affairs and Local Environmental Quality is on the Government Front Bench, because I want to make particular reference to the fourth proposal in the document, which says:

"We propose to introduce legislation, which will make it no longer possible to establish the existence of a byway open to all traffic by reference to historic (pre-commencement) use by, or other evidence relating to, non-mechanically propelled vehicles"

probably a horse and cart. However, it also says:

"We propose to do this by introducing a cut-off date after which (subject to certain exceptions) any unrecorded rights of way for vehicles shall be recorded as restricted byways in the definitive map and statement.

We propose that the cut-off date should be one year from the commencement of the new legislation."

The cut-off date is a problem, which is why I am moving the Bill now, rather than waiting.

In a letter that I received earlier this month from the leader of Dorset county council, Mr. Tim Palmer, he stated that he has forwarded to me a letter that he had written to a committee considering the consultation on opening a byway to all traffic in the county. He writes:

"You will see that all the evidence allowable under the current law is in favour of a byway"

open to all traffic. He goes on:

"Everyone is now looking to your Bill to give them a voice and to add to the clamour for a change in the law. One aspect you may want to cover is the retrospective review of existing byways. This is not allowed for in the Government's consultation paper. Because of this the TRF,"—

the Trail Riders Fellowship—

"4WD clubs etc are rushing to claim more byways before the legislation comes in. In addition we do need to be able to review the status of some ancient byways, national monuments like the Ridgeway and the Oxdrove through this constituency, both currently completely wrecked by swarms of bikes, quads and 4WDs."

This is not solely a Dorset issue. It has great support across the House. Early-day motion 380 dealing with the use of unsurfaced byways open to all traffic was tabled by the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) and signed by 90 other hon. Members. It particularly mentions the Ridgeway. In my constituency, there is a bridleway—bridleway 17—emanating from the village of Cranborne. Last June I had to attend a public meeting in the village. The 300 people who had gathered were very concerned about bikers using the bridleway not local people using it for their enjoyment, but people who had travelled almost 100 miles because it was considered a good place to ride their bike, particularly when it had been raining and the bridleway was rather muddy. There was talk of biking groups that came regularly from Bristol, Southampton and so on.

I know that my proposal has the support of the British Horse Society, the Ramblers Association and the Green Lanes Environmental Action Movement, but I also want the support of the Trail Riders Fellowship and an organisation of four-wheel drivers in my constituency called—perhaps slightly incorrectly—the Friends of Dorset Rights of Way, who have written to me on several occasions suggesting that we should find a form of co-existence.

So what will my Bill do? It will state that when a county council or other body responsible for rights of way is considering an application for a green lane, or whatever it is, to be designated as a byway open to all traffic, if the evidence is solely that 100 or 150 years ago the byway was used by a horse and cart, the council will be able to protect the rights of existing users of that byway—the riders and the walkers—as well as look after the access for farmers and for others to open spaces beyond the byway. The council should be able to protect the rights of the disabled, who may well need to use four-wheel drive vehicles to get to the open spaces beyond the byway.

The Bill would give the county council rights of way committee the powers to designate a byway as a restricted byway, and to consider the rights and responsibilities of those with mechanically propelled vehicles—the trailbikes, the four-wheel drives and so on—and to make sure that those rights are not jeopardised. Laying down specific rights should be a matter of local decision for local people exercised by their local authority. By creating a byway known as a restricted byway, we can balance the needs and rights of all the users of the countryside.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Robert Walter, Sir George Young, Jeremy Corbyn, Sandra Gidley, Mr. James Gray, Mr. Robert Key, Mr. David Drew, Mr. Anthony Steen and Mr. John Randall.

accordingly presented a Bill to make new provision about establishing the existence of byways open to all traffic: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 16 July, and to be printed [Bill 80].

I inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.

I beg to move,

That this House believes that all Post Office customers who wish to continue receiving their benefits, pension payments and tax credits through the Post Office should be able to do so through a Post Office Card Account opened at the counter of a Post Office or sub-post office; notes that the Government has encouraged Post Office customers to use their own bank accounts or basic bank accounts, whilst preventing the promotion of the Post Office Card Account; further believes that the Government should use the roll out of Direct Payment to encourage the take-up of all benefits and tax credits; calls on the Government to clarify urgently how housebound, disabled and older people who are not able to cope with the three direct payment options will be able to claim their pensions and benefits after 2005; recognises the significant role played by local post offices in both rural and urban areas; appreciates that ending cash benefit payments will deprive sub-postmasters of an average of 35 per cent. of their income; notes that this will make many post offices commercially unviable and is likely to lead to yet further closures; further calls on the Government to ensure that the urban post office closure programme is conducted systematically and only after consulting all relevant parties including Post Office users; and condemns the Government's failure to deliver benefits and tax credits in a simple, easy to understand manner while at the same time jeopardising the future prosperity of the Post Office.

The motion reflects a widespread belief not just among those on the Opposition Benches but in all parts of the House about the importance of post offices as part of the local community. We have deep concerns about the long-term viability of the post office network under the Government's approach. Those concerns were powerfully expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) in the debate in the House on 13 January. That debate focused on the post office network and the importance of sustaining it and investing in it. Today I shall consider the post office network from the point of view of the people who use it—from the demand side, rather than the supply side. I shall consider the point of view of benefit claimants and the pensioners whom we represent, who wish to have access to a viable post office and to claim their benefits in a way with which they are long familiar and comfortable.

Although it is always good to see the Secretary of State in the Chamber, it is a great pity that she was not present for the debate on 13 January, which was about her responsibilities for support for post offices. Today, even though we are talking about services for benefit claimants, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is not present. I regret that, because I want to consider the crisis in our post offices from the point of view of those claiming benefits, many of whom are very unhappy with the Government's approach.

May I tell my hon. Friend about Belper? Under the reinvention programme, which seems to be more like a programme of mass destruction, of the five post offices that were opened in Belper, four were closed. We were assured that the one remaining post office would be able to cope, but last week there was absolute chaos in it. When the Government made a commitment to allow people to collect their benefits, they did not say that they would make it impossible for them to do so—but that is just what they have done.

My hon. Friend reflects the views of many constituents across the country who face practical problems that give the lie to some of the complacent assurances that we received from Ministers. The Trade and Industry Committee report "People, Pensions and Post Offices" contains powerful evidence about the scale of the problem that our post offices face and confirms why we are right to press for the right of people to choose how they receive their benefits. Paragraph 12 of the report states that the "old" system—the so-called old system

"offered the choice between a bank or building society account or an order book for use at a post office to collect benefits and pensions. Direct Payment essentially offers the choice between a bank or building society account which may or may not be usable at a post office, or the Post Office card account, but not the order book. It is difficult to see that customer choice has, in practice, been extended significantly. Offering the full range of customer choice would entail allowing those who wish to persist with the order book system to do so."

The Opposition are committed to the order book system as an option not because we are retro or old-fashioned, but because we believe in choice. If there are millions of people in Britain, including many pensioners, whose choice it is to use such a system, why should the Government try to deprive them of the choice that they reasonably wish to exercise?

People are right to be wary of some of the options that are in front of them instead. I shall quote the experience of a constituent of mine—Mrs. Mortain, who lives in Havant—whose case I have heard about literally in the last few days; I have her permission to do so. She has been receiving her pension via her bank account, in exactly the way that Ministers are trying to encourage, but she has not received a bank payment for the past five weeks. They have suddenly ceased. She got on to the Pension Service and it told her that it is currently experiencing what it called

"a glitch in the system",

and that hundreds of others are affected.

The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry may not be able to respond to this, but I hope that in the winding-up speech of the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Pond), we will learn whether he is aware of problems in delivering pension payments into bank accounts, and whether my constituent is not alone and there is a glitch in the system affecting many others. It has reached the stage where the Pension Service is saying, "The only way we can get you the money is to issue you with a giro cheque that you can cash at your local post office." That will be the fallback when computerised payments to bank accounts have not worked. Is that not why so many pensioners do not trust the Government's assurances on payment in other ways?

That news will be of great concern to old people in Reigate, where three post offices have been closed—in fact, the latest one is closing on Saturday—and they are left with the main post office in Reigate, which is hosted by Safeway. Morrisons, which is taking over Safeway, has been quite unable to provide me with any reassurance that the post office will stay open. Meanwhile, the Post Office is pressing ahead with closing the branch in Holmesdale road. It is a dreadful state of affairs if it cannot guarantee to pay people their money. The reinvention programme should be stopped immediately until the matter can be sorted out.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He rightly draws my attention to the fact that, given all the changes in the world of supermarkets at the moment—in my constituency, Tesco has just taken over our local one-stop shop—many of the established arrangements for post offices in such shops are in question. That is another source of uncertainty and instability. I hope again that we will hear from the Secretary of State about what steps she is taking given that significant communities—towns—face the uncertainty that my hon. Friend describes.

Does my hon. Friend accept that a great deal of insult seems to be added to injury when post offices are closed in the circumstances that he has just articulated, because of the mechanistic and formulaic way in which the Post Office goes about closing them? In Bexhill, three post offices have closed, yet when I have tried to make representations, I have received only a computer-manufactured letter, and even when errors in the reply have been pointed out, I have merely received a further computer-generated letter.

My hon. Friend is quite right. One problem with the so-called consultation is that it is not real. Instead, we have something of which the Government have made rather a speciality: bogus consultation during which one never gets the sense that one is receiving a genuine, individual letter or that any response will be properly assessed by an individual. The Opposition wish to respect the views of the people whom we represent—the pensioners and the many people claiming benefits. We are in favour of choice and in favour of the customer. That is the philosophy that underpins our approach to the Post Office.

There is further evidence in the direct-payment statistics produced by the Department for Work and Pensions about what people prefer. They show the responses that it has had when it has invited benefit claimants to convert to the new payment systems. We see from the latest statistics that it has so far approached approximately 2.5 million pensioners, of whom 1.9 million have responded. Of those 1.9 million responses, only about 750,000 have said, "Here are my bank account details; of course you can pay my money into my bank account." Some 1.2 million people have said that they want a Post Office card account. Similarly, with regard to Jobcentre Plus, 2.5 million letters have been sent out, eliciting 1.3 million responses. Of those, about 800,000 have said, "Here are my bank account details", and 600,000 have asked for a Post Office card account.

The Department's latest statistics show that we have already had 2.5 million requests for a Post Office card account. The Government's limit was to be 3 million, and they have already received 2.5 million, so does the Secretary of State accept that their statistics are, first, evidence of a widespread preference for a Post Office card account rather than bank account, and secondly, very different from the Government's forecast? In the light of that clear evidence about what real people in the real world prefer, what is her new forecast for the use of the Post Office card account?

The evidence about people's preferences is even more powerful in the light of the clear bias at every stage in the system against people having a Post Office card account. Those people have expressed their preferences for Post Office card accounts despite every attempt by the system to push them in a very different direction.

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that, even after the initial stages, the procedure for obtaining a card account is complex and difficult for many elderly people?

The hon. Gentleman is quite correct, and that is a point to which I will turn in a moment.

The evidence of the bias in the system that I was about to cite is from a report inThe Sunday Telegraph of 7 March, in which a member of the DWP staff quoted an instruction received from head office, which is devastating evidence that the Government have not stood by their assurances that there will be equity and fairness in the system. The instruction states:

"We need to pay most of these customers into bank accounts which cost 1p rather than into Post Office card accounts which cost up to 30 times more. You should be aiming to get 9 out of 10 new claimants (to use) bank accounts, with a small proportion paid through Post Office card accounts."

That was the aim set for benefit claimants. I hope that either the Secretary of State or the Under-Secretary will say whether that is an accurate record of instructions sent out by the Department.

Is the hon. Gentleman being disingenuous? Does he understand that people who seek work need to be job-ready, and that the Post Office card account, although it has many favourable characteristics, does not allow the payment of wages into it? Does he not, therefore, understand that it would be quite irresponsible for Jobcentre Plus to advise people to take out a Post Office card account, which would not leave them job-ready? May I underline the fact that the 3 million figure is not a limit on the number of Post Office card accounts? We have never said that there is a limit. If people want the Post Office card account, they can have it.

Was the 3 million figure a forecast then? The Government themselves put that figure into circulation, so if it is no longer accurate, what is their forecast? Not only the Opposition but many people working for the Post Office would wish to know where the Government think things now stand. Of course I accept the Minister's point about wishing people to be job-ready, but assurances have been given that the system will not be biased. Nevertheless, the evidence is that it is biased, and the Minister has just cited a reason why it should be so. That is a very different position from the one that they have taken so far.

The system is not biased. It is a matter of choice for the customer. Customers must know their full range of choices, and that is what we provide. It is not for the Government or the Opposition to tell people whether they should have a Post Office card account, a current account, a basic account or a building society account. It is for the customer to decide and it is our responsibility to ensure that they fully understand their options.

It is, of course, for the customer to decide, and that is what we believe. Contrary to the claim made by the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Pond), that the Government allow the customer to decide, we all know that they are trying to push customers in one direction rather than the other. All we are asking him to do is to ensure that the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department for Work and Pensions stand by their assurances that all they are doing is extending choice. Conservative Members want to see fair and open choice, which is not available at the moment.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister is talking nonsense? I visited 28 post offices last summer, and I shall briefly quote three postmasters. The first said:

"The Benefits Agency is bullying people to change. The Government has not been fair."

The second said:

"The Benefits Agency has been very difficult. The forms are designed not to help."

The third said:

"The initial letters give a clear idea that customers must go direct. They are misleading. The bank section is deliberately put before the card section."

The Minister should apologise.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. His point is repeated by Labour Back Benchers in early-day motion 648, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Connarty). Many hon. Members support early-day motion 648, which recognises the problem—we can all see the problem, our constituents experience it and people who run post offices are concerned about it. It is not good enough for the Minister to come to the House and say that the system is fair and even—it is not, and that is the nature of the problem.

One of the things that most concerns pensioners in my constituency, where Ash Vale Station and Mytchett post offices have closed, is that if they even inquire about the system, as a result of Government instructions, their inquiry is treated as a request for automatic payment. That is part of the Government's dishonesty. Does my hon. Friend recognise that one of the problems is that the Government are not putting any pressure on the many banks and financial institutions that will not allow cheques to be cashed at post office counters? Only three of the banks currently allow their cheques to be cashed in that way. Does my hon. Friend agree that all banks should allow cheques to be cashed at all post office counters, which would reintroduce footfall into post offices and help sub-post offices to survive?

Both my hon. Friend's points are absolutely right. First, we are all concerned about the insidious process whereby people are pushed towards the bank account option rather than the Post Office card account at every stage. Secondly, Conservative Members do not want to subsidise post offices; all we want is people to enter post offices because that is the service they want to use. We seek increased footfall, which is the best way to ensure that as many post offices as possible are viable in the future.

Is my hon. Friend aware that the Work and Pensions Committee visited the telephone call centre for the Pension Service last year? We were shown the script that the call centre operators use when new pensioners request a pension. The script made it clear that the Post Office card account is the last option. Does my hon. Friend think that it would be useful if the Minister were to ensure that a copy of that script is placed in the Library?

Yes. I recall that that important point came up in the Select Committee, where my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) does sterling work. Yet again, the evidence that the system is biased is building up. All we are asking for is fairness for the millions of people who want their benefit to continue to be paid at the post office, which is not too much to ask of the Minister.

The House will have noted the hon. Gentleman's statement that the Opposition do not want to subsidise post offices. Are the Opposition confirming their opposition to the Government's £2 billion investment in the post office network? I shall quote Postwatch research—the research was conducted on a small scale, but it was, nevertheless, conducted by Postwatch—to those hon. Members who suggest that the process is biased to encourage people in one way or another. The vast majority of pensioners said that advice from the customer conversion centre

"was given in a clear and unbiased manner".

I began my speech by saying how much I regret the absence of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to answer on behalf of the benefits system. which is why we called the debate. The junior Work and Pensions Minister has intervened on me three times, but so far we have heard nothing from the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry did not turn up when we debated the issue from the point of view of the post office network, and now she is silent when we discuss the subject from the point of view of the claimant—instead, it is a Minister who has intervened.

The hon. Gentleman missed out a stage. After the form has been taken to the post office, one must obtain information from the post office to fill in on the original letter from the Pension Service, and return that letter to the Pension Service before the account is activated.

I am happy to be corrected by the hon. Gentleman, and I apologise to the House for having made the system sound simpler than it really is.

The hon. Gentleman is right that it is difficult to open those accounts. I draw his attention to the fact that if an elderly person writes outside the correct box when they fill in the form, the whole form is rejected. As he says, the system is biased against the Post Office card account.

The problems with the computer recognition system form a whole subject, and there have been many such cases. One gentleman wrote his sevens in the continental style—Conservative Members do not object to the continental method of writing seven—and the computer could not recognise them, so his benefit claim could not be processed, which is not a good way to operate.

The hon. Gentleman may know that I am a member of the Select Committee that made some observations about the complexity surrounding the Post Office card account. Given what he said about order books, does he want to improve the Post Office card account or does he want to abolish it?

I do not want to abolish the Post Office card account—we accept that we are too far down the track for that. We want a user-friendly system that allows people to choose a Post Office card account, which is a way to maximise footfall through the post office. In a moment, I shall turn to the important subject of the exception service, which is needed to supplement the Post Office card account.

I want to clarify the Conservative policy. The hon. Gentleman says he wants to improve the Post Office card account system, but he has not said that he wants to return to an order book system.

The Post Office card account does need to be improved, but I am also talking about the form that the exceptions service should take.

I intended to cite evidence from a range of charities about the problems involved in opening a Post Office card account, but so many of my hon. Friends have intervened with evidence of their own that I need not detain the House with it, save to quote Age Concern, which says in an appendix to the Select Committee report:

"We are concerned at the considerable hurdles that seem to be being put in the way of opening a POCA. One cannot simply go to a Post Office and open an account."

The Secretary of State must tackle that fundamental charge regarding the bias in the system.

Does the Secretary of State recognise the problems that particular groups face? We have all heard sad stories about the problems that many disabled people have experienced when using the new post office devices. It is a sad irony that the House is finally considering the draft Disability Discrimination Bill at the same time as the Government are introducing a measure that is the most hostile to disabled people, and in respect of which their interests and views have been least well considered, in many years of public policy. The Secretary of State knows about the problems, because the Government have already had to admit that the PIN machine will have to be changed. Some people find it difficult to reach the keypad and others—for example, blind and visually impaired people—find it difficult to manipulate. Will the Secretary of State tell the House where the redesign of the keypad stands and when we will see the user-friendly keypads in our post offices for which many disabled users are crying out?

The Secretary of State must deal with the problem of multiple users, which arises where, for example, claimants are housebound and receive support from carers and social services. In an ideal world, those people might have one carer or social services support worker who is with them all the time, but, sadly, it is not like that in the real world. Many of our housebound constituents face an ever-changing cast of support workers coming to their houses to assist them, which makes it very difficult for them to access the system that has been designed by Ministers and the Post Office. Citizens Advice says:

"Direct payment will bring few advantages to claimants who need someone else to collect their benefit for them, or to help them operate an ATM or pinpad. This is a significant issue that needs a solution".

It believes that in order to resolve such practical problems, the DWP should allow housebound people and those who cannot cope with a PIN to choose the exceptions service as their normal method of payment and that it should be accessible for claimants who do not have a permanent collector.

I do not blame the DTI for failing to understand this, but I do blame the DWP—after all, it is responsible for delivering benefits and should understand claimants' needs—for failing to put up the Secretary of State to respond to the debate and for failing to ensure that such problems were tackled as the system was being designed. I am afraid that that has done much damage to the Department's reputation for understanding the needs of disabled or housebound people.

In response, the Government have proposed an exceptions service. I should be grateful if the Secretary of State could give us some reliable information about how that will work. So far, Ministers have failed to inspire confidence when offering us assurances about that. The Minister for Pensions sounded like Corporal Jones from "Dad's Army" when he told the Select Committee on Trade and Industry:

"The advice to people at the moment is do not panic."

I am afraid that that is not good enough as a piece of serious ministerial advice on how the new exceptions service will work. The only response to, "'Do not panic', says Minister" is, "Panic!". He advised people to hold on to their pension books and not to worry. He also said that the exceptions service is not being offered as a "fourth option"—in other words, that it is not an option for anyone dissatisfied with the other three options. Will the Secretary of State tell us more about who will be able to access it, on what terms they will access it, and for how long they will have to wait?

The Select Committee's report is highly condemnatory on this point. It states:

"It is clear from the evidence presented to us that the failure of the DWP to develop its ideas for the Exceptions Service in advance of the introduction of Direct Payments has led to uncertainty and confusion over the means by which some groups of disabled people will receive their benefits in future. At the very least, the Government should take steps to allay their concerns by making clear that claimants do have the choice of continuing to use order books until 2005 or until such time as the Exceptions Service has been developed."

There is widespread concern about this issue, and I hope that the Secretary of State will deal with it.

Standing back from this individual disaster, we see a wider picture of a catalogue of problems and failures going right back to the original decision in 1999 to abandon the Horizon project and go for this option instead. I think we all know what happened then. Ministers thought to themselves, "There is this hidden subsidy coming into the Post Office from the benefits system. We can save money by paying the benefits in a different way and we will remove the hidden subsidy for post offices." That is what they thought they were doing. Instead, they have ended up putting even more money into post offices than they would otherwise have had to, because they have taken away the footfall of benefits claimants, while finding that many benefits claimants are deeply distressed because they have been unable to continue with the reliable system for claiming their benefits. During those five years, the Government have not taken us forward—instead, they have managed to perform the extraordinary double trick of weakening our post offices and leaving many people who wish to claim benefits with a less adequate system than they had before. This is a classic example of a failure of public policy; yet another example of this Government's failure to deliver; and, even more significantly, a failure to understand the needs of millions of people, especially elderly people, who wish to carry on being paid in the same reliable way.[Interruption.] The Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is giggling. I have to tell him that it is no accident that this policy was decided in 1999. If we date it from the geological fault lines of this Labour Government, it is a classic "cool Britannia, modernising Britain" policy, which says, "Let's get rid of the old order books: we're going to have spanking new systems and gleaming new technology." It is a classic example of a policy cooked up by people who had no understanding of the views of disabled people or of pensioners. It comes from the time when the right hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson) said that what he really thought about pensioners was that there was "no mileage" to be had from them, and when the chairman of the Labour party denounced them as "racist", then, as a final insult, as "predominantly Conservative". That is why they took no account of the interests of the many people using the post office, and that is why it is Conservative Members who are pressing for their interests today.

I beg to move, To leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:

"supports the Government's strategy to modernise the way benefits and pensions are paid, and to provide customers with a choice of accounts; welcomes the fact that with Direct Payment customers will still be able to collect their cash from the Post Office if they wish using a current account or basic bank account with Post Office access or the Post Office Card Account; notes the Government's plans for a cheque payment, cashable at post offices, for people who cannot be paid through an account; recognises that Direct Payment is a more modern, efficient and secure method of payment which will also help increase financial inclusion; welcomes the fact that more customers are now paid through an account than by order book without problems, including nearly six million pensioners; notes the previous government's attempt to introduce a Benefit Payment Card, which wasted millions of pounds of tax-payers' money; notes the fact that the Post Office had not until recently kept up with changes in customer demand and so had seen transaction volumes dropping and losses increasing; recognises the need for change and congratulates the Government for taking decisive action to help turn the business around; welcomes the record £2 billion investment in the Post Office network over a five-year period, including £450 million for the rural network and £210 million to modernise the urban network; and believes that this will help ensure a viable Post Office network that people will want to use."

I am delighted to join the hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) in a debate entitled "Post Office Services", and to respond to his opening speech. As Secretary of State, with the privilege of being shareholder on behalf of the public in the Royal Mail and in Post Office Ltd., I regard it as entirely appropriate that I should have this opportunity to respond to his increasingly absurd statements.

Let me first deal with the issue of benefit payments and the shift to direct payment that is taking place. The hon. Gentleman talks about choice. He appears to have ignored everything that has been happening about customers making their own choices over the past decade and more. For many years, well ahead of the decision by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to switch to making all payments by direct credit, more than half of benefit recipients were already having their benefits cash paid directly into their bank accounts.

Let me underline that point by saying that nearly two thirds of recipients of child benefit and nearly six out of 10 new pensioners already get their benefits paid directly into their bank accounts. Those claimants and customers are exercising choice, yet we heard nothing about them from the hon. Member for Havant.

The Secretary of State makes great play of the issue of choice, but where is the choice for my constituents who want to use a post office in their village, but find it closed?

I shall come to post office closures in a moment, but if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I want to start with the issue with which the hon. Member for Havant started—benefits payments and the introduction of the Post Office card account. Let us remember that the Government of whom he was a member introduced their own plan for a benefit payment card. It was supposed to use the latest technology of the time, and it was part of a public-private partnership. When we came into office in 1997, we discovered that their benefit payment card programme was a shambles. It was well overdue, the technology was not working—because the programme was so overdue, that technology was also out of date—and the costs were overrunning.

We spent a year and a half trying to make that programme work. In the end, however, we decided that there was no point in rescuing that absurd out-of-date Conservative proposition for a benefit payment card. Instead, we invested the best part of £500 million in the Horizon platform—on which I shall elaborate in a moment—which forms the basis for universal banking, which is extending the benefits of banking and financial inclusion to millions of people.

If the right hon. Lady wants to extend universal banking to all people, why cannot the job-ready unemployed have their wages paid into one of those accounts?

Because the card account was never designed to do the entire job of a bank account. Basic bank accounts and regular cheque accounts are available for people to have their wages paid into; the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Pond) has already dealt with that point.

I am sure that I was not the only Member who went to see ICL to talk about the Horizon system, which came out of the ideas of the previous Conservative Government. When I did so, ICL made it clear to me that the system was full of capability but was being underused. It was also made clear that there was a need to invest in it because it was going to be the saviour of the Post Office. Will my right hon. Friend point out to all concerned that that was the clear message? The Opposition do not seem to be able to remember that.

My hon. Friend is right, and I am grateful to him for making that important point. Thanks to the investment and the decisions that we have made, the Horizon platform and the automation of the post offices have now modernised post offices to enable them to offer new banking services to millions of customers who did not previously use the post office. That is extremely important.

We are now phasing out the order book system. It is out of date, and it uses systems that, frankly, belong to the era of the ration book. It is inefficient, costly to administer, and open to fraud and abuse. That is why we were right to decide to phase it out and extend benefit claimants' choice, which includes maintaining and strengthening choice for claimants who wish to get their benefits in cash at a post office.

As my right hon. Friend said, the order book system is open to fraud and abuse. Will she confirm that 100 pensioners a week have their order books stolen?

My hon. Friend is right—and that is a disaster for the individual pensioners who are robbed, with all the distress that that entails. It is also enormously costly to the taxpayer, who has to foot the bill for this kind of fraud. I would have expected the hon. Member for Havant, who is so against waste and inefficiency in the public sector, to support rather than oppose our efforts to get rid of a system that makes elderly people and taxpayers vulnerable.

Our commitment to financial inclusion, universal banking and the introduction of the Post Office card account has been welcomed by Citizens Advice, Mind and Help the Aged. Indeed, Citizens Advice's excellent recent study on financial inclusion stated:

"The government, the banking industry and the Post Office should be commended for the progress they have made in establishing Universal Banking Services. The ambition to enable all people to own the most basic of financial services—a bank account—is one we share."

I commend Citizens Advice on the way in which it has helped us to put universal banking in place.

I am pretty certain that, having seen the post offices at St. John's, Lesbourne road and now Holmesdale road close, and with a threat hanging over the main post office in Reigate, Citizens Advice and Help the Aged would be less than impressed by the accessibility of post office services to the elderly in my constituency. Those closures are happening at exactly the same time as the Government are going through the automation process. The conjunction of those two things, plus the £50,000 incentive to sub-postmasters to take their businesses out of service which places them in an impossible position—is causing a collapse in the availability of services in Reigate and elsewhere. It was the concern about all those issues that generated the petition that was presented to me by hundreds of my constituents this morning.

I am not surprised that the hon. Gentleman and his party want to go back to the days of the Conservative Government. when post offices were closing in their hundreds and thousands in an entirely unplanned and unmanaged way, partly because, with fewer customers cashing benefit cheques at post offices, it was simply not possible for sub-postmasters to make a decent living. I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that people should be forced to carry on in businesses that are no longer viable.

I shall return to the issue of urban reinvention in a moment, but I want to deal first with the series of allegations made by the hon. Member for Havant about the alleged difficulties involved in opening a Post Office card account. He made great play of the difficulty of the process, the seventh and eighth steps and all that nonsense. Let us be clear: there are three steps that individual claimants need to take. First, they ring the customer conversion centre. I looked extremely carefully at the script to be used there before I approved its use, to ensure that it was neutral in its presentation of the options. Secondly, they discuss the options. Thirdly, if they want to open a Post Office card account, they wait for their personal invitation document to arrive and they take it to the post office branch, where they get and complete their application form. They then send those account details back to the Department for Work and Pensions.

It is my recollection—and that of the Chairman of the Select Committee—that, when the Committee visited the new pension call centre, we found that the script was not neutral on that matter, and that the Post Office card account was very much the last option. Would the right hon. Lady agree to place that script in the Library of the House?

I do not agree with the criticisms of the script that have been made by members of the Select Committee, but I should be happy to place it in the Library. I shall do so in the knowledge that Postwatch, which conducted some small-scale research with actual customers, has reported that almost all the pensioners to whom it spoke felt that the advice given by the customer conversion centre

"was given in a clear and unbiased manner".

Most of them described the DWP customer information material as being of "good quality", and most of the people ringing the centre had their questions answered satisfactorily. Most of those who had rung the centre to open a card account felt that the information that they had been given was "clear and unbiased", and most did not feel that staff were seeking to persuade them to choose one option over any of the others.

I am amazed. Has the Secretary of State talked directly to any postmasters? As I said in an earlier intervention, I have visited 28, and every one said how difficult it is for people to apply for cards. I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) that the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters would say that he underestimates his case. It says that there are 22 steps in the process of getting a card. When I visited the Minister for Energy, E-Commerce and Postal Services, taking a delegation of postmasters along, it was explained clearly to him that those who manage to get through that thicket of measures do so only with the specific help of the postmaster himself. I urge the Secretary of State to come to North Shropshire to visit some postmasters.

The position of Conservative Members becomes more and more absurd as they keep inflating the number of steps that supposedly need to be taken. Let me stress to the hon. Gentleman that about 2 million Post Office card accounts have already been opened. That scarcely bears out the absurd allegations being made about how we are biasing the system, driving people away from the Post Office card account and making it impossible for anyone to open one. That is complete nonsense.

The Secretary of State calls those claims absurd, but all Opposition Members know how true they are. Is she saying that the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux is absurd when it reports that

"clients who want to open a Post Office card account feel that there are obstacles placed in their way … We consider that this process acts as a barrier to opening a card account, particularly for vulnerable people"?

That is what NACAB is saying, and that is what we all know to be the case. Why does the Secretary of State continue to deny what everybody knows to be true?

I am going by what customers have told Postwatch and, more importantly, by the fact that about 2 million people have opened a Post Office card account. The eventual number of card accounts is expected to exceed the original operating assumption of 3 million; none of that is evidence that people are finding it hard to open an account.

The hon. Member for Havant also raised a number of important issues involving people with disabilities. The first to be raised, quite properly, was the problems that people who are blind or have difficulty in seeing have in using personal identification number pads. That issue has been recognised by the Post Office, which has already improved the PIN pad by putting a key guard over it to make it easier to use, and adding a dot to the No. 5 key. The Post Office is working with the Royal National Institute of the Blind to make further changes to the PIN pad to make it easier for that group of customers to use the system.

Why was it necessary to make those changes? Why were those things not thought of in the first place?

I agree that it would have been better if the original PIN pad had been designed with full regard to the needs of people with different disabilities. The technology is still developing, and was not available at the right price and at the right time when the service was introduced. It is being introduced now, and I pay tribute to the RNIB, which not only raised the issue, but has helped the Post Office to resolve those problems in a practical way, as we readily acknowledge.

The hon. Member for Havant also asked about people who are housebound. I think that he accepts that there is no problem for those with a regular carer who use a Post Office card account, because they will have their own PIN number. However, housebound people may have different people caring for them in different weeks. Of course that is a problem: under the existing system, the claimants can simply sign an order book counterfoil, which provides great flexibility, but I am afraid that that practice is wide open to fraud and abuse. We are saying that where claimants need people to collect their money for them, they will, for the time being, simply continue to use their order book while we work with the various organisations to design the exceptions service.

The exceptions service will be based on a cheque system, which will be much more secure than the order book system. It will be introduced and available from October this year, in plenty of time for the ending of the order book system in May next year. I am delighted to say that, exactly as we would expect, my right hon. and hon. Friends at the Department for Work and Pensions and their officials have been working extremely closely with Citizens Advice, Help the Aged and many other groups representing vulnerable customers to ensure that there is full understanding of the needs of different vulnerable groups that cannot have their benefits paid directly into an account. That new system of payment by cheque will all be in place to ensure that there is no trouble in getting benefits for those vulnerable claimants.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it would be useful to give Members a full briefing, given that people are likely to question us on how the system will work? Before the system goes live, will she arrange for us to see how it will operate?

That is an excellent suggestion, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and I will ensure that such a briefing is provided.

The successful introduction of the Post Office card account is only part of a much bigger—[Laughter.] They are very slow over there this afternoon.[Interruption.] The card is extremely successful—about 2 million people have already opened a Post Office card account, because they have decided that that is what they want. However, that account, which many Opposition Members said would never see the light of day—let me remind them of that—is part of a much bigger programme of universal banking. Thanks to the £500 million investment in the Horizon platform, the Post Office can become the high street bank for millions of other bank customers.

The Post Office is providing banking services on behalf of the Alliance & Leicester, Barclays, the Cooperative bank, First Direct in Scotland, Lloyds TSB and two internet banks—Smile and Cahoot. Customers of all those banks, with their ordinary bank accounts such as cheque accounts so on, can get cash at post offices free of charge.

The Secretary of State knows that she has not mentioned any of the three main Scottish banks, which means that pensioners and benefit recipients in Scotland do not have the same choice as those in other parts of the country. What progress is she making in negotiations with the three main Scottish banks to reach agreement with them?

I am happy to say that the Scottish clearing banks and other major financial institutions, as well as those I mentioned, already provide access at post offices. Those services—for instance, access to a basic bank account—were launched on schedule on 1 April last year. Access to the other current accounts—the cheque accounts—is a matter for commercial negotiations between the Post Office and the various banks.

My point is that because of our investment in it, the Post Office can offer that service to all the commercial banks, and therefore to all their customers. It is involved in those negotiations at the moment. I have repeatedly urged all banks to provide all their customers with access to their various accounts through the post offices, but obviously that is a commercial decision for the individual banks.

The result of that programme of investment and universal banking is that there are 20 million current account customers—not Post Office card account customers, but current account customers—who can use the new electronic systems and undertake banking transactions at Post Office branches. The result of that is that since April last year there have been nearly 25 million banking transactions at post offices. That is a huge success story, which the hon. Member for Havant completely ignored. That is why Citizens Advice welcomed this expansion of banking at post offices. It is a significant step forward in financial inclusion. Above all, from the point of view of this debate, it brings more people into post offices and gives sub-postmasters a new source of revenue.

How much income has the Post Office lost through the changes in the card payment system and how much income will be replaced by the new banking arrangements on which the Secretary of State and her colleagues—as was repeated to me when I saw the Minister for Energy, E-Commerce and Postal Services—are hanging so much?

Sub-postmasters have seen a reduction in their income from benefit payments over the last 10 years and more, for the reasons that I set out earlier, as customers have moved away from that. The choice to which the hon. Gentleman is not willing to face up was to enable the process of customer choice and seize the opportunity to have a much more efficient and fraud-proof system of paying benefits, and to make post offices attractive to customers through expanding their range of products, such as financial services and so on. Alongside the decline in income from benefit claimants, we are seeing an increase, which will continue, in income from other sources, such as home insurance, travel insurance, travel exchange products and so on. All of those are hugely popular with sub-postmasters, and all provide the prospect of continuing increases in new sources of income.

The Secretary of State's vision of an integrated post office and banking system is impressive, but does she accept that there is a problem in many rural areas, because over the last two decades many banks have pulled out of rural areas and closed small branches? I cite the case of Friockheim in my constituency, where the last bank closed a few years ago. The post office has now closed, so there is neither a bank nor a post office to enable people to use any of those services.

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. It is perfectly true that many of our rural communities no longer have a retail outlet, bank or post office, because none was commercially viable. I shall refer in a moment to the investment that the Department has been making to prevent all avoidable closures of rural post offices and our work with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to try to expand in new ways the availability of services for people in rural communities.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

No, I want to make progress.

I want to underline the point that there is still a view, which I regret that some sub-postmasters share, that the only way to keep post offices viable is somehow to force customers to use them by maintaining an out-of-date order book system that gives those customers no choice at all about where they get their cash. That is not the way forward for our sub-post offices. I am glad that, in its evidence to the Select Committee, Age Concern said:

"Although we are aware that a number of organisations"—

it may have been referring to the Conservative party—

"and individual sub post masters are promoting the POCA on the basis that this is the way to save the post office network, Age Concern does not subscribe to this view."

Nor do we.

That brings me to the second set of issues raised by the hon. Member for Havant and other Opposition Members, about the number of local post offices and the restructuring. We want a viable national network.

Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to apologise to the constituents of those Members who raised cases with the Minister for Energy, E-Commerce and Postal Services the last time that we debated this subject, when we said that the consultation process was a sham? He assured us that it was not. The "Westminster newsletter", which was sent out by the Post Office after he made his announcement on 5 February, referred to new developments, one of which, it said, guaranteed that the Post Office will

"not make a decision until after the public consultation period"

The Minister of State's statement included the following provision:

"No contract binding on Post Office Limited is signed before the public consultation process has ended."—[Official Report, 5 February 2004; Vol. 417, c. SOWS.]

That meant no binding closure on that particular post office. That proves the point that many of us made before 5 February the whole consultation period was an absolute sham.

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is complaining that my hon. Friend the Minister responded to the concerns raised in that debate and took full account of all the individual complaints that have been brought to him. As a result of individual complaints, where the process has apparently not been followed as it should have been, he discussed matters with David Mills, the excellent chief executive of Post Office Ltd., and put in place stronger measures to ensure that in every case, and in every part of our country, the consultation process is properly followed and the area plan is finalised only after that consultation has been finished.

To be absolutely clear, is the Secretary of State saying that she is grateful to Her Majesty's official Opposition for the debate on 13 January, which highlighted issues on which we were supported by Members across the House, not one of whom was in favour of the Government? Do not the Opposition therefore deserve thanks for having prompted the Government to take the right decisions, which then came forth in the Minister of State's statement?

I am congratulating my hon. Friend, who is an excellent Minister, on taking account, as he always does, of constituency issues raised by Members on both sides of the House. I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman would have been less churlish on that point.

I thank the Secretary of State for her answer. There is one group with a particular problem—those for whom the network reinvention programme and the so-called consultation and decision-making processes were already under way. It is no comfort to my constituents or those of other hon. Members to find that their consultations were so flawed that matters would be put right in future but that closures would go ahead as was clearly planned from the outset in their constituencies. Why has the Minister failed to put a halt to those processes?

I am sure that that is a point on which my hon. Friend the Minister of State has had discussions or communication with the hon. Lady. If not, I shall ensure that he does so.

Let me stress the need for a planned reorganisation of the post office network. In the previous financial year, Post Office Ltd., not the whole of the Royal Mail, made losses of £194 million before exceptional items. In the year before that, it made losses of £163 million, and the half-year results that have just been reported show significant losses again of £91 million. What has been happening over many years is a process of completely unplanned post office closures. Indeed, the Conservative party presided over 3,500 post office closures during its period in office.

As a result of such unplanned closures, as sub-postmasters gave up the unequal struggle of trying to make a living out of too few customers, we ended up with a pattern of provision that had no basis in rational response to what customers needed. Let me give the House the example of my city, in which one post office branch, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, South (Mr. Marshall), has 12 other post offices within a one mile radius. Indeed, it has 15 others within a radius of 1.1 miles. That is an impossible situation, in which none of the sub-postmasters can make a decent living, none can afford to invest in their shop or post office to make it more attractive to customers, and all are chasing and competing for a hitherto dwindling band of customers. Before the Post Office began its urban reinvention programme, more than 1,000 urban post offices had at least 10 others within one mile. Either we allow that to continue and let the decline go on—which is what the Conservatives were doing, and presumably would still do today—or we face up to difficult decisions and invest to ensure a planned restructuring of the network.

The problem is not unique to the United Kingdom. Customers in developed countries all over the world have been changing their patterns of banking, using the internet more and so on. In Germany, the number of post office branches has been reduced from 30,000 to 13,000 as a consequence of changes in customer behaviour.

I agree that it is vital for us to plan the changes that are necessary, but does not the way in which Post Office Ltd. is going about a number of the reorganisations fall short of expectations? In south Birmingham, for instance, the closure of 29 out of 90 sub-post offices is being suggested. Is not one of the problems the excessively inflexible view adopted by Post Office Ltd. of the assistance available to Government, which often leads it to maximise its chances of closing post offices and minimise the opportunities to create sustainable businesses? Will my right hon. Friend assure me that in future Post Office Ltd. will be encouraged to look at the opportunities for post office business, and not just the threats?