I am grateful for the opportunity to debate Bosnia and Herzegovina because it is at an historic crossroads. That is a much overused phrase but it is justified in this case, as I hope the debate will show. Bosnia and Herzegovina could emerge as a post-conflict model of success and rebuild its economic, political and social structures. Alternatively, it could settle into ethnic strife and continued poverty, with consequences for its neighbours and greater political instability in the region.

I am delighted that my hon. Friend has secured the debate, because the subject is very important. Does he agree that one of the problems is that the world's attention moves on so quickly that countries such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, which need as much help as possible from the international community, are in danger of being forgotten from time to time? If we are not careful, we will find ourselves returning to the bad old days.

My hon. Friend speaks wisely. It would be easy to take one's eye off the ball. I shall say a few words on that when I come to speak about the stabilisation force, which feels forgotten because the focus is now on areas such as Iraq and Palestine. However, we must stay focused on establishing a bulkhead of peace and stability for the region by continuing the good progress that has been achieved. I am grateful for that intervention.

Bosnia and Herzegovina lags behind its neighbours in making sustainable economic and political progress and in making real progress towards entering the international community's various institutions, at a time of widespread anxiety about war and civil strife in other parts of the world, including Iraq, Palestine, parts of Africa and Burma. We need to review Bosnia and Herzegovina's post-conflict reconstruction and economic development and to ensure that it continues in the right direction.

Bosnia and Herzegovina's potential owes a considerable amount to British influence and intervention. British soldiers have played a widely admired role in the NATO stabilisation force. SFOR originally had 60,000 troops; I believe that that number is now down to about 7,000. The force includes a large contingent of British troops, who are serving with great professionalism and courage, as one always expects from British troops abroad. They can be forgiven for feeling a little forgotten, as the attention of the international media is focused on other areas.

We visited the British forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The multinational taskforce north-west at Banja Luka is based at an establishment called the Metal Factory, where the forces have their barracks. We were made very welcome. The SFOR mission is to conduct NATO-led military operations across the area of responsibility, to contribute to the maintenance of sustained peace and stability and to deter a major return to violence. That will support the international community's continuing progress towards achieving a self-sustaining peace, and establish the conditions for further Euro-Atlantic integration.

Peacekeeping operations are fiendishly difficult and British troops do a superb job, especially because of their decades of experience in Northern Ireland. They are finding the right balance in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They have the lightness of touch to engage the civilian population positively, but when necessary they can and will act toughly to protect themselves and others and to achieve their objectives.

We met the troops and spent time listening to their views and their problems. We brought back many messages and questions for Ministers, particularly those in the Ministry of Defence. We wish our troops a safe time in Bosnia and Herzegovina and a quick return. We commend their command structure, headed by General Crispian Beattie, the SFOR commander. They are doing a great job.

Let us move on to NATO. The Istanbul communiqué of 28 June stated:

"As the security situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina has evolved positively, we have decided to conclude the Alliance's successful SFOR operation by the end of this year. We welcome the readiness of the European Union to deploy a new and distinct UN-mandated robust Chapter VII mission in the country, based on the Berlin + arrangements…NATO's long-term political commitment to Bosnia and Herzegovina remains unchanged and the establishment of a NATO headquarters will constitute NATO's residual military presence in the country. NATO HQ Sarajevo, which has the principal task of providing advice on defence reform, will also undertake certain operational supporting tasks, such as counter-terrorism whilst ensuring force protection; supporting the ICTY, within means and capabilities, with regard to the detention of persons indicted for war crimes; and intelligence sharing with the EU. The Dayton/Paris Accords remain in force as the basis for peace and stability in Bosnia and Herzegovina."

The capture and bringing to justice of Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and Ante Gotovina, in accordance with United Nations Security Council resolutions 1503 and 1534, remain the key to progress in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In its communiqué, NATO explained why it decided not to invite Bosnia and Herzegovina to join its partnership for peace. That was particularly because of the lack of ICTY co-operation, especially on the part of the Republika Srpska entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina. NATO's communiqué states:

"We are concerned that BIH, particularly obstructionist elements in the RS entity, has failed to live up to its obligation to cooperate fully with ICTY, including the arrest and transfer to the jurisdiction of the Tribunal of war crimes indictees, a fundamental requirement for the country to join PfP. We also look for systematic changes necessary to develop effective security and law enforcement structures."

Lord Ashdown, the international community's high representative, is doing a great job, on balance. Every side grumbles but he commands respect. That is the mark of a good referee. Unfortunately, not all referees in the 2004 European championships were as good, but I congratulate Paddy Ashdown on the job that he is doing. On 30 June, he announced a series of measures to prevent obstructionist elements in the RS entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina from frustrating efforts to ensure that Bosnia And Herzegovina co-operates fully with the ICTY. Those measures include the dismissal of more than 60 individuals from public and party positions, financial sanctions and proposals to reform police structures in Bosnia.

Lord Ashdown also announced an extension to the EU travel ban on individuals suspected of aiding and abetting fugitive ICTY indictees. Will the Minister, who is listening carefully, confirm that the Government fully support that package of measures, and that failure to cooperate with the ICTY will remain a fundamental barrier to Bosnia and Herzegovina's integration with EU and NATO structures and, by extension, to its becoming a stable, peaceful and prosperous European democracy? Will the Minister confirm that the EU stabilisation and association agreement will be maintained as far as Bosnia and Herzegovina is concerned, and that the country will be welcomed into Europe once the various criteria have been met? Does the UK fully support Bosnia and Herzegovina's EU aspirations?

We welcome the fact that the EU has made it clear that Bosnia and Herzegovina and all other countries in the region are potential candidates for EU membership. However, the pace of integration is in each country's hands. It depends on willingness to implement the necessary reforms. The politicians and others who asked us during our IPU visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina a few weeks ago to press for positive responses on EU and NATO membership and for more inward investment were being a little disingenuous. It is up to them to cooperate with the ICTY, but if they do, the rest will follow quite naturally.

Progress on the feasibility study recommendations will be assessed again in autumn 2004. As we know, progress to date has been mixed. The Bosnia and Herzegovina authorities need to increase the pace and depth of reform if stabilisation and association agreement negotiations are to be opened by the end of the year. We all hope and pray that the necessary reforms will be achieved, but, as I say, that is in the hands of the people and the politicians of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The economic development and inward investment that would flow from co-operation with the ICTY would transform the country, enabling it to realise its considerable potential. The emerging Bosnia and Herzegovina economy will be based on agriculture, timber and hydro-electricity. While we were there, we heard that lignite production and sales were forecast to rise strongly in 2004. Some €25 million will be invested in iron ore production, which will employ 600 miners and produce 1 million tonnes this year and 1.5 million next year. The privatisation of the steel industry is well advanced, while sales of cement from one company will increase by 20 per cent. this year.

Those are all good, specific economic developments, but, as Bosnia and Herzegovina authorities at all levels and influential voices in the international community agree, tourism and the cultural industries will play the most significant role in Bosnia and Herzegovina's development. As hon. Members will be aware, the high representative last month presented Bosnia and Herzegovina as a significant tourist destination, and I shall dedicate part of my speech to the potential for development in that sector and to the fact that the UK is in a leading position to help bring that development about.

As I said, Bosnia and Herzegovina's economy will need to overcome the physical, economic, social and cultural damage caused by the war and the division of the country into separate entities, which followed the 1995 Dayton-Paris agreement. If it to do so, however, the international community must co everything it can to support the progressive voices in the country.

It matters that we succeed in supporting Bosnia and Herzegovina, because it is a political and geographic bridge between the Christian west and the Muslim east, if I may characterise it that way. Success in Bosnia can help to reframe the political and economic terms of engagement between the wider Christian, Islamic and Jewish communities not only in Bosnia. but across the Balkans, the Mediterranean, the middle east and beyond.

Tourism is the key industry in Bosnia and Herzegovina: indeed, it employs more people than any industry in the world. It adds great growth potential, and Bosnia and Herzegovina needs a slice of that action, not least to reduce its high unemployment, tackle poverty and create more ethnic equality in the jobs market.

There is a groundswell of opinion in Bosnia and Herzegovina that the country's remarkable cultural heritage should be protected and conserved to form the basis of the new tourism industry. Tourism depends on good environmental practice, which necessarily involves the whole community and is, in itself, good for the economy and employment. As economic sectors, tourism and the cultural industries have a substantial multiplier effect and involve co-ordination with other branches of the economy, such as building, transport and agriculture. They also provide a much needed opportunity to change the international image of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and they are, by definition, regional and outward looking. The UK is a leading player in planning and training people for a revival in tourism and the cultural industries in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Within the framework of the European Commission's Tempus programme, a group of specialists has worked to train tourism professionals in Bosnia and Herzegovina to bring them up to European standards and to design a tourism and culture strategy for the country. The group is now working with UK Trade and Investment to stimulate UK investment in Bosnian tourism and cultural industries. The professionals trained by the group adopted the idea of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a bridge between east and west, linking Christianity in its Orthodox and Catholic forms, Islam and Judaism.

The destruction during the war of mosques in Banja Luka was destruction of part of Bosnia and Herzegovina's heritage. Indeed, the reconstruction of the national library in Sarajevo, which was badly damaged during the war, has been adopted as a symbol of cultural reconciliation in the country and as a beacon for the emergence of a new tourism and cultural industry sector in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

There are natural tourist routes in the region, of course, such as the route from Dubrovnik in Croatia through southern Republika Srpska to Mostar, other parts of Herzegovina and Sarajevo. They could bring new co-operation, which would be welcome. A European village has been set up in Rudo, near Visegrad, with financial support from the British embassy. It is a multi-ethnic initiative based on the principle of the de-ghettoisation—if there is such a word—of communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and beyond, and it is a worthy initiative. I congratulate the embassy on that.

The work of the multi-ethnic, multicultural Tempus group is an example of the potential for professional cooperation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The work of its Muslim, Orthodox and Catholic members points to the future cosmopolitan development of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it needs support from this House and wider afield.

The Minister, who is a very good man, is listening carefully, as he always does. I ask him to demonstrate Government support for tourism and cultural industries in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to support the British-Bosnia tourist group, the EC Tempus programme on tourism and culture in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the initiatives on tourism and cultural industries of the Government's UK Trade and Investment. He is nodding—I fully expected that—and I am grateful for that early indication of support. I ask him also to support multilateral economic, financial and diplomatic efforts to secure the future of the Bosnian economy over the next five to 10 years as the country moves towards self-sufficiency.

Many other issues could and perhaps should be raised, and other hon. Members will have an opportunity to deal with them. For instance, there is the important and positive role of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe in education reform. In such reforms across Bosnia and Herzegovina lies another key to the country's future development. The country will not get it right until it gets education right. It must stop segregation in education and start teaching all children from all three communities the same history and the same social and civic responsibilities.

Of the current population, just under 4 million—almost one half—were displaced or became refugees during the war. So far, about 1 million have returned to their place of origin, but there are still many displaced persons. That issue must be addressed, and education and co-operation with the ICTY will be factors in encouraging people to return to their place of origin and to remake their lives.

We met Croatian and Serbian families who have returned—the so-called returnees. Both groups came up against serious problems and ethnic discrimination on their return. particularly in getting basic services such as water and electricity connected to their homes and in getting employment. There is still ethnic discrimination in the employment market. Those problems will take time, patient effort, political integrity and good will to overcome, but a rising economy with a strong tourism sector, facilitated by co-operation with the ICTY, should help to solve those problems.

The hon. Member for Putney summed up the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina by saying:

"Bosnia-Herzegovina is at a crossroads: to go back to chaos and despair or to go forward to the EU, NATO and a better life for every citizen. These are the real challenges and I hope that the IPU UK will be able to help Bosnia-Herzegovina to achieve its goals."

We must inspire the three main communities—the Bosnians, Croats and Serbs—to raise their eyes above the horizon. For Bosnia and Herzegovina to succeed in becoming a member of Europe and NATO, which we all want, it must rid itself of the legacy of conflict. Individuals in Bosnia still protect indicted war criminals. The EU visa ban to prevent some of the supporters of war criminals is welcome, and an EU assets freeze on those characters to prevent them from providing money and resources to war criminals would also be welcomed. I am sure that the Front Benchers will deal with those important points, and I thank you, Mr. Olner, for your tolerance of me this morning.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink), and I congratulate him on securing this important debate. I also congratulate him and the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Colman) on what has clearly been a significant and worthwhile IPU visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Chamber has learned a great deal this morning from the work that they have both undertaken, and we are much better informed as a result. My enthusiasm for the well-crafted speech of the hon. Member for Castle Point is not based simply on the fact that I intend to echo a few of his points; he has set the scene in an important way.

For hundreds of years, conflict has raged over Bosnia and Herzegovina and within it. The roots of the internecine difficulties are deep and complex. In modern times, the memories of the terrible war from 1992 to 1995 linger in everyone's mind. If we thought that those issues were behind us, the continuing unrest elsewhere in the Balkans is a warning to all of us in Europe never to take peace for granted. All democrats hope for a future in Bosnia and Herzegovina that will allow the different communities to co-exist in peace with full democracy and a healthy economy. Although progress has clearly been made since 1995, only the most myopic optimist could argue that we are close to achieving those ambitions. The UK and its European Union partners will have ongoing responsibilities to the country for many years to come.

Since the Dayton-Paris accords, the security situation in Bosnia has been the paramount objective, for without peace and stability there can be little prospect of securing democracy and future prosperity. We must acknowledge that significant progress has been made. NATO's original implementation force of 60,000 troops reduced rapidly to the much smaller stabilisation force, which currently comprises somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000 personnel.

Perhaps the most significant recent development has been the decision agreed at the NATO summit in Istanbul just over a week ago to finish SFOR's mission by the end of this year and transfer the responsibilities to a newly constituted EU force. We have been told that there is to be a new chapter 7 UN mandate, that the EU will take advantage of the Berlin-plus arrangements and that NATO will retain headquarters in Sarajevo. We welcome that development. It will build on the EU's policing role in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which began 18 months ago, but it will clearly be on a different level all together. Perhaps the Minister will be able to explain in his response what difference the new set-up will make to the UK's commitment of military resources in the country.

Although the developments mark progress for the EU and Bosnia, there is a parallel and bleaker picture that we cannot ignore. The Istanbul summit urged the entities in Bosnia to continue the welcome process of reform in the armed forces, but rejected the involvement of the country in the partnership for peace programme because of the continued failure of its leaders in the Republika Srpska entity to comply with obligations to co-operate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

That was an important position for NATO to take, and the seriousness of the international community's intent was underscored last week by Lord Ashdown, the UN high representative, when he sacked 60 officials in the Bosnian-Serb leadership. In case it was not clear enough, the strong international message to Bosnia was repeated in the address to the UN Security Council by the chief prosecutor at the tribunal, Carla Del Ponte.

The ongoing freedom of Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and other indicted war criminals is an offence to the people of Bosnia. On more than a dozen documented occasions, the former Bosnian-Serb leaders have evaded NATO and other attempts to arrest them. Indeed, it appears that nobody has been arrested since July 2002. Repeated warnings to the Serbian Democratic party, the SDS, have been ignored, and the collusion of its senior figures in the financing and protection of Karadzic and others is finally being tackled. Surely, Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot possibly hope to take its place on equal terms among the family of democratic European nations while senior politicians in the country harbour those criminals.

In echoing the spirit of the high representative's remarks and the comments of the chief prosecutor, I want to highlight some of the points made by Carla Del Ponte to the Security Council. Three challenges that face the tribunal were listed. Apart from the need to arrest the fugitives, it was pointed out that there are serious problems with the finances of the court. They have become so serious that contracts for investigative support cannot be extended beyond the end of December.

The cash-flow crisis is so serious that in spring this year there had to be a recruitment freeze even on the replacement of essential staff. I hope that the Minister will be able to clarify the United Kingdom Government's position on that problem. I hope that he agrees that any financial crisis that undermines the working of the tribunal can only play into the hands of the war criminals who seek to evade its jurisdiction.

The chief prosecutor also drew attention to the failure of Serbia and Montenegro to fulfil their obligations to co-operate in bringing Bosnian indictees to justice. She stated that 15 accused, including Mladic, are believed to spend most of their time in Serbia. Apart from that, there is virtually no co-operation by the Serbian authorities in support of witnesses for the tribunal. The picture painted by the chief prosecutor is damning and depressing. Almost 10 years after the awful events in Srebrenica, the most wanted men remain free, the tribunal is in financial crisis and the end of the mandate for the court is fast approaching.

I hope that the Minister will explain what possibility there is of extending the court's mandate, if not indefinitely then at least for a period that will allow justice to be done. While the process of holding war criminals to account grinds on, the economy is making painfully slow progress, as the hon. Member for Castle Point stated. There are some optimistic signs and, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, there have been some attempts to boost tourism in the country. There is the promise of a stabilisation and association agreement with the European Union if Bosnia arid Herzegovina can satisfy the necessary conditions. Quite apart from the issue of war crimes, there are many reforms to carry out. With 20 per cent. of the population below the poverty line and about half the people of the country perilously close to it, the economy clearly needs support. Perhaps there will be a realisation of what needs to be done before the situation gets even worse.

The past few weeks have seen international initiatives that must generate some hope that the faltering progress in Bosnia and Herzegovina will not stall or crunch into reverse, but the challenges to the United Kingdom Government and to the international community remain severe. They are second only to the heavy responsibilities that lie on the leaders in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

May I say, Mr. Olner, what a personal pleasure it is to see you in the Chair this morning? I thank ins' hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) for an extraordinarily comprehensive, balanced and sensible presentation of the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Moore) for a measured speech. He shares my sentiments about my hon. Friend's very good speech.

Bosnia and Herzegovina remains powerfully in the minds of many British people because of the terrible bloody civil war there between 1992 and the Dayton accords of 1995. It has had a turbulent history. It is fair to say that although Tito, a remarkable political figure, succeeded in building an ethnically diverse composite state called Yugoslavia and managed to spare the people of Yugoslavia the worst ravages of old-style Soviet communism, he prepared inadequately for the post-Tito, post-cold war world into which Yugoslavia moved.

It would be wrong to say that the multi-ethnic patchwork of peoples and religions that make up Bosnia and Herzegovina made civil war and the atrocities that happened in that civil war, such as in Srebrenica, inevitable. Bosnia and Herzegovina has been, for many years of its history, a successful blend of peoples and cultures. I went to the winter Olympics in Sarajevo 20 years ago and saw that for myself.

Were you running?

The Minister asks what I think is a rhetorical question.

The civil war would undoubtedly not have occurred had Bosnia and Herzegovina not been located where it is, with the strange mix that it possesses, but the conflict of 1992 to 1995 grew from a combination of factors other than the peculiar political and economic circumstances in the country. Those included the consequences flowing from the end of the cold war, the actions and ambitions of neighbouring countries and a willingness to exploit the dangerous political power of nationalism.

Today it appears unclear how, or even whether, the trial of Slobodan Milosevic will progress in The Hague. I hope that the Minister will share the Government's views on that matter. Mr. Milosevic undoubtedly played a significant role in stoking up the tensions that exploded in that terrible full-blown conflict.

The declaration of independence in 1992 led to three years of vicious war and united the Serb population with Serbs in Serbia, who ethnically cleansed areas of the country of Croat or Bosnian enclaves. It would, however, be only half the story to talk exclusively of Serb ethnic cleansing. Once the fighting began, no group—whether Serb, Bosnian or Croat—emerged from the civil war guilt-free and with an unblemished reputation. The violence in Bosnia, beamed into our living rooms on the TV each night, generated a groundswell of support for military action to halt the bloodshed. I pay tribute, as I am sure all hon. Members would wish to, to the professionalism of the NATO forces in Bosnia, of whatever nationality, and particularly to the work of our troops who served or continue to serve in IFOR and SFOR.

The NATO-led military response in Bosnia led to the December 1995 Dayton agreement, which fixed the internal borders along lines that still exist today and served to establish the peace and stability that have generally remained since, although echoes of the violence continue to reverberate in Kosovo. It created a new constitution and two new entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska. Those entities and those elected to run them deal with domestic matters while a federal presidency representing all three groups deals primarily with foreign and defence and national economic matters. Lord Ashdown, a person of considerable experience, continues to serve as high representative. There has been considerable progress in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the dark days of the early 1990s, with peace and stability being the most important and cherished achievements.

Stability in the wider Balkans region, especially in Serbia and Croatia, is a vital prerequisite of stability and progress in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the presence of NATO troops has also been central to the provision of security and an environment conducive to development and effective state building. As we have heard, NATO has been highly successful, but at the Istanbul summit it was announced that SFOR will be replaced by an EU-led peacekeeping force by the end of 2004. While we all look forward to the day—hopefully soon—when Bosnia and Herzegovina requires no international forces to ensure its stability, the truth is that such forces are still needed. It is concerning that a successful NATO operation is to be replaced in that highly sensitive country with an untried EU-led operation, which may have more to do with a pan-European vision than with the policing effort. I just hope that it will be successful in securing what NATO has managed to secure thus far, and will build on that.

What discussions did the Minister have with the Bosnia and Herzegovina Government prior to that decision being taken? Although the security challenges have changed from peacemaking and peacekeeping to checking on weapons smuggling, pursuing suspected war criminals and dealing with extremist groups and border security, such challenges still require a good knowledge on the ground and a clear chain of command. Is the Minister confident that those criteria will be met by the EU force?

The Office of the High Representative and the Bosnian polity have set out a reform agenda that has seen the dismissal of some officials for corruption and for obstructing the reconciliation process. The reconciliation process remains fragile, and the elections of 5 October 2002, while free of violence, saw a low turnout of 54 per cent. People in Bosnia and Herzegovina are disillusioned at the slow pace of reform, both political and economic.

The Government who are now in office are a three-way coalition made up of nationalist parties from each of the three ethnic groups: the Bosniak SDA, the Bosnian-Serb SDS and HDZ, representing Bosnian Croats. Although gloomy predictions from the time of their election have not come to fruition, a reversion to nationalist parties should be interpreted as a due warning of the frustrations still felt in the country.

The problem, despite much that is positive, is that progress towards turning words into actions is slow. Public expenditure remains high while revenue collection remains inefficient. If the economy is to thrive, privatisation and economic liberalisation require speeding up, and red tape and bureaucracy—barriers to external investment the world over—need to be cut. However, Bosnia and Herzegovina, not yet 10 years from the end of the war that tore it apart, cannot do that alone.

According to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website, United Kingdom aid to Bosnia and Herzegovina has been about £82 million since 1996. Our focus is on efforts to create a viable and sustainable private sector; enhanced trading ability; effective, accountable government; improved social policy and health policy; and the better administration of justice. The figures for 2003–04 are also on the website and they show that the funds allocated amount to £6 million, in addition to which the United Kingdom contributes to multilateral aid via the EU. What is the extent of our aid funnelled through the EU to Bosnia and Herzegovina? Does the Minister think that the £6 million of bilateral aid is proving successful in achieving our aspirations for Bosnia and Herzegovina's much needed development?

There are economic success stories. Trade is growing, with exports of £16 million from the United Kingdom in 2002, which is an 8.8 per cent. increase on 2001. Imports from Bosnia and Herzegovina to the United Kingdom are also up.

Our policy framework for the region is the stabilisation and association process. It offers the prospect of EU membership, provided that conditions on human rights, democracy, regional co-operation and economic reform are met. The contract was launched in Zagreb in 2000 and on 21 June 2003 an EU-western Balkans summit was held in Thessaloniki in Greece. It affirmed Bosnia and Herzegovina's eligibility for EU membership, if it meets the criteria.

That is a most important point. Of the former Yugoslav republics, Slovenia is already a member of the European Union. Croatia has been formally accepted into the EU process. The possibility, somewhere down the line, of accession into the EU is a powerful incentive to people to focus positively on the future and to carry out the reforms that are necessary for their development. The prospect of EU membership will be a powerful spur to reform and progress. It is certainly an aspiration that the Conservative party supports.

As I saw, Bosnia and Herzegovina is a beautiful country with a landscape that varies dramatically from the high altitudes of the central mountains to arable land in the north and Mediterranean vineyards in the south. Most of its major towns nestle in beautiful and picturesque valleys. The breathtaking scenery, coupled with the friendly welcome that is extended to all visitors, makes the country an appealing holiday destination, as my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point said. What steps are the Government taking to advise and to assist the Bosnians in developing their tourist industry, given the fact that the UK travel industry is focusing so much on the undoubted attractions of the Dalmatian coastline in particular?

I hope that the Bosnia and Herzegovina Government, assisted by the international community, will push forward the reforms, both economic and political, that are required for it to develop into a functional, modern, multi-ethnic state. I look forward to seeing such a state as a member of NATO and the EU. I am confident that that aspiration is shared throughout the House of Commons and among, the British public.

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr. Olner. I look forward to many debates under your chairmanship. This has been an exemplary one on international affairs. I thank the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) for a powerful and effective speech, reporting on a visit that he made with my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Colman) to Bosnia and Herzegovina under the auspices of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. It is a reminder of the great service that the IPU provides the House and the Government in maintaining such links.

I shall deal with the points that the hon. Member for Castle Point made and other questions; I prefer to answer, if I can, points that were made in the debate. I did not fully comprehend the speech of the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Mr. Spring), speaking for the main Opposition party. The middle of his speech seemed to drift into generalised anti-Europeanism, but at the end of it he extolled the virtues of Bosnia and Herzegovina aiming for membership of the EU under the new constitutional treaty. It is really time for the Conservative party to decide where it stands on Europe. It cannot be Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at the same time.

The hon. Gentleman's remarks about SFOR and EUFOR and the negative tone of his obiter dictum, which Hansard will record, about the European Union's great service to Bosnia and Herzegovina and to the new forces that will come into play there, are not worthy of this debate. I have here the shield given to me by the European Union police mission, in which serving British police officers proudly wear the European flash on their shoulder, as they help to achieve stability through an effective campaign against criminality in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I wish that Conservative Members would stop injecting into their speeches scorn, derision and hostility towards the EU's work in that part of the western Balkans. In Sarajevo and the rest of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the EU is warmly welcomed.

I know that the Minister is capable of being eccentric on occasions, but I have never heard such complete drivel in my life. I am absolutely entitled, as an Opposition spokesman, to ask what the relationship is between the new EU force and NATO. That has nothing to do with our view of the EU, so will the Minister just answer the question that I legitimately posed and not distract this important debate with such nonsense?

I see that some spots are tender even at this early time of the day. I will, of course, come to those points, but it is nice to clarify our positions. The fact that our main Opposition party has no locus in any other part of Europe and has no links with other conservative and centre-right parties, because it is perceived as permanently hostile to our membership of the EU and the need to win support across Europe for the new constitutional treaty, does a continuing disservice to the cause of peace and European unity.

I am happy to tell the hon. Gentleman that we have absolute confidence in the EU force. For one reason, professional, British soldiers will be leading it. British officials have played a key role in the negotiation of the force's mandate, learning the lessons of the 1990s. That confidence is shared by NATO as a whole, as the Istanbul summit communiqué made clear. The EU force will have, as SFOR has, a UN chapter 7 mandate, with the authority to use force to protect itself and its mission. The force will deploy initially with the same level of forces—around 7,000—as SFOR has now.

Before becoming a Minister, I spent time with British soldiers. I slept in a corrie back in an SFOR unit. I saw how professional their contribution is. They will be proud to show the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina that EUFOR is making a direct contribution to stability and security in the region.

I share the concerns about the ICTY in The Hague that the hon. Member for Castle Point expressed. The hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Moore) also raised important questions about that. I regret deeply that the obstructionists in Bosnia and Herzegovina, particularly in Republika Srpska, prevented Bosnia from achieving partnership for peace membership at NATO's Istanbul summit. I regret that it was therefore necessary for Lord Ashdown to remove some 60 obstructionists, mainly from the SDS, the party of Karadzic. I sent my personal congratulations to Paddy Ashdown earlier this week on his decisive action, which again showed the quality of leadership that Britain brings to bear in finding a European solution to the western Balkans.

I assure the hon. Member for Castle Point that SFOR has not been forgotten. It has done a superb job since 1995 and I welcome his kind words about our troops' efforts. British troops have detained more war criminals than any other force—24 to date. The hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale said that nobody had been detained since 2002, but, if he checks the records, he will see that one war criminal, Mr. Oric, has been sent to The Hague.

On all my visits to the region and whenever I discuss the issue with visitors—my door at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is always open, and I think that I have received more Government representatives from Bosnia and Herzegovina and from other countries from the former Yugoslavia than almost any other part of Europe—I say again and again that the road to Europe lies through The Hague, that the detention of Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and Ante Gotovina is a priority, and that more must be done. There have been clear statements from Government figures in Sarajevo and Banja Luka about Karadzic, but the Orthodox Church needs to move decisively, as do the communities that support him. People must understand that the terrible crimes of which Mr. Mladic and Mr. Karadzic are accused are in connection with the genocidal slaughter of 7,500 European Muslim citizens of Srebrenica in 1995—the worst killings in cold blood on European soil since 1945. With one year to go until the 10th anniversary of that massacre, it is time to make decisive efforts to invite those gentlemen, who claim to be innocent, to report to The Hague, where they will get a fair hearing.

The election of Boris Tadic as the president of Serbia, thus defeating, as the hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale will know, the candidate of the reactionary anti-European nationalist right, who was close to Mr. Milosevic, is good news, and I hope that it will be seen as such. It shows that we are generally getting positive and welcome signs from the region, as does the welcome decision of the European Council, which agreed the historic constitutional treaty that Britain will soon want to ratify, to set a starting date for negotiations for Croatia's EU membership.

Bosnia and Herzegovina has come a long way since 1995. I agree with the point that the hon. Member for Castle Point made about supporting the economy. I have visited Sarajevo regularly since I took ministerial responsibility for that part of Europe, and I can say that it is getting better. I strongly agree that the beautiful national library, which is being rebuilt, should become a shining cultural monument to the traditions, history and culture of that part of Europe.

The hon. Member for West Suffolk recalls visiting the winter Olympics in Sarajevo some 20 years ago. I invite him—a great sportsman among Members of Parliament—to join Lord Ashdown and me on a skiing trip on the mountains around Sarajevo, which I propose should be early next year when the snow conditions are good. As I lead him off piste, down dangerous gullies and across avalanche slopes, I may persuade him of the virtues of a more positive approach to Europe. Whatever happens, I promise to get him safely to the bottom. He will be in my safe hands.

I hosted the excellent Lancaster House conference to promote the tourist industry in Bosnia and Herzegovina. An excellent new guide has been published, and British tourists can go there. Despite our concerns about the problems with Karadzic and criminality, no British soldier has lost his life as a result of violence, although there have been some dreadful accidents. I believe that all British citizens will be given a very warm welcome there, whether as historical tourists—the hon. Member for Castle Point referred to Sarajevo as the place where 20th century history took its disastrous wrong turn—or eco-tourists. I believe that there is a lot of good hunting, shooting and fishing, so the sports and tourist desires of many different members of the community in Britain are catered for.

Hon. Members asked me about the continuation of the ICTY. The ICTY mandate will continue. United Nations Security Council resolution 1503 of last August made it clear that the ICTY will try Karadzic. Mladic and Gotovina, even if the trials fall outside the usual period granted to the ICTY. It is scheduled to come to a close in 2008, but we are determined that those three gentlemen will be brought to The Hague. Again, I make it clear that they can become old or go to their graves, but the British Government and other Governments will insist that they accept responsibility for answering to the very serious charges against them. We believe that there should be a completion strategy for the ICTY, and that it should be met.

The hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale asked about finances. Some large and significant UN member states seem to be backward in paying their dues to the ICTY, and we are pressing them hard to rectify that. We do not have a particular view about Milosevic's trial and the recent reports about his health problems. It will be a matter for the tribunal to decide, but we have every confidence that it will find a fair and satisfactory solution to allow the completion of the trial with minimum delay.

I was asked about financial support for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Department for International Development has provided £82 million in bilateral assistance to Bosnia and Herzegovina since the signing of the Dayton peace agreement. In addition, according to the last available records that we have, which cover 2001, the UK's share of Commission expenditure in Bosnia and Herzegovina amounted to £18 million, which we estimate to be some €12 million, for 2003. Britain is putting its money where its mouth is by supporting Bosnia and Herzegovina.

We welcome the creation of stronger state institutions. We believe that the politicians of the federation that represents Bosnians, Croats and Republika Srpska accept that there will be no future other than the building of a sovereign independent republic, a European state, called Bosnia and Herzegovina. There will be no repartition or reattachment to Serbia or Croatia. I am pleased to see the much better co-operation between Belgrade and Zagreb, and I make it clear that both the Serbs and the Croats fully accept that Bosnia and Herzegovina will be a republic with a strong and clear future. It will, we hope, soon be a member of the EU and NATO.

Before the Minister finishes, will he return to the question of the Office of the High Representative? The post will end for Lord Ashdown next year. Will the Minister give the Government's view as to how matters should proceed following that?

Lord Ashdown kindly accepted our invitation and the invitation of the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the entire international community to continue in office for one more year. We will take this one stage at a time. He said clearly that he wants to be the last man in that office, and that is everyone's wish, even further south in Kosovo, where a new UN special representative has just been named. It is our wish that all the countries, republics and different component elements of what was Yugoslavia should operate as self-governing entities. I cannot comment in advance on where we will be next year, on any replacement or on the future of the post.

On Monday, I was at the OSCE parliamentary assembly meeting in Edinburgh, at which the Chairman-in-Office, Dr. Solomon Passy, the Bulgarian Foreign Minister, made clear his belief that, other than in Kosovo, the OSCE should wind down its operations in the western Balkans and start looking further east to the Caucasus region. Broadly speaking, he is right.

I want to put on record again that I have seen a gradual growth of normality during my visits to the area. I do not want to raise any more European hackles this morning, but I had the pleasure of travelling through Sarajevo on a tram that was decorated on an entente cordiale theme. It was nice to see the Union flag and the tricolour painted on the tram. Very nice, young Bosnian university and school students were learning French and English and being told that their future would be much better if France and Britain co-operated. Their future will be much better if we in the European Union can co-operate under the new treaty.

Bit by bit, a new spirit is rising in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I thank all hon. Members for participating in the debate. If I have not answered all the questions—I may have answered questions that hon. Members did not ask—I will be happy to write to them in detail on those matters.

I am grateful to you, Mr. Olner, for the opportunity to raise this subject, because it is a matter of increasing concern to me. I have had a long involvement with this issue, because almost 25 years ago I worked in the chemical industry and I saw then the difficulties faced by staff and companies.

We are now seeing increased levels of animal rights activity. Most of us are familiar with the saga of Huntingdon Life Sciences, the way in which City shareholders were targeted and the damage that that has done to the company. I pay tribute to Brian Cass and his staff for managing to refinance themselves and continue their valuable work.

There have been many instances of animal rights extremism since then. In the most recent quarter, from April to June this year, there have been what are euphemistically called "home visits"—22 to employees and 32 to company directors. The director of the building company Montpellier, which is involved in the construction of the Oxford animal research laboratory, resigned from the business. There have been 24 instances of phone, fax or e-mail blockade, which are immensely threatening to employees and, more worryingly, to their families, including children. I have seen the effect on senior research scientists when their families have been targeted. It has led to divorce, mental breakdowns and distressed children who have been unable to benefit from their childhood.

There have been 46 instances of damage to property, 94 publicly advertised demonstrations and 164 demonstrations that were unadvertised. Almost 3,000 people have been involved in protests. My office overlooks Portcullis House, and I remember one evening when people demonstrated outside about Yamanouchi for about two hours, disrupting not only the business that I was trying to conduct, but that of many other Members and members of the public.

There have been 80 arrests at demonstrations and 43 occasions when vehicles have been damaged. In many cases, corrosive fluid has been used, and in 33 cases tyres were cut or pierced. When corrosive fluid is used, tyres have to be changed anyway in case there has been some damage, and it is estimated that the costs of those attacks in one quarter alone are £250,000. We know that Cambridge university has had to scrap plans for its primate research laboratory and that Oxford is facing real trouble with its research facility as senior staff receive "home visits". Huntingdon Life Sciences and Hall farm, which breeds guinea pigs for the research industry, have also been targeted.

I recognise the fact that a small number of people are involved in the terror tactics; the vast majority of people who take a strong stand against the use of animals behave legally. The Home Secretary reportedly supports the Humane Research Trust, which is a legal organisation. The problem is, however, that those extremists are causing immense damage to our scientific and research base, and the Government do not appear to have the resolve to address the issue effectively. In the US and Japan, which are our main competitors in many of the research, pharmaceutical and bioscience industries, the perception is that the UK does not treat the issue seriously enough and will not take substantive action.

A new group called Victims of Animal Rights Extremism was launched in the House of Commons in April to try to help resolve the problem. It is a coalition that includes Amicus, the Bioindustry Association, the Association of Medical Research Charities, the Research Defence Society and Huntingdon Life Sciences. A Bill has been drafted to deal with the situation faced by people involved in this area, but the Government have still not made their position clear. I want the Minister to clarify whether they want that Bill, and if not, what way forward they propose to deal with the issues. It is the right of people working in those industries to have that clarification.

Lord Sainsbury, in his recent evidence to the Select Committee on Science and Technology, of which I used to be a member, pledged to introduce legislation, but rejected a single Bill, saying that he preferred to amend other legislation. The implication was that that would be a quicker route to deal with the problem. Specific legislation already exists in the United States, and seven members of SHAC—stop Huntingdon animal cruelty, the group targeting HLS—USA were recently arrested and charged under that legislation. It is therefore clear that such legislation does work.

For a while, I thought that the Government's preferred method, which is Lord Sainsbury's option of piecemeal legislation, might come to pass. There was a rumour that the Government were planning to amend section 14 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to deal with "home visits" by amending—this seems slightly ludicrous—the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill, which has recently been in Committee. That rumour appears not to be coming true, but I hope that the Minister will tell us whether there is any substance to it. If not, what proposals does she have to deal with the issue of "home visits"?

If the Home Office is planning to amend that Bill in a piecemeal fashion, will the Minister also outline which legislation will be amended and how it will be done? For instance, is the Home Office planning to amend the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 in order to protect companies? There is currently no protection for companies, and nor is there any requirement for companies to protect employees, even though they have an overriding duty of care to take appropriate steps to do so.

Is the Minister planning to deal with "home visits" not by amending section 14 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, but by clarifying the Human Rights Act 1998, so that article 8 of the European convention on human rights, which deals with the right to respect for private and family life, takes precedence over article 10, which provides for freedom of expression? Is she planning to change the law so that companies do not need to spend significant amounts to secure injunctions, in addition to extra security costs that run to millions of pounds and reduce the UK's competitiveness as a location for biomedical research? It cannot be right that the onus is so heavily placed on the victims to protect themselves from the extremists.

Will the Government address the issue of consistency in relation to convictions in the courts and encourage the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts to consider not only the one incidence of terrorism that has led to a person being in court, but the overall pattern of intimidation or terrorism, when they sentence someone charged with such offences? Could restraining orders such as antisocial behaviour orders be used?

They are being used.

I am delighted to hear that ASBOs have been used. The Minister now has the perfect opportunity to advertise that fact and to ensure that more courts and the CPS are aware of it. We still have to see what force ASBOs will have in the long run. They are taking out some of the young toerags for a while, but I am not certain how long that will last.

Given the draconian powers and lengthy sentences that have been introduced to deal with the war against terror, I ask the Minister what makes animal terrorists different. Should they not also be charged under that legislation, making their sentences longer?

The Government's argument may be that specific legislation takes too long to introduce. I am sure that the Minister will agree that any postponement would mean waiting at least two years, because it is doubtful whether legislation could be passed before what is generally understood to be a proposed general election next May. It would take two years whoever won. Will she explain what the Government plan to do in the interim? If they do not wish to amend the legislation that I have mentioned, which legislation are they planning to amend? What ideas did Lord Sainsbury have? Which ones will the Minister advance? Will the Home Office or the Department of Trade and Industry take them forward?

What co-operation is there across Government to ensure that different Departments act in a concerted way so that a coherent body of law is produced instead of one specific measure? Does she plan to amend the legislation and—this may be a bit of a nerdy point—will that be done by statutory instrument or by amending Bills? Perhaps the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill could be amended as it goes through the House. Will the Government amend proposed legislation?

Who is gripping the issue to ensure that it is covered across Government and what time scale is envisaged to get a reform in place? Will the issue be dealt with before we prorogue in the autumn or before we rise for any general election next year? The previous Home Secretary—now the Foreign Secretary—was clear about the issue:

"We will not tolerate a small number of criminals trying to threaten research organisations and companies."

This is an opportunity for the current Home Secretary to send out an equally clear and authoritative statement that he will not tolerate such activity.

At the most basic level, that would help to protect the Government's own investment and the development of new medicines and research funding for life sciences. If we look closely at the pharmaceutical research base in the UK, we find that it has shrunk during the last two decades. Jobs and companies have moved quietly away. The decision to move is a complex one, but one factor in the equation is undoubtedly the unpleasant environment created by animal extremists. The irony is that the countries to which the companies move often have less animal-friendly protection laws than we have in the UK. We need a strong skills base to take advantage of our innovation abilities. That means that the issue of animal extremism needs to be gripped and clear remedies proposed.

This is the opportunity for the Minister to come forward with clear proposals about what the Government plan to do to ensure that people who work in science, who are our lifeblood in this country, no longer need suffer the terror of phone calls in the middle of the night, attacks on their cars, being attacked with baseball bats, as Brian Cass of HLS was, or being terrorised, as a pensioner in my constituency was. That man's pension came from a company which, following a complicated series of takeovers, acquired shares in HLS. That elderly gentleman and his elderly wife received phone calls right through the night. Posters were stuck on their garden gates. Posters were put on the streetlights down their road, saying, "This murderer lives at…" and featuring their photo.

In this day and age, it is not acceptable that people who carry out a service to this country in any way, shape or form should face horror and terror from a small number who take extremism to its extremes and terrify, hurt and maim people physically and mentally. The Minister has the opportunity to set the record straight about what the Government wish to do to ensure that those people are not affected.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait) on securing this debate, because it gives me an opportunity to say once again in a public forum that I, colleagues across Government and the Government as a whole recognise how important the area is, and to say how seriously we take it. In this public forum, it is also important to send to all members of the British public who care about animals a strong message that some people, often in their name, are using illegal activities to pursue those who are doing nothing illegal and are the victims of the sort of activities of which the hon. Lady gave examples.

We also need to send out a strong message that, although we need to do more, we need accurately to report what happens to people. I understand that the attack on Mr. Cass resulted in a 10-year sentence for the person who carried it out. That person was caught, arrested, charged and convicted, and it is important that the media report that as well, for the benefit of people who think that they are going to get involved in the sort of activities that might result in violence, but whose more common features are criminal damage, phone calls, letters and abuse.

It is worth reminding ourselves that the UK has the toughest regulations in the world on the use of animals in scientific procedures. UK scientists have to satisfy strict criteria before they are allowed to experiment on animals—a fact that, I am afraid, does not seem to carry much weight with animal rights extremists, although it is absolutely true. Whatever the extremists say, most people in the United Kingdom—a recent survey gave the figure of 90 per cent.—believe that the use of animals for medical research is justified so long as it is done without causing unnecessary suffering to the animals. Research using animals has contributed to almost every medical advance in health care in the past century, including all current medicines and vaccines, medical devices such as replacement heart valves and surgical procedures including organ transplants.

That situation will not change in the short or medium term. The development of new drugs and medical and veterinary technologies will continue to depend on the responsible use of animals. As the hon. Lady said, we therefore need to ensure that scientists can continue to do that important work on behalf of us all without harassment or intimidation. It is not only the scientists who are actively involved in that work. Particularly in the past few months, we have seen a move by the animal rights extremists to attacking the people who supply companies. Such people have no direct involvement in the work of the institutes and organisations, and by the very nature of the attacks on them, extremists are trying to create a climate of fear and to undermine the existence of companies such as Huntingdon Life Sciences.

We have already had an insight today into the activities of the extremists, which include publication of the names, addresses and phone numbers of target companies' employees on an extremist website, with an accompanying innuendo in that if their names are featured on that website, activities will follow. We know only too well what form those activities might take. There have been threatening letters, harassing telephone calls, floods of e-mails, attacks on cars and graffiti on people's homes. Anonymous letters have been sent to the neighbours of targeted directors making false allegations. In the case of one individual, the allegation was that they were a paedophile. Packages have been sent to the homes of target persons containing offensive material such as used toilet paper and razor blades. There have been late-night home visits involving masked extremists vandalising cars, smashing windows and spraying graffiti.

Since becoming the Minister with responsibility for this area, I have had several meetings with representatives from the bioscience industry and other companies. I have met victims of such activity and heard about their experiences at first hand. My colleagues and I are in regular contact across Government, and Lord Sainsbury and I meet regularly. We are not only responding to the general issue, but have responded strongly to the individual targeting of particular companies. We also have regular contact with senior police officers to discuss policing and enforcement at national, regional and local force levels.

The hon. Lady will understand, as we do, the complexity of dealing with the individuals involved in such activities. The fact is that the leaders behind them do not show their hand. There are midnight visits and people carry out the activities anonymously, so piecing things together and taking effective action against them is not easy, but we are trying to address that challenge. We have ensured that animal rights extremism features in the 2004–07 national policing plan, which means that police forces should take account of it. Every police force should be aware of what powers are available, and we have recently established a unit in Cambridge that exists primarily to improve performance at force level and to act as a support and a service. Where things are not happening at force level, that unit can be contacted for additional action. In recent weeks, particular companies have been targeted, and the unit has played a big role in working with us to address particular concerns.

The Association of Chief Police Officers recently appointed an assistant chief constable to the new role of national co-ordinator with responsibility for developing regional and national responses to animal rights extremists. As I said, we have also used Home Office funding to create a national extremism tactical coordinating unit, which is based in Cambridge. It will provide police forces and others throughout the country with tactical guidance, information and advice.

We also need to work with industry. Understandably, companies often do not want to take a proactive approach—for example, by warning their suppliers. Nevertheless, we must be able to share information for the good of all. We must be able proactively to help people to protect themselves and to know what to do when their switchboards—

Order. The hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) should not be playing with his mobile phone while the Minister is speaking.

Companies must know what to do when there is a campaign of phone calls to their switchboards and where to go with information about suspicious activities. We need not only greatly to improve our relationships with the main companies, but to identify what we can do to reassure people elsewhere in the supply chain who work with them.

There were at least 138 arrests of animal rights activists during the first six months of this year, compared with 37 during the same period in 2003. We are working with the police, other agencies and companies to improve the availability of information on arrests. We are looking carefully at where arrests are made, what charges are laid and when cases come to court. That will help us to work better with other sectors of the criminal justice system to ensure that, as the hon. Lady suggested, cases that come to court are not seen in isolation, but connected to the wider campaign of animal rights extremism, which seeks to undermine the legitimate practices of business in this country.

I am very pleased to hear what the Minister says about the courts, but will she address the principal issue that I raised: the legislative changes that, as Lord Sainsbury acknowledged, must be implemented? What plans does she have in that regard?

I will come to that. I have eight minutes left, and I intend to use them all.

The Government are looking at better enforcement throughout the criminal justice system. Of course, penalties are important in that respect, and they must reflect the circumstances in which a person is brought before the court. One ASBO has already been used on someone who committed an offence linked to animal rights extremism, and more ASBOs are in the pipeline. As with other areas of antisocial behaviour, we intend to ensure that police forces and the criminal justice system are aware that tools already exist to contain and curtail people's activities.

Over the past few months, we have been debating how to improve law enforcement, and one way is to ensure that the powers that are available in the criminal justice system are actually used. Recently, we made two changes to the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003. We amended the definition of a public assembly in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 from one consisting of 20 people to one consisting of two or more persons. We also extended the offence of aggravated trespass in that Act to cover trespass in buildings. Both changes came into effect on 20 January, and we have endeavoured to ensure that the relevant powers are used effectively. Indeed, they have already been used on several occasions to control intimidatory protests and office occupations, although that does not mean that they should not be used more widely. We have tried to ensure that companies and other organisations are aware of them, so that they do not think that there are no laws or powers to deal with this issue. A lot of the time, however, the issue is effective enforcement.

In 2001, we made several changes to legislation specifically to tighten up the law to deal with the problem of animal rights extremism. One of the most significant changes gave polices officers a new power to issue directions to protestors to move away from homes where protests may cause harassment, alarm or distress. That power is being used to minimise the impact of protests by animal rights activists outside the homes of targets, but we are looking further into the issue of home visits. For example, the police have directed the removal of offensive banners and prevented the use of sound systems and musical instruments. The legislation is being tested by animal rights extremists. They generally comply with directions before the need to arrest arises, but we need to engage with law enforcement agencies to make sure that they are being used to the fullest power of the law.

As I said, we are considering what more can be done to protect people who are targeted in their homes and to ensure that activists cannot exploit gaps in the law. We have introduced new provisions in other legislation. Section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 has been amended so that, since 20 January, the police have had the power to stop and search for articles that could be used to commit criminal damage. That could apply to an animal rights activist carrying a spray gun with intent to spray graffiti or to someone with a brick who intended to smash a window.

Since 1 January 2004, the courts in England and Wales have had the power to ban from driving persons convicted of any offence. Again, that measure could be used by the courts when sentencing persons convicted for criminal damage, public order offences or harassment. Taking away an activist's car for a few months is likely to cause a lot of inconvenience. That is part of our effort to disrupt the activities in question and not make things easy for the people concerned.

On 1 July, we announced the outcome of our review of section 24 of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 in the context of the Government's commitment to freedom of information. Section 24 of the 1986 Act prevents the unauthorised disclosure of confidential information by Home Office Ministers, officials and others with functions under the Act. It does not waive or vary the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, but creates an additional criminal offence, should there be unauthorised disclosure of confidential information.

The decision that has been taken follows consultation with stakeholder groups, and reflects the significant misgivings about the potential impact of repealing section 24 that continue to be expressed by scientific stakeholders in the lace of violence and intimidation from the criminal activities of a small section opposed to animal research. We have decided not to repeal it at this stage. In the meantime, we are considering ways to inform the public better about the law and to provide more information about why and how animals are used and the related regulations. We want a better dialogue and do not want to allow those who propagandise to get away with issuing their false and distorted pieces of information.

We are open to considering further legislation to address the criminal activities of animal rights extremists. The hon Lady mentioned the United States of America. Views on the success of its legislation are mixed. At the moment, there is discussion about that legislation having left some parties, such as suppliers to companies and organisations involved in the use of animals, out of the relevant scenario. The USA has found the matter difficult as well.

I am pleased to hear about the seven recent arrests, but considering the time for which the legislation has been in force in America, it has been used pretty rarely. We have good relationships with the FBI and work internationally on tackling some of the issues, as well as with the people behind the organisations and their activities in our communities.

We are open to the idea of more legislation. Our concern has been about passing quickly the legislation that we need. We recognise that the activities undertaken by the people in question could easily be undertaken by another group that felt that it had a particular concern about something. For example, there have been attacks in America on facilities that provide for women to have terminations. The activities could be harassment of employees. We are considering legislation that can respond to such illegal attacks on individuals who are not breaking the law. That is why we are not considering a narrow measure purely about animal rights extremism.

That does not mean that we do not need more legislation. We are looking at that possibility, but we also want to make better sense of what we have and to consider how to improve enforcement. To do that, we have established a national forum of officials in the past few months. We have now decided that it will be ministerially led, so that we can better assess how it can act as a delivery group to achieve outcomes and implementation on the ground, and deal better and more quickly with issues that arise. We shall have to plan for some issues in the medium and long term, but we shall have to deal up front with events affecting people today.

I welcome the opportunity to debate what I consider to be a very serious issue. It touches on honesty in politics and in government, and it touches on issues of constitution and law and the way in which a group of people have been grievously treated by this country and, to some extent, the United States for more than 40 years.

The people who lived for hundreds of years on the Chagos Islands were descendents of its first inhabitants who had been dropped off there as slaves and traders or had settled there. They lived a settled existence, fishing and producing copra, and they inhabited an idyllic and pristine environment. Their problem was their location—the Indian ocean. The United States was eyeing it up in the 1950s and 1960s as a potential base, and subsequently decided to build what they euphemistically called a "communications facility" on the island of Diego Garcia. The communications facility turned out to be two of the longest runways that the world had seen and a base from which 4,000 US troops could operate. The base is now routinely used for the bombing of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the United States 'considers it to be a crucial communications facility.

Prime Minister Wilson and President Johnson discussed the matter in the 1960s and decided to do a deal and evacuate the population of Diego Garcia to make way for the American communications facility. The Americans insisted on the evacuation of not only Diego Garcia, but the entire archipelago, despite the fact that its other islands were some distance from the putative communications facility.

The language used by the then Colonial Office was outrageous beyond belief. Simon Winchester wrote a wonderful piece on the subject in Granta magazine in which he quoted the then permanent secretary in the Colonial Office who described the population inhabiting the islands as a group of "Man Fridays" and stated that it would be simple and easy enough to move them out of the way. The deal subsequently went through and, to make ready for the American base, the British authorities proceeded to remove people from the islands. However, it was never done openly.

Only two days ago outside the Foreign Office, I met a man who was part of a demonstration there. He told me that he had left the islands in 1966 and that he was not allowed to go back, as many others were not. When they went to Mauritius or the Seychelles—mainly Mauritius—for medical treatment or education, they suddenly found that they could not go back.

When the time came for the British to remove the population in earnest, they did so —putting them on a ship, taking them to Port Louis in Mauritius and simply dumping them on the quayside. When my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) speaks, I am sure that he will describe the conditions that he saw when he went to Mauritius at the time. The people were dumped there in terrible destitution. To ensure that nothing was left on the islands, the British commissioner had the problem of what to do with the islanders' domestic animals and pets. The dogs were rounded up and gassed, all the animals were killed and the islands were left empty and uninhabited to make way for the American base.

The poor islanders were forced to eke out an existence in terrible poverty in Mauritius and the Seychelles. Ignored by everybody, they managed to survive and they never gave up two things: first, the hope, determination and desperation for the right of return; and secondly, the hope that one day, somebody, somewhere would recognise the fundamental injustice of their treatment.

Time has moved on and it is 48 years since the original and disgraceful deal was done between Wilson and Johnson, but the injustice has not gone away. I visited Mauritius a couple of years ago to meet the Chagos islanders and to see the conditions in which they live. They are very poor indeed. We have to remember, and we should remember, that the compensation that they finally won, some 15 years after the original removal from the islands had begun, was mainly eaten up by debt collectors and land agents. No one was given sufficient compensation and no one was made rich or wealthy by the process. This has been the subject of a court case that is still going on, so I cannot comment on anything more than the original facts of the case. However, it seems that the islanders were cajoled into signing what they did not believe to be a full and final settlement, and were told to accept it as such. The injustice and the poverty go on.

When I was in Mauritius, I spent a week visiting as many Chagossian families as I could. I talked to them about their lives on the Chagos Islands, when they lived there, and their lives now. They described their sustainable form of living, the type of community, religion and schools that they had and their lives in general. It was fascinating to talk to them, but one could see the hurt in their eyes at the way that they were taken from the islands and dumped on the quayside at Port Louis. Many of those families still live in desperate poverty in metal huts with outside toilets and little furniture. Although the current Mauritius Government have been kinder to them than previous ones, they are still very poor people.

Those people, however, were always going to campaign for their hope of a right of return; they would never give up. Eventually, a case was lodged in the British legal system and, in a court order of 2000, they were granted the right to return under British immigration law. It was ruled that they had the right of return. The following year, a further step forward was taken when the British Overseas Territories Bill was introduced in Parliament. My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and I raised the question of the eligibility of the Chagos islanders for British citizenship, on the basis that they would be entitled to British citizenship like everyone else in overseas territories had they not been removed from the British Indian Ocean Territory. To their credit, the Government accepted the thrust of our argument, and a Government amendment was tabled and accepted in Committee. Therefore, the islanders were given the right to British citizenship. There is, unfortunately, a grey area in which I hope ministerial discretion will be used to deal with the small number of those who have fallen outside the provisions of that law.

Things looked quite good in 2000 and 2001, and a compensation claim was lodged to re-open the issue. In meetings we had at the Foreign Office with the Minister's predecessor, Baroness Amos, on the right of return and the possibility of a visit, we thought that things were going very well. Indeed, in the Commons, Ministers have asserted two things. One is that there is a right to return, and the second is that there was no impediment to anyone going back at any time. Things were looking good, and we had hope, as did the islanders.

On 10 June this year, which everyone will remember as election day, staff at the Foreign Office were not out ensuring that people were voting. Instead, they were at the palace asking the Queen to sign an Order in Council. When I was told that an Order in Council had been signed, I misheard or misunderstood. I thought that it was a statutory instrument that I would be able to pray against, as I assumed other hon. Members would, so that decisions made by Ministers would be subject to some form of democratic accountability. I had to reconsider, and I spoke to Sheridans' Richard Gifford, the excellent solicitor who has represented the Chagossians for many years. He calmly explained to me that I had misunderstood, and that an Order in Council signed by her Majesty was law. It overrides everything in which we believe about the democratic accountability of the Government.

There are two orders: one is the British Indian Ocean Territory (Constitution) Order and the second is the British Indian Ocean Territory (Immigration) Order. I shall just quote a little of one, to give the Chamber a flavour of it:

"Subject to the provisions of this Order, the Commissioner"

appointed under the constitution order—

"may make laws for the peace, order and good government of the Territory".

The order then goes on to declare,

"without prejudice to the generality of subsection (1)",

that the commissioner in effect becomes the supreme Governor of everything in the territory. The order says:

"All laws made by the Commissioner in exercise of the powers conferred by subsection (1) shall be published in the Gazette in such manner as the Commissioner may direct. Every law made by the Commissioner under subsection (1) shall come into force on the date on which it is published".

We have handed power over to a commissioner. Never mind the fact that there were islanders living there and that several thousand people until that point had every right to live there; apparently, they now have no rights whatever. So much for the constitution order.

The immigration order was the second one passed, and I shall quote just two of its sections. Article 7 says:

"An immigration officer, acting in his entire discretion, may issue or renew a permit or may cancel a permit before the expiration, subject to the right of appeal provided in section 10."

That is for people who wish to visit the Chagos Islands. Article 10 says:

"A person aggrieved by any decision of an immigration officer may appeal to the Commissioner, whose decision shall be final and conclusive."

So the only person to whom one can appeal if one does not agree with a decision to prevent Chagos islanders going to their own islands is a commissioner appointed specifically to control the Chagos Islands in every way for evermore.

The Minister made a written statement to the House on 10 June, although frankly it should have been an oral statement and made at a time when he could have been cross-questioned about it. At least, however, we are debating the subject here in Westminster Hall today. His statement said:

"Following the departure of the Chagossians in the late 60s and early 70s, the economic conditions and infrastructure that had supported the community of plantation workers ceased to exist. While the judicial review proceedings were still pending, the Government therefore commissioned a feasibility study by independent experts to examine and report on the prospects for re-establishing a viable community".—[Official Report, 10 June 2004; Vol. 422, c. 33WS.]

I have some comments to make on that. The Chagossians did not depart from the islands in the 1960s and 1970s; they were rounded up, taken away and thrown off the islands. Let us not beat about the bush: that was a disgraceful, immoral act. It is time that a Minister stood up and apologised for that act committed by the Government of the time and for the treatment of the Chagos islanders by succeeding Governments.

I was kindly given the three volumes of the feasibility study by the Foreign Office when it came out in November 2000, and it said that there were problems with water supply, periodic flooding, storms, seismic activity and so on, as the Minister points out. However, it did not say that no one could live there or that life was impossible on the islands. When pressed on the matter, the Foreign Office retreats into arguments about the potential cost of resettling the Chagos islanders. I have two points on that. First, they have a moral right to return. Secondly, would any Minister stand up in the House and say that the cost of keeping the population on Pitcairn, St. Helena, Tristan da Cunha or the Falkland Islands was such that we were going to withdraw the entire population? They would not dare.

My hon. Friend mentioned the Falkland Islands. Has he made any comparisons between the costs that he is talking about and the amount of money spent on defending the Falkland islanders when the Argentines invaded?

Indeed, the costs are on two completely different scales. The costs involved in administering the Chagos Islands are very small. At the current time, all the income from fishing licences—about £50,000 a year—is taken up by administration, and other money is paid to continue that administration. Were the islands to be resettled, however, and were there to be serious discussions with the islanders about resettling them, there would be an economy on the islands. There is fishing there, and the possibility of ecotourism or copra. Quite a lot of activities could take place on the islands. However, I do not get the feeling that there is any wish, desire, hope or intention of going down that road. The whole desire is to put the issue to one side and forget about it. That is because of an American base on Diego Garcia, for which I suspect nothing is paid, and because the Americans have said that they do not want anyone anywhere near their base owing to security concerns.

I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) on securing this debate and endorse everything that he said in his excellent contribution.

I shall speak briefly because I know that other hon. Members also want to speak. I want to draw on two points that were raised by my hon. Friend and to give them a little more emphasis. I want to return to the origins of the scandal and to look particularly at what we now know, under the 30-year rule, was said in the Foreign Office about Diego Garcia and the other islands of the archipelago. Every Foreign Office Minister, up to and including current Ministers, and every Foreign Office staffer who has been involved in the story over the past 40 years should hang their heads in shame at what has been done to these defenceless people.

The 30-year rule information that we now know refers to the "problem" of Diego Garcia. It was not a problem until the realpolitik of the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom made it a problem to get rid the islanders out of their homes—to clear them, as we would say in Scotland—for the convenience of an arrangement made between this country and America. Foreign Office documents show that one Foreign Office diplomat said that

"unfortunately along with the birds go some few Tarzans or Man Fridays whose origins are obscure, and who are hopefully being wished on to Mauritius."

The same documents show that Foreign Office officials were worried that they might be open to "charges of dishonesty" and referred to "old-fashioned" concerns about "whopping fibs" that Ministers were being asked to tell about Foreign Office policy. I am glad that at least one old-fashioned Member of Parliament, the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), has pursued the matter and championed the cause of the islanders over the past 40 years. The rest of us, perhaps with the honourable exception of the hon. Member who raised this debate, should be ashamed that we have not done more to support that campaign. The more we discover about the matter, the more disgraceful, underhand and thoroughly disreputable the long-term treatment of those few thousand people is shown to have been.

They were cleared from their island for the convenience of the United States and the United Kingdom, and most were abandoned in Mauritius. We know not just from assessments from friends of the islanders but from the High Court judgment that the conditions in which they have been living are disgraceful. They have been living in abject poverty, left to cope with an urban lifestyle when they have been used to a subsistence rural lifestyle. They were totally abandoned with pitiful and insulting compensation being offered over the years. That has been the fate of those few thousand people who were charged under the Crown to the protection of successive Governments but were abandoned disgracefully to their fate.

It strikes me that there is something of a parallel between what has happened to the Chagos islanders and the highland clearances in Scotland, when the rich and powerful drove the poor and weak from the land. That has scarred and informed Scottish politics ever since. Is it not significant that two of the three speakers here today are Scots?

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman raised that point, because I was about to come to it. One of the first and better acts of the Scottish Parliament when it came back into existence on the mound was in a debate such as this when it apologised collectively for the historic injustice of the highland clearances. They were not the responsibility of any Scottish Parliament, but it was felt none the less by all parties in that Parliament that such an apology should be offered, and that was done by representatives of all the parties. I very much hope that the Minister will do exactly what the hon. Gentleman suggested and proffer some sort of apology to the few thousand Chagos islanders who deserve not just an apology but some sign that future action and policy will be different from that in the past.

The islanders won the High Court judgment in 2000, which was in the days of ethical foreign policy. I shared the hopes that were expressed earlier that at last something would be done to rectify the historical grievance and injustice. I accepted, as I think did many islanders, that there was an American base of long standing on Diego Garcia and that it might not be possible for all the islands to be reinhabited. However, basic rights—such as the right to visit the graves of ancestors, to occupy the outer islands and to receive reasonable compensation, and the right of the duty of care that any Government and the Crown should have over these people—should have been respected as de minimis compensation for the wrongs and injustices of the past. In fact, none of that occurred, and instead the Government, in a sneaky, underhand way, passed two Orders in Council on European election day to prohibit debate, to remove what little rights had been won and to rectify loopholes in legislation that allowed the assertion of the human rights of the islanders and their descendants.

The analysis that the islands are no longer capable of sustaining occupation because of global warming must be pretty bad news for the American military base—perhaps the runway is about to disappear under water. I have an overwhelming feeling that if Mauritius could be persuaded to send just one gunboat to the outer islands to establish the Mauritian flag again in what is arguably its territory anyway, we would decide that the islands were worth reclaiming on behalf of the Crown and dispatch a taskforce to the Indian ocean.

Global warming is an interesting concept, because it conflicts rather dramatically with what is on the US navy website. In a welcoming introduction to "The Footprint of Freedom" and Camp Justice, Diego Garcia is described as a paradise on earth and it is said that one of the best stationings that any US serviceman can have is on Diego Garcia. The website states:

"Although it is a British Territory, there are fewer than 50 British personnel (or Brits as they are commonly known) on the island."

The Minister had better explain how the Government claim to know better than many respectable outlets of the US press. The Washington Post, for example, claims that prisoners are held on Diego Garcia for "rendering" before being transferred to Camp X-Ray. How confident is the Foreign Office in the information that the US authorities have offered it on what is happening on Diego Garcia, given that the Prime Minister seems to be revising his previous confidence in judgments that he has made about the international situation? Ultimately, the Minister should accept the collective responsibility of this and previous Governments for what has been done to the islanders. An apology should be proffered, but above all there should be a change of approach and of policy by the Government, who should offer some justice and some compensation to the islanders.

It may be thought that because of indolence or lack of concern among most Members of Parliament—there are a few honourable exceptions, who are here today such an issue is of no great moment, but it is precisely such issues that are of great political moment, because no member of the public could hear and understand what has happened to the islanders without having an overwhelming sense of injustice. If the Government cannot rectify the wrongs of the past for these few thousand people, what hope is there for their having any moral compass on the great issues of the day? Unless the Government are prepared to act and rectify the wrongs of the past, they are, in a moral sense, every bit as homeless as the islanders of Diego Garcia.

Let none of us suppose that there is a complete lack of interest in this country on this issue. When the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) had the opportunity to put a question to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, I was in company in Scotland. However, I subsequently heard, not only in university circles but more widely, that it was an important question. Indeed, some people went so far as to observe that it was the most sensible question asked of the Prime Minister for some weeks.

My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) has inspired an important debate, but perhaps it comes 40 years too late. It was in 1964 that the Government began misdescribing the long-settled population as transitory workers in order to mislead the world into thinking that they had no obligations to that population. My clear recollection is that I raised the subject with the then Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker. Frankly, having been defeated at Smethwick and about to be defeated at Leyton, his mind was on other things. A later Foreign Secretary was George Brown. When the general problem of the British Indian Ocean Territory was raised with him, he told me, in colourful language, to mind my own business. Perhaps I was not as tough then as subsequently, but George Brown was a formidable operator in his heyday. I raised the subject on the prompting of the late Sir Ashley Miles, the biological secretary of the Royal Society. It was his concern about the Indian ocean that first raised my acute interest.

Article 73 of the United Nations casts a "sacred trust" on a sovereign power to promote the welfare and advancement of the people, but the Government surreptitiously deported the islanders and misled the world about their status. At the United Nations on 16 November 1965, the British representative Mr. F.D.W. Brown, acting on the instructions of the Foreign Office, misdescribed the islands as

"uninhabited when my government first acquired them",

misdescribed the population as

"labourers from Mauritius and Seychelles"

and misled the UN into stating that the new administrative arrangements had been

"freely worked out with the…elected representatives of the people concerned".

Instead, they bought the plantations, closed them down, forced the people to leave on boats, which incidentally were horribly overcrowded, and led them to exile, where they still remain. Their lives have been a tragedy of misery, poverty and despair, the only alleviation of which has been the heartfelt desire to return to their homeland, where their villages and ancestors lie.

In 1969, on my return from Australia, I stopped in Mauritius to stay the night with the former general secretary of the Labour party, Len Williams. Harold Wilson had wanted him out of Transport house and made him Governor-General of Mauritius. His wife Margaret Williams was a very intelligent and nice lady, and she decided that I should spend a morning with some Ilois people. It made a strong impression on me.

What is remarkable is that in the same speech by Mr. Brown representing the Foreign Office, he described the wishes of the Falkland islanders, whose representatives were consulted. Here we return to a previous intervention and a proper comparison with the Falkland islanders, of whom Mr. Brown said:

"It has been suggested that this population is somehow irrelevant and that it has no claim to have its wishes taken into account …it would surely be fantastic to maintain that only indigenous inhabitants have any rights in the Country".

He then quoted Woodrow Wilson from 1918:

"Peoples and Provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were chattels or pawns in a game".

Within months, the Chagos Islands had been given to the United States and the destruction of the islanders' homes and lives was soon to follow.

These days, we are all too familiar with conducting foreign policy on the basis of false or misleading facts. The historical record now revealed by the islanders' legal struggle has after 30 years shown that a small and vulnerable population of British subjects can safely be written out of the history book on the pretext that they are not really a population at all. There is nothing new in deceiving the world while acting in breach of civilised standards of international and constitutional law. That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North in his powerful speech.

When the islanders finally won their struggle to return in the High Court in November 2000, Lord Justice Laws stated:

"The people are to be governed, not removed."

He also stated that the Immigration Ordinance 1971 was an "abject legal failure", which had

"no colour of lawful authority."

That is not my view but that of a distinguished Law Lord.

We are supposed to have an ethical foreign policy. The then Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), accepted the Court's judgment and said:

"I have decided to accept the Court's ruling and the Government will not be appealing.

The work we are doing on the feasibility of resettlement of Ilois now takes on a new importance. We started feasibility work a year ago and are now well under way with phase two of the study.

Furthermore, we will put in place a new immigration ordinance which allows Ilois to return to the outer islands while observing our treaty obligations.

The Government has not defended what was done or said 30 years ago. As Lord Justice Laws recognised, we made no attempt to conceal the gravity of what happened".

History is repeating itself with the same moral turpitude. This time, given that the islanders had already been promised that the Government's policy was to move towards their resettlement on the islands, the new banishment is a cruel change to what has already been offered. Moreover, the reasons given are again based on inaccurate and misleading information.

The Foreign Office press statement claimed that it was the feasibility study that prevented resettlement. I am glad that this Minister is replying to the debate, and I thank him for his personal courtesy in seeing my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North and me in the Foreign Office. He cited a conclusion, supposedly made by the consultants in their executive summary, that the costs of maintaining long-term inhabitation are likely to be prohibitive. However, that was not based on any work of the consultants, whose terms of reference precluded any consideration of cost. Even if he had read only the executive summary, he would know from page 3 that the consultants reported:

"This report has not been tasked with investigating the financial costs and benefits of resettlements".

I feel entitled to ask where the conclusion came from. It was certainly not from the consultants.

The Minister further stated that

"human interference within the Atolls…is likely to exacerbate the stress on the marine and terrestrial environment and will accelerate the effect of global warming."

However, other things might accelerate global warming.

"Thus",

he continued,

"resettlement is likely to become less feasible over time".

Again, that judgment was not based on the work of the consultants, who stated in volume 3, paragraph 8.3:

"At the present time it is not possible to quantify the risk associated with climate change for the Chagos Islands."

The Minister's conclusion had crept in from somewhere else.

Finally, it is impossible to take seriously the suggestion that only a resettled population will face difficulties. Are we really to believe that the 64 islands offered back to the islanders by the then Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Livingston, are going to sink under the waves, while the one island occupied by the Americans is to provide defence facilities for generations to come? It is the biggest military base outside the continental United States.

Only yesterday, in the Court of Appeal, Lord Justice Sedley referred to the shameful treatment to which the islanders were subjected:

"The deliberate misinterpretation of Ilois history and status, designed to deflect any investigation by the United Nations, the use of legal powers designed for the governance of the islands for the illicit purpose of depopulating them, the consequent uprooting of scores of families from the only way of life and means of subsistence that they knew, the failure to make anything like adequate provision for their resettlement, all of this and more is now part of the historical record."

Moreover, he went so far as to compare those removals with the highland clearances of the second quarter of the 19th century. He stated:

"Defence may have replaced agricultural improvement as the reason, but the pauperisation and the expulsion of the weak in the interests of the powerful is the same. It gives little to be proud of."

Now there has been a cruel new blow to this mistreated population. Their hopes, which were raised by this Government, have been dashed. Nothing in this game of cat and mouse is any less culpable than the lies and inhumanity that characterised the removal of the population.

It is not, however, too late to render justice. The right of the islanders to return to their homeland should now be recognised, and proper scientific studies should be undertaken, with proper, independent input from respected scientists whose conclusions ought to be binding on the Government.

I am pleased to be able to make a brief contribution to the debate. I am relatively new to this subject, but when I read the press reports a few weeks ago I could not believe that the Government, whom I so strongly support, are taking this action. I know the Minister to be a good man, and I cannot believe that his sleep is not a little troubled due to these problems.

The test of any Government, or any man or woman, is how they deal wit h injustices felt by powerless people. I urge the Minister to make a stand on this issue; if there are forces beyond his office, outside or within the Foreign Office, that are urging this course of action, I urge him to take a stand. I have looked at the press release—that is all we can go on as to the reasons why we are taking this action. I could see four: the risk of flooding; the precarious nature of life for any people who return; the effect on the delicate marine and terrestrial life caused by people who return; and the cost.

With regard to the risk of flooding, I have consulted one or two experts on the level of the land there, and a lot of it is higher than that in East Anglia. We know about flooding in my constituency of Selby, and if we accepted the argument on flooding that the Government are using, half of my constituency would be depopulated. Some outlying islands were inhabited in the past, and some were based on banks that were shifting in storms. There were tall copra trees on the islands and the inhabitants had worked out a mode of living—growing copra successfully, and in some cases raising huts on stills. The argument does not seem overwhelming to me.

We have talked about the precarious nature of the life that would face any islanders who returned to the outer islands. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) was rather restrained and understated in quoting the American publicity about the islands. I shall detain the Chamber for a moment to give a little more flavour of what the US navy says about Diego Garcia in its message to its recruits. It says that Diego Garcia boasts

"unbelievable recreational facilities and exquisite natural beauty"

as well as "outstanding" living conditions. There is no mention of the threat of imminent demise from flooding. In fact, I understand that the US is seeking to extend the lease on its base, which would expire in 2016, so it is thinking long term. There is a windsurfers club, a yacht club, an annual Miss Diego Garcia competition, regular picnics to what the US describes as some of the best unspoiled beaches in the world, fishing, snorkelling and a beauty parlour. It does not sound that precarious to me.

As for the delicate marine and terrestrial life, the impact of the 1,500 US personnel, the British personnel, the 2,000 civilian contractors and the various military equipment must be at least as worrying, if it is the major concern, as the effect of some islanders returning to the outer islands.

The cost of returning is obviously a serious matter. From a preliminary scan of the literature, it is very difficult to work out whether any payment has ever been made by the US Government for the use of the island.

It occurs to me that with all the wonderful facilities at Diego Garcia, the American forces must have first-class health provision. Would it not be a generous offer if the Americans provided health services for the returning islanders in return for occupying part of their islands?

That would be a very generous gesture, shoulder to shoulder. Perhaps it could be the first gesture of President Kerry in November or December.

I would be interested to hear the Minister comment on whether any payment by the L S Government has ever been made. Officially, the Foreign Office denies it, but time and again the suggestion in the literature is that the British Government at the got a $14 million reduction in the cost of the PolLris nuclear missile system. I do not know whether that is true.

Clearly, with all the magnificent leisure, tourism and health facilities, it would not be bey and the wit of man or woman to develop a tourism strategy for the islands—perhaps the North York shire tourist office could give some advice. I have a marginal seat, so perhaps there will be a job for me there. In any case, we do not seem to be dealing with a basket case of an economy, and I think the Minister knows that in his heart. It would be a great sadness for me and for other Members—present and not present—if a Labour Government did not bring justice to these islanders who have very little power. I appeal to the Minister to think again.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) on securing the debate and on setting out in stark terms a dark chapter in our history and the impact it has had on the Chagos islanders. Other Members have dwelt at length on the history of what has happened, but I want to focus on the immediate past, the present and the future.

On resettlement, the Government statement of 15 June, which banned all rights of return of the Chagos people to their homeland, relied in part for its justification on the findings of the June 2002 feasibility study on the resettlement of the islands. Several hon. Members have referred to that and I want to highlight a couple of points.

That report concluded that the resettlement of the islanders would be prohibitively expensive and precarious to their safety. The Minister will be aware that Jonathan Jenness, who is a resettlement expert, carried out an independent review of that study. He examined the claims that the Government-inspired report made and it is clear that the Government's consultants were not given the task of assessing the financial costs and benefits of resettlement. The Department for International Development has not carried out, or received, any estimate of costs of the resettlement of the islands. I would be interested to know whether any Department has such figures.

On the safety of the environment, the review conducted by Mr. Jenness found that the Chagos Islands have a "benign environment" and that no available material can assess the possible consequences of global warming. As several hon. Members have pointed out, the Minister must explain why a micro climate exists in Diego Garcia, which ensures that it is safe from global warming, whereas the rest of the islands are under threat.

On resettlement in general, the review of the study—undertaken by Mr. Jenness—says that

"it is fatuous to imagine that the islands cannot be resettled…they were settled, successfully for several generations".

Of course, Diego Garcia is successfully settled by the Americans and the BIOT administration. What assessment have the Government conducted of the review by Jonathan Jenness? Can they make any such assessment public, so that we can see how they responded to the valid points he made? I hope the Minister can say whether any discussions took place between the UK and the US Governments on these matters in the run-up to the decision that was taken on 15 June?

On compensation, to which other hon. Members have referred, it is clear that the level provided was insufficient and that when the Chagos islanders entered into the arrangement that we are discussing it was not made clear to them precisely what they were signing up to.

On visitation rights, the Minister must say why the security concerns are so great that people are not, for instance, allowed to return to visit graves. Before I turn to the issue of Camp Justice, I will discuss the report in today's papers that Mauritius may sue for Diego Garcia. Perhaps he can say also what discussions have taken place with the Mauritian Prime Minister on that subject. How many times has the UK been taken to the International Court of Justice—that is what is being proposed? Has the Prime Minister replied to Mr. Berenger's letter? I understand that he is very angry not to have received a response. Can we have assurances from the Minister that the Government will not retaliate and perhaps take it out on the Mauritian Government in relation to subsidies that they receive for sugar?

On that point, a report in The Guardian today suggests exactly that. It is incumbent on the Minister to deny that pressure will be placed on the Mauritian Government not to pursue the case, which is their absolute right under international law.

I agree, and I am sure that the Minister will use this opportunity to put that on the record.

I will briefly touch on the issue of Camp Justice, to which other hon. Members have referred. For those who are not familiar with it, I have a satellite picture of what it looks like. It is difficult to see individuals, but this is clearly an extensive camp.

Are there any weapons of mass destruction?

It is not possible to see any weapons of mass destruction, but I here are some very large hangars. Hon. Members have referred to reports in the Washington Post and Time magazine of claims that prisoners are being held in the camp by the Americans for so-called rendering—which others have described as torturing—or at least for questioning before being transferred to Camp X-Ray. Similar claims are being made by Mauritius-based campaigners; I understand that no journalist has been able to visit the camp.

I hope, therefore, that the Minister can say how long he expects the camp to be operational. Is it designed to hold prisoners? Does the UK have control of any sort over the operations within the camp? Is there any dialogue with the US over what goes on in the camp? I understand that the US would need permission from the British Government to hold prisoners there. When a question was last raised about the matter—in January 2003—no such request from the US Government had been forthcoming. Have the US Government made any request to keep prisoners there more recently than that?

It would be extremely useful to clear up any misunderstanding by the Washington Post and Time magazine of the purpose of the camp if the Minister were to arrange for a visit—possibly a parliamentary visit—so that hon. Members could see precisely what is happening and deal with any concerns we may have about prisoners being held there. I hope he can give us that assurance.

The issue is a sorry chapter in our past and it is poisoning our present. The Minister can start to repair the damage today; the Chagos islanders deserve an apology, compensation, assistance where they are based currently and a right of return. The Government's claim to be the champions of freedom will sound very hollow unless he can deliver on these promises today.

This is probably the most important of all the debates in Westminster Hall in which I have participated since taking on the foreign affairs portfolio in November. I want to put three points on the record. First, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) and to the Father of the House the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) not only for speaking so powerfully, but for campaigning on the issue over so many years. Sometimes, we grapple with the legitimacy of this place when there is a powerful Government and a large majority on one side of the Chamber, but it is a legitimate and proper use of the House to raise injustices, national or international, on behalf of a host of people or of a relatively small number. I congratulate the hon. Gentlemen on how they have fought the corner for these people.

Secondly, a grave injustice took place in the 1960s and 1970s, and that is not widely known. It was a stain on our history and there is now an opportunity to do better. I confess that, in preparing for the debate, I found that my knowledge of the issue was extremely limited. I have learned a lot in the past few days in trying to grapple with the matter.

Thirdly, although the original decisions were taken by a Government led by Harold Wilson, a Labour Prime Minister, this is not a party political issue. Conservative Governments in the interim could have done more to put matters right and did not do so. I am interested not in apportioning blame, but in trying to see where we go from here.

I think I have his permission to say that Lord Balneil, who is now the 29th Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, was the very capable Foreign Office Minister in charge. He said that the only time during his career as a senior Conservative Minister in the Foreign Office when he was really unhappy about brief was on this issue.

I am grateful to the Father of the House, and I look forward o reading his memoirs, because his knowledge of the senior figures of the past 30 or 40 years is impressive.

I would like to think that what happened to the Chagos islanders in the 1960s could never happen again, given the way the media are today and our attitude towards human rights and transparency. However, when I think about the unlawful incarceration of so many people in Guantanamo Bay, which I have spoken about two or three times in this Chamber and in the House. that undermines my confidence in today's commitment to human rights as well as common sense.

We cannot undo the events of the 1960s, but we can do better in righting some of those wrongs. I intend to give the Minister 20 minutes for his winding-up speech, because many questions have been asked. Regardless of where I am in my remarks, I intend to sit down—probably abruptly—at 3.10 pm.

Many hon. Members have talked about comments that have come to light that were made by Foreign Office officials—and, sometimes, politicians —during the abject episode in the 1960s. One of them sticks in my mind. It was made by Sir Paul Gore-Booth, the senior Foreign Office official—the Father of the House probably knew him well. In 1966, he wrote to a diplomat:

"We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the exercise is to get some rocks which will remain ours… There will be no indigenous population except seagulls".

The Tarzan and Man Friday comment was made in response to that telegram. It was a classic "Yes Minister" moment. Irrespective of the facts, a story needed to be promoted, so they promoted that story.

I appreciate that it is difficult for the Minister to respond to debates such as this—it seems 1,000 years ago that I was in his position. However, I ask him to go as far as he can in accepting that a major injustice took place. If he feels Omit an official apology is called for, everyone in this Chamber will welcome that.

It was sensible for the Government to carry out a feasibility study. We welcomed that. and we appreciated that it was made public and placed in the Library. I do not want to go into the details; others have successfully done that today. However, some of the reasons given for not coming down in favour of allowing people to go at least to the outer islands simply did not make sense. Others have powerfully made the point about global warming and flooding. Some of those reasons do not ring true. They are not credible, and I ask the Minister to answer some of the specific questions that have been asked.

In the Minister's statement of 15 June, he seemed to be saying two things at the same time. I am reminded of a famous statement: "If you are trying to sell shampoo, you can say that it makes your hair look shiny or you can say that it gets rid of dandruff, but you can't say both." The Minister appeared to be saying that the reason for the decision is global warming and the precariousness of living there, and that it is essential for security reasons, but he cannot sa3 both. What is the real reason that the Government have taken this uncharacteristically robust—and. I think, unfair—position?

To follow up on the comments of the Liberal Democrat spokesman about the Americans, I would like to know the extent to which they were involved in the recent decision to file the Orders in Council and to make the written statement. I recognise the importance of the US air base. It has been used to good effect in the recent wars in Afghanistan and the Gulf. B-52s have flown from there. I strongly support our alliance with the Americans and their commitment to global security. However, this Government need to grapple in their mind and conscience with the question of when an alliance becomes a relationship of subservience.

The Minister needs to deal with that point today. I was not in the House last Wednesday when the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) asked the Prime Minister a sensible question about this issue. Although the hon. Gentleman went over the top, as he sometimes does, the answer from the Prime Minister was a rant—a total, blind commitment to the Americans. Can that commitment really be at any price, even at the cost of a major injustice to the people we are talking about today?

I think the Prime Minister has some difficulty in distinguishing between a country called America, which has a constitution, and the personality of a President, George W. Bush, who has an Administration. The Prime Minister's inability to distinguish between the two is one of his major weaknesses.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for putting that on the record.

Why on earth was it necessary fur the Government to deal with this issue in the past few weeks in the way they have? Why was it necessary to execute Orders in Council, with no prior discussion, no consultation, no debate and no warning? It came as such a bolt out of the blue that, I freely confess, the Opposition—for whom I take responsibility for the issue— missed it completely for a number of days. Perhaps we were focusing on the tremendous local election results that we received on 10 June and the fantastic European election results that we received on the following Sunday. What on earth was that all about? I understand that one of the officials in the Foreign Office publicity department, when pressed about the timing of the announcement, said:

"Obviously this was discussed at length within the Foreign Office".

Within the Foreign Office—that is great, isn't it? It did not let anyone else in on those discussions. However,

"it was decided through our legal adviser; that this was the most appropriate way."

I speak as a lawyer—never let lawyers make decisions such as that. He went on:

"To do it any other way would have taken an inordinate amount of time."

Well, excuse me for being in a Parliament. We are here to scrutinise such decisions and to debate them. I am so sorry if today's debate is taking

"an inordinate amount of time".

It is what this place exists for.

Can the hon. Gentleman confirm whether he, as Opposition spokesperson on the matter, was informed of those announcements being made?

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman asked that question, because I checked this morning with the shadow Foreign Secretary, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), whether discussions were held at a higher level. There were no such discussions and no approach was made. There was no indication, no Chinese whispers—nothing.

I say to the Minister that that is simply no way to introduce a major decision of this kind. It represents a major reversal in Government policy to slam-dunk and to prevent the islanders from returning. The order does not just say that we are not going to take them back; it actually says that we are not going to permit them to return. That is another point. Why is that so difficult? If the islanders want to take that upon themselves—I agree with those who say that we are supporting relatively uneconomic communities in other parts of our territories— why is it wrong?

I believe that it is possible for the Chagos islanders to return, at least to the outer islands. I understand the American sensitivity in terms of security and defence, but I do not know why they want every island cleared. The Americans tend to go over the top in such situations. We must have our own robust view on the matter. I believe that it is possible for the islanders to return to the outer islands, while still maintaining our treaty obligations to the Americans over the base at Diego Garcia. The Chagos islanders have been very badly treated.

I accept that difficult decisions must sometimes be taken for legitimate security and defence reasons. Tough decisions have to be taken by all Governments, but where they affect an innocent people, as in this case, the compensation should be generous. Decisions should be implemented in an honest and transparent way that does not compound the injustice. That clearly has not happened in this case, and the Minister has some explaining to do.

I should like to start by genuinely congratulating—these are not idle words—my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) on securing this Adjournment debate. I do not always agree with him, but I admire and respect the commitment and passion with which he pursues the causes in which he believes. Similarly, I would direct those remarks at the Father of the House, who has pursued this issue diligently and persistently over a matter of decades, which is enormously to his credit. I know that concern for the Chagossians and interest in BIOT is genuine and long standing on the part of many hon. Members, so I think the opportunity of today's debate is important. From my perspective and that of the Government, it gives us a welcome opportunity to put on the record our position on BIOT and the reasoning behind our recent decisions, which I believe were justified.

I shall start by acknowledging that, in my view, the decisions taken by successive Governments in the 1960s and 1970s to depopulate the islands do not, to say the least, constitute the finest hour of UK foreign policy. In no sense am I seeking to justify the decisions that were made in the 1960s and 1970s. Those decisions may be seen as regrettable, but the Government must deal with the current situation. The responsibility of the UK Government for the decisions taken in the 1960s and 1970s has been acknowledged by successive Governments since then, as is demonstrated by the substantial compensation that has already been paid to the Chagossians.

Having said that, the Government must deal with the situation that we face today, some 33 years after the depopulation. We have had to judge whether it is realistic, feasible or appropriate for the islands to be repopulated today. We do not have to judge whether what happened in the past was right or wrong, but whether it is appropriate, justifiable and sustainable to repopulate today. We have had to focus on that decision in recent weeks.

I believe that it would have been wrong for our decision to have been influenced by concerns about Government actions in the past rather than by the realities of today. Nevertheless, as I said earlier, successive UK Governments have acknowledged our moral responsibility; that was why compensation was paid.

I shall set out some of the history behind the creation of the British Indian Ocean Territory, and the chain of events that has led to hon. Members raising concerns on behalf of the Chagossian community today.

The islands of the Chagos archipelago, in the middle of the Indian ocean, were originally uninhabited and remained so until the French assumed sovereignty in the 1700s, and began to exploit them for copra in the 1780s. The islands became British when ceded, together with Mauritius and the Seychelles, by France to Britain in 1814. The islands continued to be administered from Mauritius.

During French rule, and for a short period thereafter, the copra plantation was run with slave labour. However, when slavery was abolished in all British possessions in the 1830s, the work force became contract labourers. That continued to be the basis of employment for as long as the copra plantations remained in operation.

Prior to Mauritius achieving independence, and with the agreement of the Mauritius Council of Ministers, the islands were detached in 1965— several hon. Members referred to that—to form part of the British Indian Ocean Territory. The territory was created to provide for the defence needs of the USA and Britain. At that time, Britain gave Mauritius an undertaking to cede the islands to Mauritius when they were no longer required for defence purposes. Again, let me be clear that I do not seek to justify the decisions that were taken in the 1960s and 1970s.

Some time after the islands had been set aside for defence needs in 1965, it was decided that the islanders should be relocated to Mauritius and the Seychelles, and arrangements for that to be done were made in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The vast majority of the islanders—some 1,200—were relocated to Mauritius. At that time—I believe appropriately—Britain made£650,000 available to the Mauritius Government for the express purpose of assisting resettlement. At today's prices, that is equivalent to almost £5.5 million.

It is worth mentioning that the majority of Chagossians automatically acquired Mauritian or Seychelles citizenship when those countries achieved independence. In addition, the British Overseas Territories Act 2002 gave the majority British citizenship. Such citizenship carries with it the right of abode in the UK, which some have already taken up, and freedom of access to other EU countries. That change, which was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North, was widely welcomed by the Chagossians, and indicated the Government's commitment to our responsibilities.

At the time of the detachment of the islands from Mauritius, the population consisted solely of the employees of the copra plantations and their dependants. Some of those employees were transient contract labourers, but others had more settled roots in the islands—in some eases their families had lived there as plantation workers for several generations —and regarded the islands as their home. The people who had that sort of connect-on with the islands were known as the "Ilois", which is the Creole word for islanders, or as "Chagossians." The whole population was dependent on employment in the copra plantations for its livelihood and basic services.

In 1982, Britain made an ex gratia payment of £4 million in return for withdrawal of legal proceedings brought by a member of the Chagossian community in Mauritius, in addition to the previous £650,000 for the Chagossian community in Mauritius. Everyone who was registered as a Chagossian—approximately 1,350 people—benefited from the fund. At today's prices, that sum is the equivalent of £9 million. At that stage, it was agreed by all concerned, including the Chagossians and their representatives, that that payment by the British Government was a full and final settlement against all the claims against the Government arising from the relocation of the Chagossians to Mauritius, their resettlement there and their preclusion from returning to the Chagos Islands.

Nevertheless, in 1998, another member of the Chagossian community instituted judicial review proceedings challenging the validity of a provision of the BLOT immigration ordinance 1971, which prohibited the entry of any person into any part of the territory, unless they obtained permission to do so. The judgment, which was given in November 2000, held that the provision of the 1971 ordinance was invalid to the extent that it excluded the Chagossians from the whole territory. At that stage, the Government decided to accept that finding and not appeal, and the 1971 ordinance was replaced by a new one, which allowed the Chagossians to return and reside in any part of the territory, except. for defence reasons, Diego Garcia. A reasonable question at that juncture would have been, "What has changed between now and then?" That is a legitimate question to which I will try to respond.

At the same time is that judgment, the Government had also commissioned a study in 2000 into the feasibility of resettling the Chagossians on the islands other than Diego Garcia. I stress that that was done by independent experts. The report on the final phase of that study was made public in July 2002, at which stage a copy was rightly deposited in the Library of the House. I know that there has been much mockery of those conclusions this afternoon, but I am directly quoting from that study, which was drawn up independently. It concluded that

"whilst it may be feasible to resettle the islands in the short term, the costs of maintaining long-term inhabitation are likely to be prohibitive."

That was not dreamed up by a Foreign Office official or a Minister; it was the conclusion of the independent experts. I ask hon. Members, whatever they feel about past decisions, to consider whether it is realistic and sensible, having been presented with that advice, to move towards repopulation.

Will the Minister set out for the benefit of other hon. Members what studies have been carried out to consider whether the costs are prohibitive?

I will come on to answer that key point.

Before the orders were made—if that was the basis of making them— why was there no discussion with anybody, such as the islanders, who has knowledge or interest in the matter, or a real desire to see the Chagos Islands reinhabited? Why was this done by Ministers and officials in secret in the Foreign Office?

There was always going to be an opportunity for these issues to be debated, but it was right, given the imminence of the intention to repopulate, that we took considered action, and I believe that we did so.

The report says:

"Even in the short term, natural events such as periodic flooding from storms and seismic activity are likely to make life difficult for a resettled population."

It also says:

"Human interference within the atolls, however well managed, is likely to exacerbate stress on the marine and terrestrial environment and will accelerate the effects of global warming. Thus resettlement is likely to become less feasible over time."

The report advised specifically, with respect to climate change, that

"the main issue facing a resettled population on the low-lying islands will be flooding events, which are likely to increase in periodicity and intensity and will not only threaten infrastructure, but also the freshwater aquifers and agricultural production. Severe events may even threaten life."

It also highlighted the implications for resettlement on such low-lying islands of the predicted increase in global sea levels as a result of climate change. That is where the facts, as my hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) said, need to be taken into account.

It is worth highlighting that the highest points on the islands are only about 2 metres above sea level and, in most areas, are just a couple of feet above sea level. We have to make a judgment, but not on whether we already have an existing, settled population who we need to protect and support. We are talking about islands where there is no settled population at the moment. That is the factor that we must take into account. In effect, therefore, as I said in my statement to the House on 15 June, anything other than short-term resettlement on a purely subsistence basis would be highly precarious and would involve expensive underwriting by the UK Government for an open-ended period, and probably permanently.

We made an assessment based upon comparative costings with other overseas territories with which we have significant experience, and we believe that the initial resettlement costs would be of the order of £5 million in start-up costs and £3 million to £5 million annually thereafter. The Department for International Development thinks that those estimates are overly optimistic and that the costs may well be higher. We are not talking about minimal costs.

Will the Minister give way?

I will not give way.

The sums that the Minister mentions are very small compared with the enormity of the issue and the blot on the moral conscience. Does the European convention on human rights apply to the British Indian Ocean Territory, and does the International Criminal Court have jurisdiction over Diego Garcia under the terms of the American lease?

As I understand it, the ECHR does not apply, as there is no settled population. With regard to the hon. Gentleman's other question, I will respond later because I do not want to give a response that is not entirely accurate.

Due to the fact that settlement is not feasible, the Government decided after long and careful consideration—that was genuinely the case—to legislate to prevent it. Equally, however, legislation to restore full immigration control over the entire territory is also necessary, and I do not absolve ourselves from responsibility for this so as to ensure and maintain the availability and effective use of the territory for defence purposes for which it was constituted and set aside in accordance with the UK's treaty obligations entered into almost 40 years ago.

On that basis, two prerogative Orders in Council were made on 10 June restoring full immigration control over the islands of the British Indian Ocean Territory. Those controls extended to all persons, including members of the Chagossian community. This point has been made on several occasions, but a prerogative Order in Council is the normal way in which the UK Government legislate for an overseas territory. Indeed, legislation in that form on BIOT has been entered into in the past.

All the other British overseas territories have some form of resident population and some form of representative local administration who are consulted before an Order in Council is made, which is, in effect, a decision made by the local population. Why was there no discussion whatever with any representative of the Chagossian community?

That is the very point that we are debating. There is no settled population within BIOT and that is why we have to make the decisions that we have to make.

Several Members have raised questions about the manner in which we reached that conclusion and asked whether there was any pressure from the United States of America. Let me be abundantly clear: we made our decision based on our own assessment of the situation and not as the result of any pressure or lobbying from other parties. I have certainly received no representations from the United States and I do not believe that the Foreign Secretary has had any representations on the issue for a significant number of years.

I understand the concerns that hon. Members have for the Chagossians following the two Orders in Council, and I do not seek to justify or defend actions that were taken in the past. but the decision not to allow any form of resettlement on the islands was taken only after long and careful consideration of the current circumstances.

Will the Minister give way?

No.

On a point of order, Mr. Olner. The Minister said a few moments ago that DFID reckoned that the costs of resettlement were understated.

Order. That is a point of debate, not a point of order.

It is a point of order.

Order. No, it is a point of debate, not a point of order.

I am genuinely trying to respond to the legitimate questions that Members have put, and I ask for the opportunity to do that.

As far as compensation for the Chagossians is concerned, the High Court judgment established that we have no legal obligation to pay any further compensation beyond what has already been provided. The Chagossians have sought to lodge an appeal against that judgment but, as the compensation payments that have already been made are equivalent to £14.5 million at today's prices, I can make no promises about further payments. If hon. Members want to make further representations on that issue, however, we will listen to them as is our proper constitutional duty.

I understand—this was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North—the wishes of many Chagossians to visit the islands to see the graves of their ancestors. We have twice put in hand preparations for such a visit, but those fell through on both occasions for reasons that were absolutely and categorically beyond our control. I heard what my hon. Friend said on that, but the boat that was bringing the Chagossians to the islands was not owned by the British Government, who had no influence over it. At that stage, we were happy for the visit to take place and, as I have written today to my hon. Friend, we remain genuinely prepared to organise and finance a visit to the outer islands in cooperation with the representatives of the Chagossian communities in Mauritius and the Seychelles.

The current position on Diego Garcia is that the Americans have made it clear that, on security grounds, they cannot, at present, agree to a visit that includes the cemeteries there. Under our treaty with the Americans, access to Diego Garcia cannot be permitted without the agreement of both Governments. None the less, if the Chagossians confirm that they would like an organised visit to include Diego Garcia, I am prepared to make representations to the Government of the United States of America.

Another issue that I should mention concerns not the problems of the Chagossians but the claim that the Government of Mauritius have made to sovereignty over the BIOT territories. As the House will have seen from the written statement made yesterday, the Government have amended the UK's declaration accepting the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice under article 36(2) of the court's statute. A copy of the revised declaration, set out in a letter to the United Nations Secretary-General dated 5 July 2004, has been placed in the Library of the House. As my written statement yesterday explained, the revised declaration makes changes to the former declaration put forward on 1 January 1969.

That former arrangement confirms a Commonwealth exception that excludes jurisdiction in respect of any dispute with the Government of any other country that is a member of the Commonwealth. That Commonwealth exception is of long standing, and is retained by a number of Commonwealth countries. The change that we have made broadens the scope of the exception so that it now covers a dispute with a Government of another country who have been a member of the Commonwealth. Although those changes are of general application, their immediate significance is that they prevent any Commonwealth country from circumventing the present limitations by withdrawing from the Commonwealth and then instituting proceedings against the UK Government in respect of an existing dispute. We have acted in that way to prevent such a move because we believe that that would be against the spirit of the existing Commonwealth exception, which is a view and a practice adopted not only by us but by many Commonwealth Governments.

As I have said on several occasions, we are not seeking to defend actions that were taken in the 1960s and 1970s, but we have to deal with the situation as it is today, some 33 years on, when there is genuinely no settled population in the BIOT territories. Previous Governments have introduced substantial compensation for past actions, which I think is right and proper. Clear and genuine evidence has been put before the Government on the longer-term viability—or non-viability—of repopulation of the islands. We have received a report based on independent advice from independent experts, which, at the very least, significantly questions the sustainability and viability of repopulation of the islands. In those circumstances, and given the overall context of an ongoing set of contingent liabilities to the overseas territories running into hundreds of millions of pounds, for Is cavalierly to have gone ahead and said that we would allow repopulation to take place would not have been the right decision. I do not believe that it would have been a sustainable decision, and that was a significant imperative behind the reasoned position that we took.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North on having secured this Adjournment debate. I recognise the strength of feeling on this issue, and that what I have said will not be agreed with, or welcomed, by everyone. However, the debate has enabled us to have a significant airing of the issues.

I am pleased to have this chance to raise the important issue of involving the community in the treatment of sex offenders.

What is the point of raising this subject today? When people have questioned me on what I am about to discuss, I have been asked whether I am interested in supporting the sex offender only, and not the victims. In other words, is this just a woolly liberal desire and do I care only about the sex offender? I want to make it clear at the start that, like most people, my motivation and interest in raising this matter comes from a desire to prevent people from suffering sexual abuse. The point is to consider what can be done in practical terms to protect people from such abuse. It is important to be clear about that from the outset.

What happens when a convicted sex offender is released into the community? Normally, when an offender is released, police and social services are aware of where they live. There will be systems in place to protect the public. The offender will get visits from the police public protection officer, and the number of times that they are visited will depend on the perceived risk from the offender to the community at large. Usually, family and friends will shun them, leaving them feeling isolated. Often, they will not be where their home was. They might suddenly have to move a few times if people living nearby find out about the offence that they have committed. That is just the sort of situation that is believed to be most likely to encourage the sex offender to reoffend, and that is not good news for people in the community.

How does a community respond to the release of a sex offender into its midst? It is understandable that there will be fear and concern for the safety of those in the community. In an extreme, that can lead to what happened to Arnold Hartley, a convicted sex offender who was murdered in his home in Redear, Cleveland, last November, similarly, we all remember the scenes in Paulsgrove, Portsmouth. That is not the kind of community involvement in the treatment of sex offenders that I am seeking through this debate. That would just reinforce the feelings of isolation and otherness that play a key part in offenders repeating their behaviour, and would not reduce sexual abuse, In fact, such involvement risks increasing it.

Can something be done to change the situation? One solution put forward by the media, particularly the News of the World, is Sarah's law, named after Sarah Payne. That aims to involve the community by informing it of where sex offenders live. The view is that the community could then protect itself from the sex offender, monitor his behaviour and hold him accountable.

Among those dealing with the management of sex offenders living in the community, general community notification is thought likely to cause more problems than it would solve. Fear in the community would be exacerbated. The offender might be made to feel more isolated, and there would then be more examples of the sort of behaviour that arose in Paulsgrove, and what happened to Arnold Hartley might be repeated. For anyone who wants a reduction in sexual abuse, that is not a good prospect. Such action would not reduce the amount of sexual abuse, and a reduction in such abuse was, as I said, my motivation for seeking the debate.

In the mid-1990s, a scheme known as circles of support and accountability started in Canada. It was the coming together of two groups. There was recognition in the criminal justice system that most offenders were released from prison on a licence before the end of their sentence, and were provided with support to resettle into society. The licence also provided a mechanism for ensuring the accountability of the actions of the offender, and the ability to recall them if they offended again or were at risk of reoffending. However, prisoners too dangerous to be released early had no support or accountability when they left prison at the end of their sentence. There was also a feeling of powerlessness within the community when a potentially dangerous individual was released into its midst. That is the kind of feeling that led to calls for Sarah's law in the UK a few years later.

In Canada, the response was for groups of people, primarily churchgoers, spontaneously to group together around one or two offenders. From this experience, a project grew, funded by the people who ran the prisons and probation service in Canada and administered by the Mennonite church. The police in the part of Canada where circles have been operating for some time have become convinced that the scheme works and cooperate with it.

In fact, in those parts of Canada where circles have operated, recidivism among sex offenders has been cut by more than 50 per cent. to just 10 per cent. Of the 30 offenders who had taken part in the pilot in Ontario, just three had reoffended, whereas the statistical expectation would have been for seven to have done so. Let us think of the people who have been saved thereby from the trauma of sexual abuse.

In fact, in those parts of Canada where circles have operated, recidivism among sex offenders has been cut by more than 50 per cent. to just 10 per cent. Of the 30 offenders who had taken part in the pilot in Ontario, just three had reoffended, whereas the statistical expectation would have been for seven to have done so. Let us think of the people who have been saved thereby from the trauma of sexual abuse.

Present at the meeting was the manager at the Wolvercote clinic, which focuses on reducing abuse by assessing and treating sex offenders. He was aware of the situation of men who leave prison or the clinic to be met by nobody. Inspired by the meeting, he set up a circle for an offender leaving the clinic, and that has now grown into a full-blown pilot managed by the Lucy Faithfull Foundation. A third pilot has been established in the Thames valley, managed by Quaker Peace and Social Witness.

What is a circle of support and accountability? An offender is identified anything up to a year before release. He will be a high-risk sex offender with high levels of need and little or no support from family or friends in the community. The offender is referred to as the core member of the circle, and he could have offended against children or adults. Typically, four to six volunteers join a circle. They have to be prepared to commit a substantial amount of time over one year in the first instance. They need to be responsible, to have their feet on the ground and to be mature about their own sexuality. The project screens volunteers, and if they are not suitable, they are not taken further. Only after that are checks taken up. In the Thames valley project, which I will focus on, the police provide the references. That means that as well as any record of criminal convictions, the scheme also receives any intelligence that the police have on the volunteer.

Volunteers receive 16 hours of training and will have met as a group for at least three weeks before meeting the core member. One session will involve a visit from the sex offender registration officer. The aims of the sessions are: introduction exercises and team building; practical issues; group boundaries, guidelines and individual contact; circle contact; essential information about the core member; discussion of the introduction of the core member; and any fears or concerns. The aim is that the circle will have a robust diversity in age, gender, interests and so on and that it will generally meet the core member bet ore their release. Initially, the circle meets once a week with the core member. In between, at least one circle member will be in touch with the core member each day, with contact ranging from a phone call to going out for breakfast or to a cinema or other social event.

As its name suggests, the circle's aim is to provide support and accountability in stages such as moving from a hostel into other accommodation, finding work or starting to establish a social life. The circle provides support when things go wrong, such as when there are rejections from work or promises of accommodation that do not materialise, and in managing working relations with other inmates of the hostel. Basically, the circle is there for when things go wrong—things that might otherwise dishearten the core member and tip them back into patterns of behaviour that lead them to reoffending. Studies show that although it can take 28 months for an offender to be caught, it can be one month before they reoffend.

The core member has to apply for the circle before release. As a rule, they must be motivated to change and not to reoffend, although one offender in Oxford is an entrenched paedophile who still believes what he did was not wrong, but is motivated to make the circle work because he does not want to go to prison. Clearly, that is a telling motivation for anyone.

Let me quote the words of core members from a study conducted as part of a placement with the Thames valley project by Sarah Bell, a social work student at Oxford Brookes university. One said:

"When I am advises or told something which does not necessarily make me feel comfortable, I do listen because I know that it is honesty in order to benefit me."

Another said:

"Coming out of prisor, was an emotional period for me. If I had not had the Circle, it could have led to re-offending when feeling emotionally down. They have helped me focus in on the way I think so that I do not get into a situation of re-offending."

According to another member:

"Without the circle's support I think I could have re-offended, they offered me support and advice at one of my lowest points and were there to help and support me."

The other side of the project is accountability. The circle challenges the core member and monitors their behaviour. For example, one offender in the Thames valley scheme was taken back into custody as a result of information he gave to his circle. The circle is in a position to monitor things that it is otherwise difficult to monitor in such detail and on such a regular basis. To quote another core member:

"My relapse programme, with the support from volunteers, has real meaning. I feel that I can continue with my main aim of not re-offending."

The circle seeks not to replace probation or public protection services, but to assist them in their work, to protect the public and to help the offender rebuild their life as a productive member of society.

In the Thames valley scheme, there are 10 circles, and 51 people have been through the training. About 50 per cent. of the volunteers ate from faith-based communities, and about 20 per cent. are survivors of sexual abuse. There are no hard and fast rules about whether volunteers should be survivors of sexual abuse or whether that should be raised in the circle. However, people who have suffered abuse a ad who seem to be using the circle as part of their therapy will not be accepted as volunteers.

The benefits of the circle will not necessarily all be in one direction. To quote one British volunteer:

"I suffered from abuse as a child. I was attracted to the project because I hoped that it would help me lay some ghosts … My gut feeling is that working in this circle has substantially reduced the likelihood of our Core Member re-offending. I may be wrong, but I just can't see him doing it again. To me, as a survivor, that is the greatest reward I can imagine—that other little girls are spared. To my complete surprise, I have also come to really like our Core Member. It makes me happy to feel that he, too, will be able to live a better life now. It has helped me to see th; it whatever awful things someone might have done, they still have a human heart beating in their chest."

In Berkshire, there are four circles, three managed by the Thames valley pilot and one managed by the Lucy Faithfull Foundation. I am grateful to the programme manager of the Thames valley project, Chris Wilson, for his assistance in providing me with the information for my speech today. I would also commend to hon. Members the interim report about the project from November 2003. Reading that report inspired me to seek to have this debate.

I will finish by citing two parts of the report. The first is details of what has been learned from the project, and the second is the introduction of the report by Tim Newell, which for me sums up the project. Before doing so, I commend the project to the Minister. I know that he was at a national conference this morning on circles of support and accountability. I hope that this success will spread out around the country.

First, those involved have learned that it is important to consider the mix of volunteers. Five volunteers can be an intimidating number, so there should be flexibility. Attention must be given to team building. Supervision and support is essential, but a balance must be achieved. Volunteers are part of the team and should be included in all decisions.

The introduction to the report states:

"The experience of commitment from courageous volunteers and dedicated staff has demonstrated that the concept of Circles works within our setting of statutory supervision and controls. We are still at an early stage of development and evaluation but the experience has been that working towards emotional health and active citizenship within a group of supporters provides powerful and safe opportunities for growth.

The work achieved so far has major implications for the management of risk in the criminal system. The signs are that serious offenders respond to the opportunity of being held accountable by their fellow citizens. The signs are that there are people willing to volunteer to become involved in this demanding involvement on our behalf. The signs are that there is a wider acceptance that this is the right way to restore dangerous, damaging and damaged people into full community."

I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, East (Jane Griffiths) on securing the debate. I am sure that everyone is grateful to her for her clear explanation of the development of circles of support and accountability. A little later, I shall refer to some of the work undertaken by circles.

How to engage the community in helping offenders to rehabilitate and break the pattern of offending and reoffending is a key question that arouses considerable public interest and debate. That interest and debate are significantly heightened when the offender in question has committed a serious sexual offence.

The most unwelcome and unhelpful public responses have been those thankfully rare occasions when members of a local community have decided to take vigilante action against particular individuals. My hon. Friend referred to one or two such incidents. I welcome the opportunity to respond to her and present some of the positive ways in which the community is increasingly involving itself in this important work. She was entirely right when she said that it is not soft-headedness or misdirected compassion but hard-headed, practical action that will ultimately reduce reoffending rates.

As the Minister responsible for the correctional services, I am keenly aware, as is my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, that one of the first duties of Government is to ensure the effective protection of the public. Since 1997, we have introduced a number of important measures to give our criminal justice agencies the powers and tools they need to address the risks and dangers caused by sexual offending.

The Sexual Offences Act 2003 was the culmination of the most comprehensive review of sexual offence legislation since the mid-1950s. Through measures such as creating a new offence of "grooming", we will put in place increased protection for children and other vulnerable people and make sure that the perpetrators of such offences are dealt with appropriately.

The Criminal Justice Act 2003 provides additional powers to ensure that the most dangerous offenders, including dangerous sex offenders, are not released until it is safe for them to be so. We have established the taskforce for child protection on the internet, and the national high-tech crime unit will also provide a powerful enforcement tool to combat child pornography on the internet.

These measures should not be seen in isolation but as a range of complementary initiatives aimed at improving public protection. However, it is the multi- agency public protection arrangements—the MAPPA, as they are known—which provide the essential framework in which the criminal justice agencies work together to assess and manage the risks posed by sexual and violent offenders.

I reported in an earlier Adjournment debate on sexual offending—a debate I know my hon. Friend attended. The early indications are that the MAPPA are helping to reduce serious violent and sexual crime. For example, in 2002–03 only 2 per cent. of highest risk MAPPA offenders were charged with a further serious sexual or violent offence.

It is important to mention at this stage the recent statutory changes we have introduced to create a new role for lay advisers to the MAPPA. We have successfully piloted this arrangement in eight areas and are now appointing lay advisers in all 42 probation areas.

Lay advisers are not directly involved in the management of offenders, but they can attend case conferences to observe how risk management is carried out and they will be part of each area's MAPPA strategic management board. I would like to share with my hon. Friend the comments made by the chief constable for Dyfed-Powys on the role of lay advisers. He said:

"They represent a community interest in public protection and bring a different perspective from that of the professional interests in the MAPPA. This gives a freshness of view, a disinterested opinion which can, as the pilot arrangements showed, provide a 'reality check'."

The concept of a reality check is important and reflects the balance that we need to strike between the rehabilitative treatment of offending behaviour and the monitoring and management of the risks posed by sex offenders in the community. My hon. Friend was right to point out that there is no contradiction between the roles of statutory agencies and those of community volunteers. Those complementary roles give added protection when people work effectively together.

The Government recognise that long-term protection of the public requires sex offenders to address their offending behaviour. That starts with structured and effective assessment. In the offender assessment system, known as OASys, the Prison Service and the probation service have developed a highly effective tool to assess risk and work out how offending behaviour can be addressed. OASys provides the objective basis on which those services can build effective supervision and intervention programmes to manage risk and make offenders face their unacceptable behaviour. The services are developing a comprehensive range of sex offender treatment programmes to challenge unacceptable behaviour. Programmes are based on carefully evidenced research into what is effective in addressing sexual offending.

The managers of voluntary sector-managed approved premises and other residential facilities have also developed a mature understanding of the challenges of managing sex offenders in a community setting. That allows them to complement and add value to the work of statutory agencies, which reinforces my hon. Friend's point.

The activities of the Prison Service and the probation service to help sex offenders to be rehabilitated through a combination of careful assessment and targeted interventions are making a difference, but treatment in the community must go hand in glove with effective monitoring. The introduction of sex offender registration in 1997 and the strengthening of the notification requirements that we undertook in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 are proving effective in that regard.

It is important that statutory agencies are organised and equipped to meet the challenges posed by sex offenders, but my hon. Friend rightly highlighted the role that the community can play. I assure her that the Government are keenly aware of the wealth of imagination and energy that local communities and voluntary sector organisations can bring to understanding how sexual offending occurs and, even more importantly, how it can be prevented. The correctional services, for which I have direct responsibility, work closely at a number of levels with a wide range of voluntary sector agencies in this sphere. Indeed, when I became the Minister with responsibility for prisons and probation, I was heartened, if not a little surprised, by the level of involvement by voluntary organisations in prisons, the probation service and communities. An impressive array of organisations work in that way.

My hon. Friend spoke eloquently about the role of circles of support and accountability, which is an impressive example of a community-based initiative. She was right to say that I spoke this morning at its first national conference. Fourteen circles are running, including those in her constituency, which she mentioned. A circle of support is precisely as she described: a group of volunteer members of the public who come together, with the help of a central organiser, to provide a network of personal relationships with a sex offender. I was grateful to her for highlighting the emphasis that is placed on appropriate screening, training and support for such volunteers. They are not left to do the job without support; they are given appropriate help.

Through such a network, a circle can provide social and practical support. Circles build on the good work undertaken in sex offender treatment programmes and the MAPPA. As well as supporting offenders, volunteers act as the eyes and ears of local agencies by passing vital information to the multi-agency public protection panel.

I am pleased with the initial feedback that I have received from the earliest circles, which includes a range of evidence on such matters as offenders being supported in a way that enables them to live more independently, by getting a job, for example, or moving to their own accommodation, thereby helping them to overcome personal crises that are, perhaps, inevitable after a long period in prison. They are also helped to develop their own social networks, as my hon. Friend described, which can be difficult.

I believe that the circles' working in partnership with the police and probation service in monitoring the high-risk behaviour of one particular offender, who may have been quite close to my hon. Friend's constituency, led to that offender's recall. That shows that there is effective support and also the right kind of feedback to the statutory agencies, so where there is a real risk, an offender can be removed.

I am particularly impressed by the way in which circles can engage people from across the community. It is interesting to look at the backgrounds of the scheme volunteers. They form a diverse group that includes a retired farmer, a university professor, a journalist, a secretary, a computer software engineer, a member of the clergy, a solicitor, a nurse arid a warehouse worker. That is indeed a rich, varied group.

No politicians.

Indeed, but perhaps in the future, Mr. Olner.

Adjournment debates such as this often come too late, as they are either a reaction to something that has already happened or a demand to address a problem in which either resources or political will are lacking—or both. I do not think that this is one of those occasions. It is a chance for us in Westminster and the Minister in particular to influence a process that has barely begun, in which Government advice could be a significant directive help.

What instigates the debate is that Sefton metropolitan borough council—the Sefton LEA—has announced a primary school rationalisation/closure programme. It is a major exercise. It features the closure within a year of 11 schools and the review of the cases of a further 16. As we stand here, the proposals are out for what is referred to as "informal consultation".

I think that everybody recognises that, particularly when it comes to school closures and rationalisation of provision of any kind by any local authority at any time, tough decisions always have to be made, and in some cases, they should be made. We all understand that councils have to make tough decisions and that good politics is not the same thing as cheap populism. In this case, the LEA expects to encounter a fair number of howls of protest and many choruses of opposition. It has steeled itself to an adverse public reaction.

However, there is a distinct difference between making a tough decision and making the right one. If one is going to make a tough decision, one must make sure that it is the right decision and a fair and rational one that can be publicly defended by a public body. What is sad about the Sefton proposals, which are in a large document that I have in front of me, is that they are a response to a surplus place problem, and the solutions that they advocate for that problem are, I think, taxing—if not severely stressing—relationships between the LEA, schools, communities, parents and the children concerned.

That is a great shame, because Sefton has traditionally had a good relationship with its schools. Throughout the period for which the previous Government were in office, there was never a school that succeeded in opting out of local authority or that seriously wanted to do so. Funds were maintained in Sefton in good years and in bad, often to the cost of other services. Sefton was one of the first LEAs to give schools control over their own budget, long before the Government mandated it to do so.

Sefton had that sort of record to fall back on, but the proposals have blemished it to some extent. As a result of that good and positive relationship, attainment is high, Sefton has a fair number of beacon schools, its standard assessment test results are good in primary schools and its schools are generally well resourced both in terms of equipment and staff. The Minister will accept that that has something to do with the efforts of the Government to ensure that funding goes in that direction. I give credit to the Government for that, and I hope that the work load agreement will do nothing to impair it. Sefton schools, particularly primary schools, seem to be relatively well resourced by historic standards.

MPs in Sefton have had a similarly constructive relationship with the local authority. At least two of them had a very close relationship with it, having at one time been members of it. The dissolution of those satisfactory relationships is obviously based on the problem of surplus places and how it can be tackled. To be fair, that has been emphasised repeatedly to the authority by Ofsted, the Audit Commission and the district auditor in management letters. The Government have also not been slow to alert Sefton to the fact that there is a problem. At one time, the removal of surplus places was intimately linked to the Sefton capital programme, so Sefton could not help but be mindful of it.

Sefton does have problem. It is estimated that it has about 3,762 surplus places in the primary sector alone, although total primary school places number up to 23,000. There is no expectation that the problem will vanish overnight. The birth rate and census figures do not suggest that things will change for the better. With the phenomenon of young people being burdened with debt and unable to buy houses, I suspect that the age of child rearing will rise and that the patter of tiny feet will not be heard with greater frequency throughout Sefton. Additionally, the deserved expansion of some popular schools has aggravated Sefton's initial problem.

The problem of underused surplus places is further complicated by a separate problem that the Minister will understand and wish to respond to. He and I discussed the Sefton formula when considering the 4 per cent. guarantee on the increase for pupil places that the Government have recently instigated. During the debate on the statutory instrument, I said that, worthy though the initiative is, it will have a complicating effect on the Sefton formula.

The Sefton formula compensates schools in Sefton as the rolls fall and distributes money in a particular way. There are many complications, such as the square metreage rule and so on, which I need not go into now, but the formula endeavours to compensate schools for a decline in rolls. The Government's recent statutory instrument, which contains the good news that all schools will receive 4 per cent. more, also contains provision to do the same thing. That has resulted in one Sefton school that is on the closure list receiving £4,218 per pupil, and another primary school, which is similar in structure but not in terms of its pupils, receiving £1,998 per pupil.

There have been genuine difficulties and unhappiness in Sefton with the formula, which has been an added pressure on the problem of surplus places, although it is a separate problem and should not be wilfully or inadvertently confused and confounded. I am sorry to say that, in the local authority's document, the two problems are confounded to some extent. There is wholesale agreement however, that something must be done and wide acceptance throughout the Sefton education community that the problem must be addressed sensitively but effectively.

The problem is that, looking at the first rush of proposals, what Sefton is choosing to do is partly perverse. I would fault many things in the document. One page features the word "logic" in bold letters, presumably with the expectation that we might find some logic there, but there is not a great deal of fair argument. I could ignore the fact that Sefton's decision makers have been told, ludicrously, that there are savings in the package of £5.7 million. That is not the case, because £5.7 million can be saved only if schools are obliterated, the children go somewhere else and Sefton does not accept the responsibility for educating them. I could ignore the fact that the document presented by Sefton misrepresents the cost of running schools. Figures are quoted for the average cost per pupil—I assume that they are quoted accurately—but it is not explained that some pupils have a higher weighting because of deprivation, because they have free school meals, because they are infants and so on. When comparing school with school, the decision makers did not get the full information.

I shall also ignore that fact that, to my certain knowledge, some of the people who composed the document do not appear to have taken the elementary precaution of visiting all the schools that they intend to close, and consequently have produced some suggestions that closer inspection might have identified as physically unrealisable. I shall ignore the fact that it appears to me that the early years partnership, which is an important consultee in this affair was left entirely out of the loop during the composition of the proposals. Furthermore, I shall ignore the fact that in the evidence presented to decision makers, there is an astonishing ignorance about what facilities arc available in which school. In some cases, the document fails to identify the important facilities in schools nominated for closure.

If I ignore all those things, I can turn to what might be called the logic in the Sefton plan. It has a kind of central thread as to why some schools arc chosen for closure rather than others. The thread appears to be that the authority believes that it could manage without the schools on the closure list. That is what all the schools have in common. Some are undoubtedly failing and some are the walking wounded of the primary school world. The performance of some is acknowledged to be excellent, and some are in new buildings and are temporarily under-subscribed. Most strangely of all—this is what exercises me most and exercises many parents to an even greater extent—some are excellent schools that are performing well and are, by any standards, full.

The common strand uniting all the schools is that they are relatively small, and it is self-evident that it is easier to close a popular, successful, small, full school and to accommodate the pupils in a less fall large school than vice versa. That is the logic, if I can put it like that, that drives and seems to influence the Sefton proposals most.

The Minister does not need me to point out that the tack that is being taken, or the thrust of the plan, has nothing to do with raising standards, rewarding success, the wider community agendas that schools are supposed to embrace or school transport issues. To any reasonable parent, that appears transparently unfair.

I should like to cite two real cases, so that I am not talking pure theory. St. Teresa's infant school is a one-form entry school with a nursery attached. Ofsted regards it as in the top 5 per cent. The governors are supportive, the head teacher is excellent and the staff are committed. Pupils, parents and teachers are incensed at any suggestion that their school, full to the legal maximum as it is, should be on a closure list.

I would like to read out a comment from the report of the last inspection of the school, carried out by Her Majesty's inspectorate of schools. It is addressed to the head teacher, and it says:

"You must be very proud not only of your staff and pupils, but also members of your governing body and the parents and parishioners who give of their time cheerfully and unstintingly. Under your leadership and direction, you have ensured that all have a part to play in the school's splendid achievement."

Mr. Tobin, the inspector, goes on to say:

"(All the more puzzling, therefore, that the school's success has not been recognised in terms of Beacon status!)"

According to pupil performance indicators, the school is in the top 5 per cent. of the national aggregate point score for reading and writing and in the top 10 per cent. of the national aggregate score for maths. What touched me most about the school were not those statistics, but a letter from a parent whose son was afflicted with autism, who described what their child personally got out of a school that performs so well.

That is not an isolated case. I could cite the case of Kings Meadow in Ainsdale, which is in the heart of an ex-council estate and has about two surplus places. The bizarre thing about proposing to close Kings Meadow is that, although at one time it was a school in trouble, it now subscribes to more or less all the positive forward-looking agendas that the Government support. The school is located in a pocket of deprivation where parents will have difficulty in getting their children to another school. It is very much part and parcel of the community, it has a nursery where numbers are increasing and it has now been given New Opportunities funding for wrap-around care on a three-year basis. It is well supported by the Sefton early years partnership and it has had £110,000 invested in it to provide better child care provision. It also provides all the necessary and desirable services that a school can offer to an area of relative deprivation.

It is perverse for that school to be closed. According to Sefton's plan, mums—many of whom do not have a car—will be forced to make a daily journey across a major road and over a railway line, and they will be targeted to go to a school, Shoreside, which does not have the capacity to take them.

Order. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman wants the Minister to give a responsible reply, so I remind him that we only have until 4.30 pm.

I am aware of that, and I am three quarters of the way through what I have to say.

I would think that that is very discourteous to the Minister, quite frankly, if the hon. Gentleman wants him to respond adequately.

I will bring my remarks to a close, but there are certain key things that I need to say.

Rationalisation in Sefton is always going to be hard. The situation is complicated by geography and by the fact that Sefton has a large denominational sector. However, the decisions presented and argued for by the local authority are explicable only as prejudice against smaller schools. As it stands, the agenda does not give sufficient weight to issues of choice and standards. I recognise that the diocese and the archdiocese will have an input when the final decision is made by the school organisation committee and possibly the adjudicator. However, key factors in the process will be the ministerial guidance, which all these bodies must attend to, and the interpretation of that guidance.

I conclude by asking the Minister to test how far what is currently outlined is in the spirit of that guidance. It seems to me that it is biased against small schools, rewards successful schools with closure and does not give primacy to raising standards. Is that a rational interpretation of where the Government guidelines should take us? I argue that it is not. I ask the Minister to look into the matter, and I would welcome it if he could find time to visit Sefton and some of the schools there to explore the plan further. If he cannot do that—I understand that he has to keep to many pressing engagements—could he meet a delegation of head teachers?

At the end of the day, this issue is about standards. I understand from some recent comments of the Prime Minister that standards are in the forefront of his mind, but surplus places may be a little less so.

It is nice to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr. Diner, and I look forward to responding to the points made by the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh). He deserves the congratulations of the watching hundreds or even thousands—on television, if not in the Room itself—on securing a debate about this important issue. Early in his remarks, he said that he wants to engage in good politics rather than cheap populism. In my experience, good policy makes good politics, and I hope we can find some common ground on that basis.

The hon. Gentleman raises an important issue involving how to deliver a primary school strategy designed to raise standards, not just in literacy and numeracy, but across the curriculum. I am sure that he would agree with me that an enriched curriculum is an important part of primary school experience.

I want to set out some ground rules for the decisions that local government has to take on school places and surplus places. First, there may be some confusion among those watching or reading this debate about whether there is a rule relating to surplus places.

I was explaining that, contrary to popular opinion or allegation, there is a no surplus places rule. The responsibility for managing the supply of school places rests with the local education authority. I know that the hon. Gentleman and his party will join us in standing up for the constitutional role of local government in making such decisions. At local level, people are best placed to ensure that schools meet the needs of parents. In managing the supply of places, LEAs must first elsure that schools provide good quality education and serve the needs of the local community.

The hon. Gentleman is concerned about the survival of small schools. I am sure he agrees that it is important that policies are designed to raise standards in all schools, irrespective of size, because the quality of education matters most to parents. I have no hesitation in saying that small schools have an important place in our education system. One of the strengths of English education is its roots in the community.

However, I would point out something rather interesting to the hon. Gentleman: there are, I think, 89 primary schools in Sefton. Obviously, I would not have thought that they are all in his constituency. Only one has fewer than 100 pupils and 27 have fewer than 200. That is striking for a couple of reasons. First, Sefton does not have too many of the very small schools of fewer than 75, 50 or 40 pupils that are a significant issue in many parts of the country. Secondly, I guess that it has an above average number of schools above the national average size, which is about 200.

That shows that it is right that local people are able to take account of local diversity in reaching their decisions. I understand that Sefton is consulting on the proposed reorganisation programme about which the hon. Gentleman spoke. It is projecting a 10 per cent. fall in the demand for school places between 2003 and 2006. That projection is against a background of—I think I am right in saying—5,000 children being lost to the system over the past 10 years and a 13 per cent. surplus in primary school places in 2003.

It is important that I set out what the framework is for local government to make its decisions. There are five stages to the process: consultation; publication of a proposal; the six-week representation period; the decision making; and, finally, the implementation. Sefton LEA is very much at the first stage of the process and is consulting widely on it with the Churches and other bodies.

I think that the hon. Gentleman will know that Ministers no longer make decisions on closing schools. Given my generous nature, he might bemoan that loss of central power. The decisions are devolved to local level—to school organisation committees, whose members represent all aspects of the local community. He mentioned in passing that if there is no agreement, the independent adjudicator takes a decision. They would take into account the effect on educational standards of the decision, the availability of alternative provision and travel Implications, as well as the view of local parents. I hope that gives him some idea of the criteria we set.

I do not wish to underestimate the challenge that falling school rolls present to local authorities. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman tried to hide those difficulties in the least bit. There were 500,000 surplus places in primary schools in England last year, which is almost 12 per cent. of capacity. On the basis of the current forecasts, we estimate that primary schools will lose about 50,000 youngsters a year for the next couple of years. That adds up to a 4 per cent. fall by 2007. I am sure he agrees that 12 per cent. surplus places represents a significant number of local decisions on the allocation of resources.

That has implications for how much can be spent in the rest of the system. When examining the small schools issue it is important to look at funding, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. All schools receive funding in the form of a delegated budget share via a locally agreed formula set by the LEA in consultation with schools. The budget share is primarily based on pupil numbers along with other factors, including a recognition not just of school need, but of pupil need. Small schools cannot rely solely on the number of pupils on roll, or, in technical jargon, the age-weighted pupil units, to deliver sufficient resources for schools to function satisfactorily.

To deal with the diseconomy of scale in small schools, LEAs invariably have other factors built into their formulae to protect smaller schools. It is an open question how one defines a small school, which in some county areas would be fewer than 50 pupils, rather than the Government's definition of fewer than 100, or fewer than 200 nationwide. In most cases, a small school would be a primary school in a rural setting, but there are some in urban areas, too.

It is important to mention the per-pupil funding guarantee that the hon. Gentleman referred to. In 2004–05, a minimum increase is 4 per cent. per pupil, where pupil numbers are not changing. However, there are special arrangements for very small schools with 75 or fewer pupils in terms of the guarantee. We are soon to publish our proposals for 2005–06, the second year of the stability pact that we have agreed with local government. Those announcements learn from the lessons of this year, which has been more successful for the operation of the school funding system than 2003– 04. The decisions will have to take account of the work force reform to which the hon. Gentleman referred, which has an impact on primary schools.

Falling school rolls do not automatically need to lead to closing schools. The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that officials from the Department are working with LEAs and the Audit Commission to develop a range of approaches that LEAs can use in addressing surplus school places. Although the number of surplus places is increasing with the decline in primary school pupil numbers, the provision being offered to the under-fives as well as to school children out of school hours is rising. Small schools can become extended schools and use their spare capacity for other purposes. One of the great strengths of small schools is their sense of community, on which they can capitalise, and extended schools can help.

Services delivered from school sites are accessible to the community. They can offer a wide range of services such as child care, parenting and family learning classes, and health and social care opportunities, and can be of great benefit to the wider community. Children can see specialists, parents can engage with the education system, adults can access important training opportunities and the whole community can benefit from a wide range of activities from sports to the arts. We will be supporting LEAs in developing options to utilise the schooling estate in a way that promotes standards and increases the range of services.

Small schools can make resources go further by collaborating or, ultimately, forming a federation, with other schools. Federations can deliver the curriculum through collaborative approaches that enable the sharing of facilities, staff and expertise. For example, shared heads, teachers, administrative staff and information and communications technology coordinators are an increasing part of the education scene.

I do not want to understate the importance of the issues raised by the hon. Gentleman on behalf of his constituents—

In the Government's guidance, in respect of rural schools there is a presumption against closure. It may not be stated in the document, but is there a presumption in the Department against the closure of schools that are full and successful?

As I said, our guidance, which relates to local education authorities and to the role of the adjudicator, is to take educational standards seriously and to recognise also that other factors come into play. The hon. Gentleman is right: the technical position is that there is a presumption against the closure of rural schools, for obvious reasons, which he will recognise as there are rural areas in his constituency and in his borough. We suggest that school standards issues are taken into account, but the presumption is as he described.

I am sure the debate will carry on. Many hon. Members have similar issues to raise and I look forward to engaging with them as the discussion proceeds.