I am pleased to have secured this debate as it offers the opportunity to discuss the role of faith schools in our society. In particular, it gives me the opportunity to highlight some of the current challenges facing faith schools with regard to education policy. It allows me to respond to some of the unfounded criticisms made by Members of this House, Select Committees and the wider media when addressing the role of faith schools in society.

I speak in today's debate from my own personal experience as a Christian, an alumnus of a faith school, a former teacher, a school governor in my constituency and a Member of Parliament for 38 years who has seen and admired the continuing contribution made by faith schools over those years. Although most of my speech will be based on my experience of Catholic schools, the principles that I am outlining appertain to other denominations, Christian and non-Christian. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to their sterling work.

To start, I want to express my opposition to calls to water down or undermine the role of faith schools, not only in improving education standards but in the wider community. That is not to say that one particular type of education is beyond criticism. There is always scope to perfect existing services.

There are those in our midst who want to abolish faith schools. They have tried many times over recent decades, and they will use every modern fad to rehearse the same old tired and lame arguments. They are seeking not the end of prejudice or discrimination but their reintroduction. They want to impose their secular beliefs. They want choice removed from the equation. They want to undermine one of the longest-established traditions in our education system and a basic human right: that children should be educated in accordance with their parents' wishes, as far as is compatible with the effective use of resources.

Such an aim was outlined in section 76 of the Education Act 1944 and repeated in section 9 of the Education Act 1996. Our aim as legislators must not be to replace the role of the parent within the state; it must be to help parents to do their best to raise their children. Indeed, the historic role of the Churches was in pioneering popular education, long before the state intervened. Our role as legislators is to build a pluralist, not a secularist society. Secularism is the French way, not our way.

Secularism overrides individual rights, freedom of expression and free will in favour of uniformity. It dictates what people can wear and where they can wear it. That may be the French way. To do things differently, and to deny children the right to a religious schooling because of their faith, would not he our way. It would be a retreat from long-held principles and would raise questions about our human rights obligations, which commit us to ensure that

"No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions."

That is article 2 of the first protocol of the European convention on human rights.

Referring to education provisions, the UN declaration of the rights of the child states:

"The best interest of the child shall be the guiding principle of those responsible for his education and guidance; that responsibility lies in the first place with his parents."

Those instruments outline the concept that parents are first and foremost educators of their children, and that the state, while properly setting educational standards and ensuring the proper use of public funds, should be a facilitator to ensure that all children, as far as is practical, can be educated in line with their parents' religious and philosophical convictions. We must continue to maintain that right.

There have been calls from Members of the House and others for faith schools to be forced to admit a quota of those of a different faith or of no faith. That would be an unwelcome and unnecessary intervention on the part of the state and I caution against it. First, it would mean excluding children from their own faith schools, denying parental choice. Imposing a fixed quota would have serious practical implications. In some places the demand for places in faith schools outstrips supply, and imposing a quota would have huge implications. To meet demand, schools would have to increase provision for pupils who have been displaced. Catholic dioceses and, I suspect, others would that find very difficult and expensive.

Secondly, there would be a knock-on effect on community schools, with a reduction in demand for places in those institutions. Introducing a quota is likely to be unpopular with providers of faith schools as well as with those responsible for community education. Many faith schools already have considerable numbers of students from other faiths. In 2003, on average, one in five pupils in Catholic secondary schools were not Catholic.

Thirdly, a more effective approach would be to let local faith schools work in partnership with the local community and to respond to local circumstances rather than setting targets in Whitehall that ignore local needs and situations. To support that view, it is worth mentioning the decision taken by the Leeds diocese, which, after local consultation in Bradford, implemented a new strategy for Catholic schools. Instead of closing one school and leaving two schools fully subscribed with Catholics, the decision was taken to keep all three schools open, with each school taking a percentage of non-Catholic, usually Muslim, children. At the same time, there was a drive to develop an ethos to enable children of other faiths to feel at home. Prayer rooms were made available and provision was made to meet the need of Muslim girls for appropriate school uniforms. The idea of twinning Catholic schools with other schools with a significant Muslim intake was also proposed as part of this strategy. That, to put it simply, is the practical way of doing things; it is practical common sense applied at the local level. Adopting such a voluntary approach is far more effective than imposing a national quota.

Some of my colleagues have argued that one of the main reasons for the academic success of faith schools is their strict selection procedures. That is quite wrong. They do have high academic and social standards, but the sole criterion that guarantees admission to the school of which I am a governor is a baptismal certificate. Figures for one of the largest faith school providers in the United Kingdom, the Catholic Church, contradict the popular myth. First, the figures for the ethnic and cultural mix of pupils who attend Catholic schools reflect our diverse society far more than do those for the non-faith sector. For example, 70 per cent. of pupils in Catholic schools are, on average, white and British—a figure that jumps to 81 per cent. for all other schools.

Madeleine Bunting's recent article in The Guardian highlighted the rich diversity in Catholic schools in Hackney. She had observed seven-year-olds taking part in a school assembly on friendship. She said that there were

"40 different nationalities, over 20 different languages—and one faith. Nigeria, the Philippines, Colombia, Eritrea, Vietnam, Portugal, Italy, Ireland: what goes on in this Catholic primary school is an extraordinary process of integration that makes the public debate about the divisiveness of faith schools appear absurd."

This is evidence of the diverse cultural and ethnic nature of faith schools, which bring together children and parents of different backgrounds, social classes and nationalities who are committed to their children's education and to the needs of the local and wider community. We should do all we can to encourage such an approach; we should not attack or undermine it.

Faith schools have become renowned for their educational achievement and have gained a reputation for high standards and educational attainment—a view that is supported by the evidence. In general, attainment in Catholic schools is higher than that in other sectors. An analysis of GCSE results achieved by both 11 to 18-year-olds and 11 to 16-year-olds between 1996 and 2001 found that, for nearly all levels of disadvantage based on free school meal eligibility, a higher percentage of pupils in Catholic schools than in other schools achieved the required standard each year, despite the fact that many families live in poverty. One has only to consider initiatives such as the programmes for African-Caribbean boys in Gunnersbury school in west London, or the work done by the Zacchaeus centre in Birmingham, to see the commitment of Catholic schools to improving the attainment level of underachieving groups. We should be trying to expand and support that work, not attack it. What happens in Catholic schools happens in the schools of other faiths. Given those achievements and that community involvement, the Government should try to support faith schools and ensure that they are not disadvantaged when they participate in the Government's education agenda.

I am concerned about home-school transport provision and how that affects faith schools. It is worrying to see an increasing number of local education authorities trying to reduce costs by removing school transport provision for children attending such schools. Proposals to end transport provision for such children are being discussed by East Riding of Yorkshire council, which is to reach a decision tomorrow. The arguments for that are based on subjective judgments and highly questionable notions of social gain, and they probably border on some sort of underlying hostility to faith schools, if not on sectarianism.

If agreed, the changes will have a profound impact on many families who choose to send their children to faith schools, particularly those on low incomes. The implications of the proposals go beyond East Riding and into my constituency in Hull, where many pupils from East Riding attend schools. The proposals would affect the 136 secondary school pupils from East Riding who attend St. Mary's college, of which I am a governor and which is in my constituency, and would have a profound impact on admissions to the school.

It is clear that the draft School Transport Bill, currently being considered, might discriminate against parents who wish to send their children to a faith school, although that may not be the Government's intention. That would be unacceptable and could be a Trojan horse for attacking the very principles and existence of faith schools.

It is worth remembering that the physical location of many Catholic schools has already been agreed with the local education authority, sometimes a number of them, and encouraged by former Governments—indeed, the sites have almost been designated by Governments. Then, transport costs and subsidies were among the factors considered and the fact that there were subsidies meant that the Churches could accept the sites. Catchment areas for faith schools, therefore, are often considerably larger than the equivalent areas for community schools. Catholic schools located in rural areas have been specifically sited, with Government and LEA encouragement, so as to have the widest possible catchment areas; the introduction of charging for school transport would bear down more heavily on the children who go to such schools and their parents, and would thus be discriminatory.

Essex county council is introducing a charge for home-school transport of £100 per term at St. Benedict's secondary school in Colchester, and applications for that school's 2004–05 intake have reduced by approximately 30 per cent. The school is located to serve the widest possible rural area.

It is clear from such evidence that school transport charging has an impact on the possible future development and continued existence of some faith schools. It is possible that misguided notions of education policy are guiding the introduction of the charges as a way of getting faith schools closed. The Government need to address the problem urgently. Pupils of faith schools cannot be discriminated against in this way. If necessary, central Government must intervene to stop the local education authorities abusing their powers vis-á-vis faith schools. Faith schools cannot be sacrificed merely to cut costs.

Urban Catholic schools provide education to a wide diversity of ethnic groups and children with economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Although the proposals in the draft School Transport Bill ensure financial assistance for children in receipt of free school meals, many families just above that threshold will incur a significant financial cost. Large families, for example, could be severely affected, and the ability of families to access their preferred education could be jeopardised.

I welcome the assurance given me in a written parliamentary answer from my right hon. Friend the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education, in which he stated that

"It is important that parents can choose a school in accordance with their religious convictions and in approving schemes, we will not expect LEAs to disturb well established arrangements for denominational transport, particularly where they are associated with local agreements or understandings about the siting of denominational schools."—[Official Report, 20 April 2004; Vol. 420, c. 472W.]

However, I would be obliged if the Minister could confirm that that will be made clear in the Bill and that the Government will stop any proposal, such as those of Essex and East Riding, to introduce discriminatory school fees. The introduction of charging and the draft School Transport Bill run the risk of forcing parents to make a choice in respect of their children's education on the basis not of their philosophical and religious beliefs but of their financial means. Such financial coercion will hurt those who can most benefit from faith schools: the poor. I would be greatly saddened if that happened under a Labour Government, particularly given the proud record of previous Labour Governments, and indeed this Government, and the fact that the proportion of capital costs that faith schools are required to provide was reduced to 20 per cent. in 1967 under Wilson, to 15 per cent. in 1975, again under Wilson, and to 10 per cent. in 2002 under Blair.

The aim of the welcome "Building schools for the future" programme is to ensure that pupils are taught in well designed schools that motivate teaching and learning and provide the education that is expected in the 21st century. That is something from which faith schools would want to benefit—as indeed does my constituency in Hull, for which I put in a special plea for the next round of funding.

Although the fund is widely welcomed, there are specific implications for faith schools. As my hon. Friend the Minister is aware, the diocese is required to make a 10 per cent. contribution to capital investment in building costs and major school repairs. The Catholic and other sectors are committed to sustaining that, but there are clearly huge financial implications for all dioceses and other faiths if their secondary schools are to benefit from the "Building schools for the future" programme over the next 10 to 15 years. Finding the 10 per cent. contribution—estimated at about £250 million for Catholic schools alone—will be difficult for many dioceses. The funding of such programmes is complex and, just like LEAs, the Church cannot transfer funds between dioceses.

There is a danger that a two-tier system could emerge from "Building schools for the future", with Catholic and other faith schools being excluded owing to financial constraints and thus not benefiting from this welcome programme. I understand that there are further difficulties for Church and other faith schools with private finance initiatives—such schools are charities, and that creates some problems for the Treasury. Officials at the Department for Education and Skills have been in communication with the Catholic Education Service and other interested groups on that issue. I urge the Minister to do everything possible to find a way of overcoming that obstacle to ensure that all secondary schools can benefit from the programme.

The Children Bill offers the biggest reforms of children's services in a generation. That is an area in which faith schools can make a valuable contribution to realising the Government's vision for change. However, some elements of the reforms may not be acceptable to governors of a Catholic school. For example, when looking at the proposals for extended schools, Catholic schools are unlikely to accept on-site pregnancy advisory services as part of their extended school, although many extended school activities are and will continue to be important to Catholic schools.

We have only to look at the support that Catholic schools give to parents at present—for example, offering parenting classes—to see that they are already providing things provided by extended schools. Parenting services are already provided by Notre Dame, Southwark and St. George's secondary, Maida Vale. Those parenting classes are not limited to the Catholic community but are advertised locally in libraries and health clinics for the wider local community.

It is better for extended schools to be based on the needs of their local communities. I know that Catholic schools want to participate in providing extended schools and wider opportunities where possible, but they should not be expected to supply services or offer advice or counselling contrary to their core values.

I shall now address the findings in several recent reports that single out faith schools as one of the main causes of segregation, conflict and riots in local communities. That was one of the conclusions of the Cantle report, and was more recently echoed in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister Committee report on social cohesion. Findings that are based on ignorance and prejudice, ignore statistics and play to the somewhat prejudiced London sectarian gallery should be treated with caution. Compared with the state sector, Catholic schools have greater social cohesion in terms of class, race and ethnicity, and one in five of the students in Catholic schools come from other faith groups or has no faith. Rather than criticising, some commentators might do better to figure out how some of the non-faith sector could adopt the model of success found in many faith schools.

Although it would be wrong to state that religion is never the cause of conflict, there is no evidence to suggest that faith schools are a major cause of social unrest in this country, or indeed in Northern Ireland. Those who believe that such schools are a cause of social unrest often give the example of Northern Ireland, but they clearly misunderstand and oversimplify the causes of its problems. Are they seriously suggesting that integrated education would have prevented the riots, stand-offs and killings? It is perhaps easy for a mainland British audience to blame religion, but those who look more carefully will see that the issue has far more to do with politics, human rights and national and community identity. We in this country cannot get ourselves off the hook that easily.

Rather than blaming faith schools for Britain's modern urban ills, we should look at the high levels of poverty, unemployment, poor housing and discrimination, as well as the lack of opportunity, in many of our areas. Those problems are common throughout this island and Northern Ireland.

The hon. Gentleman may be interested to know that when the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister Committee went to Oldham to look at the schools, it found that pupils in some community schools were almost entirely white and English, while those at other schools were entirely Bangladeshi or from the wider Asian community. The disjunction between those schools had little to do with religion, and a lot to do with feelings in those communities.

Yes, I understand that.

Faith schools are not the problem; they are part of the solution. One of the main causes of social segregation is ignorance of difference and fear of the unknown—perhaps that is the reason for the situation that the hon. Gentleman described. The guidance given to Catholic schools in the document "Catholic Schools and Other Faiths" clearly spells out the role that they can play, stating that they

"should be ready to share resources with other schools and with other faith communities—especially if the Catholic school is situated in an area of deprivation and racial tension."

That attitude is shared by other faith schools, and I gave the example of what is happening in Bradford.

Inter-faith relations have progressed over the past few years. Now is the time to step up the inter-faith dialogue, and faith schools have an important role to play in it. We should be working to give Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs and others the opportunity to establish faith-based schools where there is demand. Abolishing, watering down or undermining faith schools will only push religion to the periphery of society, increasing ignorance, prejudice and bigotry. We must reject pressures to do so.

I would like to put on record my appreciation of the Catholic Education Service, which often works professionally with representatives of other faiths and effectively raises issues and concerns relevant to faith communities. The continuation of faith schools is important not only to ensure parental choice and education standards but to overcome the challenge of prejudice and intolerance. In that respect, the CES is making a significant contribution to the debate.

When he was Secretary of State for Education and Employment, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said that he wanted to "bottle" the ethos of faith schools, and I hope that he intended to pour it over the whole of society. I also hope that the Minister shares that view.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) on obtaining this important debate at just the right time. I intend to make a reasonably short contribution. Many of my remarks will be appropriate to the Catholic sector, although they apply to all the different faiths.

I should declare that my wife was head of religious education at a Catholic secondary school in Rochdale for 15 years. My daughter has taught in a Catholic primary school in Nottingham and is now an educational psychologist. I have a son who was doing teacher training in a large Catholic secondary school in London, but he has changed his mind and is setting off on another career.

I welcome this opportunity to discuss the role of denominational schools and the challenges that they face. I have recently received letters from head teachers in my constituency who are worried about the damaging effect that the proposals for faith schools may have. My hon. Friend listed those issues so I do not intend to go into them in detail.

I live in an area where there are immigrants from Pakistan, India, Ireland, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Italy, Latvia and Croatia—and I must mention Scotland, because I am one of those immigrants. I understand the value that the Scottish bishops place on the Catholic education system in Scotland, where Catholicism is a minority faith. Minority faiths across the world have the same problem.

Recently there has also been an influx of people from various African countries to my area. They are beginning to appear in my constituency. We also have many travellers who stay for a few months and move on—but they use the Church schools, and the Catholic system in particular. The local central Catholic primary school is in the middle of the borough of Rochdale. The oldest Catholic church in the town is next to the railway station. It was built to serve the needs of the wave of Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine, and it is adjoined by the school.

Last year I was invited to a nativity play. It was a wonderful event, performed by children from all the countries that I have listed. The story of Jesus's birth was enacted with carols and music from different countries, sung beautifully by those children. Their parents were there and were really proud of what they were listening to. What I am describing is a multicultural, multi-faith society, where people of different faiths and cultures can exist peacefully and happily together. That is not unusual nowadays. In most Catholic schools, as my hon. Friend mentioned, about 20 per cent. of the pupils are non-Catholic.

Historically, the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 gave the Catholic Church a new role in England. At the same time, because of Irish immigration caused by economic conditions, there was a huge increase in the number of Catholics in the country. When the hierarchy was restored in 1850, Catholic schools were given the same rights and financial help as other Christian schools, although much less than the board school grants that were then available. It was under the leadership of Cardinal Wiseman, who was appointed the first Archbishop of Westminster, that the bishops decided that rather than building more churches they would build more schools. They saw that as the vehicle for strengthening and maintaining the faith of the population.

From the time of the Education Act 1870, which introduced universal elementary education, there were, thanks to the great financial sacrifices of the mainly poorly paid working-class Catholics, about 100,000 children in Catholic schools. The right that Catholics had struggled for, to bring up their children according to their religious beliefs, was conferred by the Catholic emancipation Act, but the financial cost was enormous.

By the time compulsory schooling for children up to 10 was introduced, Catholics had paid more than £4 million in donations and collections and through private means. By 1900 there were 1,054 Catholic schools. The Education Act 1902—the Balfour Act—abolished school boards. Local authorities were then allowed to give Church schools grants from the rates. In 1905 the Catholic Education Council was set up. It showed great firmness of purpose and the schools continued to expand. The Education Act 1944—the Butler Act—brought about a dual system giving grants to Church schools, with shared administration.

The original schools survived thanks to the support of the parents, the religious orders that provided teachers and helped to found many schools, and the commitment of the hierarchy. As a result of that determination to overcome prejudice and discrimination there is a strong and well respected Catholic education system in England and Wales and an educated Catholic laity.

Why would people who had not two halfpennies to rub together struggle to finance a system of education to run alongside a free system? Should the underlying principles that have dominated the maintenance of Catholic education remain unchanged despite the problems and influences of society, or should they be modified to suit changes in society?

Catholic schools were set up first and foremost to pass on the Christian faith. There should be no apologies for, no fear of and no embarrassment about that. The Catholic school is sure of its stance on faith and morals; that is what makes the faith school distinctive. The basis of the Catholic school is the revelation of God through Jesus, according to the tradition and teaching of the Catholic Church.

The ideal is a synthesis of faith and life, in which the tenets of faith have relevance to the problems of living in the modern world. I have no problem with parents wishing to educate their children in schools of another denomination if it supports and helps them in their task of bringing up the children in their own faith. I fully support that. It is obvious that if parents are interested in their children's education, the children will do well. The Catholic bishops of today are encouraging the sharing of resources with other schools and faith communities. I see that in my own community.

Perhaps the way forward is for all schools to focus on their raison d'être. Perhaps the values that parents want taught to their children should be the starting point for the debate on education, so that all those involved share the values that permeate the school's entire curriculum. Faith schools have proven their worth and gained a reputation for good discipline and high educational standards. We can see that in the number of parents who want to send their children to such schools. The schools have not remained static but have taken up the challenge of meeting the needs of our modern, secular, multicultural and polycentric world.

As my hon. Friend said, various arguments have been advanced suggesting that the segregation of children according to faith leads to conflict and riots. He mentioned Ted Cantle's report on the riots in Oldham three years ago, which suggests that that was a main cause of conflict, when in fact the segregation was in nothing more than housing. I could identify a state school in a borough of Rochdale where Pakistani and Kashmiri people live, and nearly 95 per cent. of its pupils are of ethnic origin because that is where those people live. Ted Cantle's suggestion was totally off the mark. He also said that segregated schools in Northern Ireland have been blamed for the bigotry and conflict, yet segregated schools in England have not provoked that problem.

It is too simplistic to put the blame on schools when so many causes of conflict can be seen in both of the examples that I cited. Ted Cantle said that poverty, racism, under-development and housing also contribute to the problem. For instance, children in Yugoslavia were taught in integrated secular schools but that did not prevent conflict between communities. How can the restriction of parental choice in education guarantee peace and harmony?

Parents have the right to choose a faith-based education for their children. As we can see from the difficulties in establishing faith schools, that right was hard won. It would be a brave Government who attempted to change the system without agreement and take away those hard-fought-for rights. It would be a brave Government who took on the huge pressure group that supports faith schools. I applaud my hon. Friend for raising the issue this morning.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) on raising this important matter at such a pertinent time. I agree with almost everything he said. We often hear that we live in an age of choice. Choice is very much the word of the moment. Governments and political parties would be ill advised to take away parents' right to send their children to the school of their choice, based on their faith or religion.

There is no doubt that Church schools, be they Catholic, Anglican or otherwise, are extremely popular with parents. The Anglican Church has far fewer secondary schools but an enormous number of primary schools, particularly in rural areas. There is often a great desire on the part of parents who live in towns to send their children to Church of England schools in villages. The same applies to schools of the Catholic faith.

The idea that there needs to be a quota for a Church or faith school is not only unwise but goes completely against the principle on which such schools are based. By their nature, they are comprehensive schools, within the terms of their religion. Taking away the baptismal certificate and replacing it with another test for entry would favour the children of the better-off and the better educated. Church schools would no longer be all-embracing community schools but would become increasingly selective, and the selection would not be based on anything other than heredity or wealth. Therefore, far from making society more equal and open, the quota would work in entirely the opposite direction.

One of the reasons for the importance of faith or Church schools is that they are a counterbalance to the prevailing materialism of our time. The Government in their wisdom have rightly concentrated on encouraging secondary schools to specialise in a particular area, whether it be mathematics or the arts. The Government seek to put an ethos into schools, so that there is a raison d'être for a school. That philosophy already exists in the Church school system. There is a particular reason for going to a certain school—because that is the school of one's faith.

My hon. Friend made a number of points, one of which touches on my constituency. He referred to the policy of Essex county council, on which both the hon. Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson) and I have sat at various times in our lives. The council has introduced a policy of ending free school transport to denominational schools in our county. He referred to St. Benedict's in Colchester—a school that I have visited, which is held in enormously high regard in north and central Essex. He stated that schools were situated to serve rural areas. That is especially so in the case of St. Benedict's, which serves an area that runs all the way from my constituency on one side to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Henderson), on the other. Children travel large distances to go to that school, because it is the school of their choice. For decades, the county of Essex has provided free school transport to the nearest denominational school.

There was another reference, I think in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Jim Dobbin), to the 1944 Act. The Butler Act, as it is known, was introduced by R. A. Butler, who was my predecessor in that he represented part of my constituency. Indeed, only on Saturday I spoke at a rally in defence of maternity services in our area with his stepson, Julian Courtauld. That tradition of liberal Conservatism, if I may put it that way, is still strong in certain parts of the country, although it does not seem to be as predominant as it once was at the top of certain public institutions.

Let me return to the school transport situation in Essex. Ending free provision for distances of more than three miles is discriminatory in a number of ways. Free provision still obtains if the parents choose to send their children to the nearest school beyond three miles, although that school is highly likely not to be a Catholic secondary school. As a consequence, parents face the choice of either paying to go to the school of their faith or receiving free transport if they opt out. That seems to be an abomination, in terms of human rights and our history of freedom of religious choice.

The situation goes beyond that, however. The county is discriminating against children from poorer backgrounds. Better-off parents, with their four-wheel-drive cars, will drive their children to whatever school they choose, because they can afford to do so with ease. If one is not in that privileged position, one has to make hard choices.

My hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton mentioned that the Churches have survived for many centuries on the support and donations of poor people who have shown the strength of their faith by overcoming the poverty in which they live. I should not have thought that, in this century, we should put that obstacle in the way of people exercising the choice to which they are entitled.

Another point that flows from that is that the Catholic Church has paid considerable lump sums for the construction and maintenance of the schools. When built, 25 per cent. of the schools' costs were normally paid for by the local parishes; I believe that to this day 10 per cent. of external structural work is still paid for by the parishes. In that sense, education is subsidised and cross-subsidised by the religious communities.

In these times, we need to pay more attention to matters that rise above pure financial self-aggrandisement. Church schools offer a focal point at which such matters can easily be discussed. That is not to say that all schools make strong efforts to direct minds away from the current fashions and advertising campaigns—some schools base their school uniforms on designer labels rather than on blazers—but it is a fraction easier with the overriding community purpose that is found in church schools.

I hope that the provision of Church schools will be not only preserved but expanded, so that everybody has the right to choose which school they go to, and other denominations or faiths will consider whether to bring schools into existence along the lines that the Catholic Church and the Church of England have devised over a long time. That diversity will strengthen education and our communities.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this important debate, and to take up a couple of the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara), whom I congratulate on securing the debate.

I will continue the Catholic flavour for a while. My hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Jim Dobbin) mentioned Catholic immigration from Ireland. My surname betrays my links with that immigration: I understand that it means "the wild hairy one" in Gaelic—obviously, some of those genes have been lost over the years.

I want to take up two of the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hull, North: first, the attitude of the Catholic diocese of Leeds to Catholic education, which has been progressive, and secondly, the subject of East Riding of Yorkshire and school transport. My family has been very much involved with Catholic education in Yorkshire down the years. My late father spent many years working as a teacher in a Catholic school and trying to build it up—forgoing his pension rights and getting the kids fish and chips on a Friday because there was no school kitchen. My brother is the chaplain to a school in Bradford that the Catholic diocese of Leeds has kept open as a contribution to inter-faith relations in Bradford, even though the number of Catholic children attending it probably would not justify doing so. Children from several faiths attend the school, which is one place in Bradford in which there is some dialogue between faiths.

One of the most depressing surveys in recent days was one that found that few people of any age in our society have friends in different ethnic groups. The Catholic diocese of Leeds is conscious of that problem in Bradford, and there is a real mission to contribute to inter-community relations there, which is not always easy. Often, the young people in my brother's school show interest in other faiths. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hull, North said, there is provision for Muslims—an imam can come into the school and so on—and my brother even jokes that there could be problems if there started to be conversions; at that point, parents might begin to make representations! It is not without problems, but on the whole it is a positive experience that I thought was worth sharing when my hon. Friend brought up the subject.

I should like to ask the Minister a couple of questions about school transport in East Riding of Yorkshire, which is a very topical issue. If he does not have the answers to hand, perhaps he could write to me. All the education authorities in the north of England are waiting to see what is decided in East Riding. Its policy is largely officer-based, and I hope that councillors there will revolt against their officers and show some sort of political control. As my hon. Friend said, because it is a rural area, what happens there impacts on neighbouring counties and districts. In my constituency, the Holy Family Catholic high school at Carlton has 432 pupils on roll, 207 of whom live in East Riding. The East Riding authorities have consulted on a proposal that from September 2005, only children who live more than three miles from their local catchment school, or if that is full the school to which they are allocated by East Riding, will get free transport.

Is my hon. Friend aware that a decision is supposed to be reached tomorrow night?

Indeed. I am aware of how current this is, and how important the decision is. I urge councillors to think very carefully in the next 24 hours and also to consider two legal implications. It is not clear to me that the council can adopt such a blanket approach. I understand that section 509(4) of the Education Act 1996 requires it to

"form a judgement, in relation to any particular person, as to whether it is necessary for the Council to make arrangements for free transport for that person. In forming that judgement, the Council is"—

I understand—

"required to have regard to any parental wish that the pupil should be educated at a school where the religious education or training provided is that of their parents' religion or denomination."

In other words, there is a considerable body of legal evidence to suggest that councils have to consider the matter case by case and that a blanket ban would be inappropriate and possibly legally inadvisable.

I also draw attention to the admirable Department for Education January 1994 circular. Can the Minister tell us whether it remains in force and whether, given the debate in East Riding and the Government's general support for denominational schools, it is worthy of reissue? It was stated then:

"The Secretary of State hopes that LEAs will continue to think it right not to disturb well established arrangements … He continues to attach great importance to preservation of the opportunity to choose a school or college in accordance with religious convictions".

That is fairly straightforward, and as I understand it, it has not been rescinded. Can the Minister comment?

Finally, I appeal to the councillors in East Riding. Their officers are saying that a child should automatically go to the nearest school in the catchment area. That denies the whole agenda of choice. Take the Holy Family school again. It is passed by just one bus—going from Goole to Selby. A lot of Catholic children at school in Selby are from the East Riding, and there is no way they could all get on the one bus. East Riding would be saying in effect, "If your family does not have a car, or is not very well off, you cannot make a denominational choice." That is a scandalous proposition. If the councillors think carefully in the next 24 hours, they will realise that in East Riding of Yorkshire, and in the neighbouring areas, there is strong support among the electorate for the continuation of denominational schools, which have contributed so much to local communities. I hope that councillors will kick out their officers' proposals tomorrow night.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) on securing the debate.

I want to start by laying my cards on the table. My children went to a Catholic comprehensive school, I am the governor of one and I taught at one in the inner-city area of Bootle—strangely, it was largely staffed by old boys from St. Mary's, Crosby, which is the hon. Gentleman's former school. The debate is clearly a thoroughly incestuous occasion, and one dreams of my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) showing up at the last minute to break up, if not the Liberal consensus, at least the Catholic consensus, which is alive and well.

Denominational schools have a distinct position in our society. Many countries do not have them, and severely separate religion and education. They allow religious education, but not at the state's cost, for fear that the state could be seen to favour or promulgate a particular religion. The United States is a classic example of that.

For largely historical reasons, Britain is different. The state took a late interest in education, and the Churches had largely got there first. Essentially, the state absorbed the existing Church system. That arrangement was controversial, and it has always been fairly favourable to the Churches. At the start of the last century there were lively political battles, featuring slogans such as "Rome on the rates". Since the Butler Act, however, peace has largely reigned, and the issue of religious education was relatively uncontroversial until quite recently. It was accepted that the arrangements were fairly stable and that they should exist to allow Church members to have their children educated in Church schools. New schools could also be set up where there was demand for denominational places, so it was not just a question of the state absorbing a pre-existing system; to some extent, the arrangement helped to promote the supply of denominational places.

As I understand it, a denominational school is set up primarily to provide an education flavoured in a way that is appropriate for members of a given Church. The essence of denominational schools is that they are part owned and part run by Church representatives. They are justified if they provide a distinctive ethos and education. The state can support them—in many cases, one could argue that it should do so—if their ethos and objectives are not inconsistent with or contrary to the state's ambitions for its citizens.

To some extent, I part company with the hon. Member for Hull, North when he says that it is the state's job to cater for every philosophical persuasion. There are some very odd philosophical persuasions, which the state would not wish to cater for, and he would not want it to. It must have a view, and it need not cater for all philosophical or religious persuasions. The question is whether they are consistent with its aspirations for its citizens.

Contingent on that is the fact that denominational schools in many places have high educational standards. Indeed, there is an argument in education at the moment that suggests that denominational schools generally are more likely to have high educational standards, although we should acknowledge that some do not. Whatever denominational education is provided, however, the fundamental point is that it should not conflict with the state's legitimate ambitions for pupils.

Some hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon in the debate on his ten-minute Bill, have alleged that that is exactly what denominational education does. People have said that the presence of denominational schools frustrates the state's legitimate desire for social cohesion. It has been well argued in this debate that that is not the case—unfortunately, my hon. Friend is not here to hear it.

Opponents of denominational schools have also argued that they encourage social division and selection. One could make a fair case for saying that about some parts of the country, but that is not the case in Merseyside, where I come from, or anywhere in Lancashire. If those are features of denominational schools, they are contingent features that can be remedied. Denominational schools have taken an unfair share of the blame for social division where it exists; Oldham, for example, has been well covered in this debate.

There are, however, issues of which the state needs to be mindful. If it is true that denominational schools favour denominational pupils, which is a fair point to make, or that non-religious parents have rational objections to denominational schools, which I believe we would all accept, the state could, in certain circumstances, be said to be offering a better or wider choice to some citizens, who are religious, than to others, who are non-religious. That must not happen.

Non-religious citizens of our country do not regard the option of a religious school as a real choice, so their choice as non-religious people should be at least as good and in no way diminished by the presence of denominational schools in their area. That should be an agreed principle between secular people and religious people. I am not completely convinced that the Government have understood that. In certain circumstances, they may be guilty of trying to promote denominational schools in the absence of demand and on advantageous terms. The crucial point is that if they are seen to be doing that and are not catering for demand, there is almost a link between their activity and proselytising. Clearly, those things should be separate. They should not promote denominational schools in a vacuum without there being demand. It is not sufficient to say that good education is provided in the process—I am thinking in particular of certain academy projects—as the state can clearly provide good education in other ways that do not have a denominational context or flavour.

That is my caveat about current procedures, and it is a legitimate and reasonable one. If the archdiocese is going to scour over the details of the debate, I make a particular plea that relates to some extent to the academy projects. I come from an area that is struggling very hard to deal with surplus places. Part of the problem is that very acceptable high-performing primary schools are under severe threat. St. Teresa's infants school in my area is full to capacity, yet it is scheduled to close. The archdiocese must agree or disagree in some way to that project. Simultaneously, it is promoting an academy in which it is investing funds, although the reason for closing the infants school is that funds are tight.

There is an obligation on those who run denominational schools to ensure that it is a priority that the base service be provided and sustained in the community. There are circumstances in which the misguided promotion of new ventures can seriously harm effectively run current ventures. It will be a very sorry day when that occurs.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) on securing this debate, which is turning out to be one-sided, with great consensus. I agreed with almost every word he uttered, and I am happy to join the serried ranks of supporters of denominational schools.

We—the Opposition, not the royal "we"—are strongly in favour of denominational schools, which form a popular and essential part of the spectrum of education provision in the country. We believe that schools should be as varied as the demands of parents and should suit pupils' needs. In particular, denominational schools provide a choice for the large number of parents who seek places for their children at schools with a religious ethos, and it is right that those places should be available to them.

Most denominational schools are heavily oversubscribed, and for that reason alone must turn away pupils who fit their admissions criteria. That is certainly the case in Upminster at both primary and secondary level. Competition continues to grow for places in many of London's denominational schools, especially in those that dominate the league tables. In some cases, such as Monken Hadley Church of England primary school in Barnet and St. Paul's Church of England primary school in Camden, three applications are received for every place. That necessarily means a lot of disappointed parents. It is an extremely traumatic experience for a family when their child is refused a place at the school of their choice and allocated a place at another school which, however good in other ways, does not have the denominational ethos that is important to them. Having sat on admissions appeals committees in the past as a district councillor, I can attest to that.

The issue of free school transport has been raised by several contributors to the debate. As a former Essex county councillor, I have defended free school transport for denominational schools in the county on many occasions. I would therefore like to defend Essex county council, as I am sure that this unwelcome policy change is being led by budgetary pressure rather than a desire to withdraw free transport for denominational pupils.

The impressive examination results achieved by many excellent denominational schools on a comprehensive intake are testimony to their success and one of the two main reasons for the growing demand for places. The 19th report of the Public Accounts Committee concluded that faith schools and single-sex schools do better than average, and the Local Government Association report on the impact of specialist and faith schools on performance concluded that Jewish schools performed exceptionally well and Church schools performed consistently well in English. In general, denominational schools outperform maintained schools consistently, but of course results are not the only reason for their popularity; it is the whole package that parents find attractive.

The other main reason for the popularity of denominational schools is the ethos shared by parents, staff and Church, which is recognised in the community. That shared ethos between like-minded people provides pupils with a secure learning environment that brings out the best in them and encourages them to achieve their full potential. Shared ethos is the key to the success of denominational schools.

I know about the issue from personal experience as a former local authority governor of the De La Salle school in Basildon, as a current governor of the Sacred Heart of Mary girls school in Upminster, and as a Christian but not a Roman Catholic. Sacred Heart is a secondary, single-sex Catholic comprehensive school with a flourishing sixth form. It is a prime example of a school with a shared ethos. It also teaches tolerance and understanding of other faiths. The school comes consistently very high in the annual national league tables, and it has a truly comprehensive intake with its fair share of special needs pupils. Do not assume that they are all from comfortable middle-class homes; not that that should ever be held against a child, as children are quite unable to influence their parents' financial circumstances—but prejudice against the middle class has become fashionable in middle-class circles.

By an historic arrangement, part of each cohort at the school comes from the neighbouring parish of Dagenham, where the community is less advantaged. Nevertheless, those girls feature prominently among the highest achievers in terms of exam results and positions of responsibility in the life of the school, which are achieved on merit and without social engineering. Pupils flourish under an ethos that insists on high standards of behaviour and effort. Interestingly, this single-sex Catholic girls school is also attractive to Muslim families who require a protected disciplined educational environment for their daughters. Although the faiths are different, there are many shared social values, such as the importance of marriage and the family as the basis of a stable society and of high educational achievement, which are an integral part of the ethos of the school.

Already over-subscribed, Sacred Heart receives four to six calls every week from families moving into Upminster who want a place for their daughters. Denominational schools have, uniquely for providers of generalist education in the maintained sector, been permitted to interview applicants and their parents in order to ascertain religious affiliation and commitment where that is explicit in the admission requirements. There have been suggestions that the procedure has, from time to time, been used to make a selection based only ostensibly on faith. On the balance of likelihood, there are probably a few examples of that, but it would be unjust and damaging to ban interviewing for all because of a suspicion that a few interviews may have been unfairly conducted.

There is no evidence of widespread abuse of admission interviews, and schools receiving two or three applications for every place must decide which pupils are to be offered a place. The whole point of denominational schools is that everyone who is part of that school, whether pupil, parent or teacher, shares a denominational background and core values. That is what gives the school its special character.

Such is the level of demand that there can be no justification for the introduction of quotas, which force schools to accept pupils who do not fit their criteria while refusing places to others who do. If that were to happen, the school would no longer be a denominational school. There has to be a way of determining adherence to the faith of the school, and ticking boxes on an application form is likely to give a less reliable result.

Of course, where there is spare capacity many schools accept pupils who are not of the same faith but share their ethos. Admissions criteria for denominational schools, and all others for that matter, should be set by the schools and should fit local circumstances. They are a matter for head teachers, governors and parents, not for central Government. Schools should be wooing parents, persuading them that what they have to offer will be highly beneficial to their children, rather than parents chasing too few school places.

Denominational schools have an established winning formula. It works well for the pupils and their parents support it. If a denominational school is achieving better results, has better discipline and a higher reputation than its neighbours, the answer is to make the others better, not to change the formula of the successful school. We need to see levelling up to the highest common factor, not down to the lowest common denominator.

Let the other schools adopt an ethos worth sharing, secular if that is their choice. Let them consult parents and establish an ethos that will engender pride in belonging to that school, ambition and a determination to succeed. That is the way to drive standards up in less successful schools so that parents will choose to send their children there.

It would be quite wrong to destroy successful denominational schools by changing their admissions criteria on the old socialist maxim that if everyone cannot have something, nobody can have it, thereby driving standards down. Just like the doctrinal objection to grammar schools and the abolished assisted places scheme, which gave able pupils from disadvantaged homes the opportunity to widen their horizons—

:You are spoiling it now.

I stand here as living proof, as an old grammar school girl from a poor working-class background. The winning formula of denominational schools will be destroyed if the Government meddle in their admissions procedures. They should leave well alone and concentrate on raising the standard of other schools to meet those of denominational schools.

I join colleagues of all parties in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) on securing this debate on an important issue. He has clearly brought his considerable experience, educational and political, to the debate.

As others have said, the debate has been characterised by remarkable consensus on an issue that we know to be contentious, for some of the reasons that have been set out. I also echo my hon. Friend's tribute to the Catholic Education Service for the excellent job that it does. I pay tribute to the other faiths that are part of the system, as he did.

I want to put it clearly on the record that we regard faith schools as playing a very important part in our education system. As a number of hon. Members have said, there is a long and proud tradition of faith-based education in this country. For many years, we have acknowledged parents' wishes to educate their children in mainstream Christian schools.

Since 1944, faith communities have been able to apply to set up schools in the maintained sector in response to demand from parents. Given our multi-faith, multicultural society, it is only right that such opportunities should be available for parents and communities of other faiths, and that they should have similar opportunities to educate their children in accordance with their beliefs. I strongly support what my hon. Friend said in distinguishing the pluralism of our society from a secularist approach. I associate myself completely with his contrasting of our attitude with that of France on such questions. That is an important philosophical point that connects well to some of the community cohesion issues that he and others referred to.

Faith schools have an important and positive role to play in protecting and enhancing the pluralist character of our society. They are very popular with parents and typically play a valuable role in enhancing standards of education. As my hon. Friend said, they also play a valuable role in their local communities—the faith communities themselves, and more broadly.

Faith schools usually have a distinct ethos and mission. We know from evidence and common-sense observation that such things tend to be at the heart of school improvement—the schools that do best and provide the widest range of opportunities tend to be those with that clear sense of ethos and mission. My hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Hurst) talked about specialist schools. Part of the reason why they tend to do well is that they have that sense of drive, ethos and mission, and the same applies to faith schools.

In the 2001 White Paper "Schools—achieving success" we made it clear that we welcome faith schools in the maintained sector when parents and the local community want them. As a Government, we are certainly not campaigning for more faith schools. I take issue with the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) and any suggestion that we would seek to establish faith schools in communities where there is not that demand. In many respects there is an opposite issue, to which the hon. Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson) referred, of there being far more demand than the number of places and therefore scope for further faith schools.

The issue between us is how the demand is assessed. If large numbers of people in Gateshead were already members of fundamentalist Churches and wished their children to be educated in a school with a fundamentalist ethos, that would fit in with what the Government say. If, on the other hand, somebody promoted a school that represented only a minority faith in the area but still attracted pupils who came largely from other faiths or no faith at all, that would be a different kettle of fish. How do the Government assess the demand for another faith school?

I think that the hon. Gentleman is referring specifically to one of the academies—to be fair to him, he said that in his opening remarks. The academy programme is very new; for it to succeed, clear support from parents and the local community is required. Otherwise, the schools concerned will not attract the pupils and will not achieve the improvement in standards. A very substantial investment of money is going into the programme—predominantly public money, with some private and charitable money. The clearest test of whether that is a worthwhile investment will be demand—that is, take-up—and improvement in standards. If standards do not improve we shall have to consider that.

Are parents being offered the choice between an academy and an academy with a fundamentalist ethos? Are both those offers, or just one of them, on the table? If people want an academy, do they have to have one with a fundamentalist ethos?

I quarrel with the description of the academy as having a fundamentalist ethos. I have not visited the academy in Gateshead, but my understanding from colleagues who have is that the school's ethos is impressive and the quality of education high.

The hon. Gentleman raises an important, broader issue, which I do not want to dwell on now, but which I am sure we shall return to in future debates: how we fully engage communities, by which I mean not only the local authority but the broader community, including parents, in questions of the ethos and nature of new schools in general, and academies in particular. He makes a legitimate point in that respect.

I was trying to make the broader point that we do not want to campaign for more faith schools but that where there is demand or support for them in communities we welcome that as an aspect of diversity and of real choice. From my experience as a Minister and a constituency Member, I feel that there is a great deal for us to learn from faith schools. I have been hugely impressed by what I have seen.

As other hon. Members have said, about three in 10 state schools in England have a religious character. There are about 7,000 faith schools, of which 600 are secondary and 6,400 are primary. Of course, the majority of those are associated with the major Christian denominations. However, in recent years other faiths have promoted schools. There are now 34 Jewish schools, one of which, Wolfson Hillel, is in my constituency; it is an excellent Jewish primary school. There are four Muslim schools, two Sikh schools, one Greek Orthodox school—St. Cyprian's in Croydon—and one Seventh Day Adventist school.

I believe, from my discussions with the communities in question—perhaps most notably the Muslim community—that non-Christian minority faith communities have a growing interest in the possibility that some of the independent schools that already exist in those communities could become part of the maintained sector. I warmly welcome the interest that is being shown, and the Department is doing its best to enable that to happen, where it is appropriate, and where there is support in the communities locally.

When we set out our departmental five-year strategy two weeks ago, one of the five key principles that the Secretary of State maintained was that we should promote greater personalisation and choice, placing the wishes of parents and pupils centre stage. I am confident that faith schools can, should and will be part of that choice for parents and pupils.

I want to discuss some of the issues that have been raised today about admissions and the character of faith schools. I also want to talk about community cohesion. However, first I want to respond to the points that have been raised about school transport. There are two separate but related issues. One is the draft School Transport Bill referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Hull, North, which is intended to revisit the existing arrangements for home-to-school transport, which, as hon. Members will know, date back to 1944.

We are considering whether to change the law to allow local education authorities to run trials of alternative packages of school transport. The draft Bill has been open for consultation. Pre-legislative scrutiny has been carried out by the Education and Skills Committee and the Department is considering the results. I have met representatives of the Catholic Education Service and the Church of England, and they expressed some of the concerns that my hon. Friend set out today.

I believe that the pilots, through a possible transport Bill in the coming Session, could provide an opportunity to deal with some of the issues that have arisen in the debate. The Bill could provide a vehicle for authorities to improve the availability of transport to denominational schools.

On the second set of issues raised by a number of my hon. Friends, what is happening in Essex and in East Riding is happening under existing legislation, and in that sense it is nothing to do with the draft School Transport Bill.

My hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) reminded the House of the circular of January 1994. I am pleased to be able to inform him that that circular is still operational. We have not changed it, but we will reconsider it in the light of recent consultation on school transport. The circular remains in force for tomorrow night's meeting. I share the concerns that he and others set out in respect of East Riding and Essex. They have sent a clear message to those councillors who have to make a decision tomorrow. It is true that such decisions are made locally under the framework of the 1944 legislation, but I reaffirm that what is set out in the 1994 circular still stands. The East Riding and Essex examples demonstrate some of the iniquities of the present system of school transport. I would argue that a case should made for exploring alternatives, which is what we seek to do through the draft Bill.

Do we need to explore alternatives? Should we not simply establish a principle: that parents choosing denominational schools should have school transport, provided that they meet the distance criterion?

If we were to go down that route, it would require changes to the 1944 Act. One of the features of the existing situation is that what my hon. Friend described happens in some authorities but not all. As he and others have said, the tendency is to move away from such policies. Providing more flexibility in the broader system of school transport may allow more children and young people to benefit from free or subsidised transport, including transport to denominational schools. However, going down the route that he described would be a radical change, and it would require primary legislation to make the necessary changes.

As we proceed with the draft Bill, I am keen that the pilot schemes test the impact of transport policy on the accessibility of denominational schools. I was interested in some of the examples given of the impact of charging on access to certain schools. I make it clear that we would not want the policy on charging to result in parents being deterred from sending their children to their first-choice schools. If that is happening, the subject will be included in our further consideration of the draft Bill.

The other issue raised by my hon. Friend was the building of new schools. The Catholic Education Service and the Anglican Church have raised the matter with us. We are convening a new working group, to which we shall invite the Catholic Education Service, the Church of England and other faiths. It will have its first meeting shortly, when it will consider the question of the 10 per cent. requirement with respect to capital costs. My hon. Friend has placed that issue firmly on the record, and I shall ensure that that is made clear to the working group.

In the remaining five minutes, I shall refer to some of the broader issues. We know—the subject has been explored this morning—that faith schools are popular with parents. In the light of that, hon. Members will want to know more about the Government's commitment to providing more places in popular schools. We have already introduced new funding incentives to enable popular and successful secondary schools to expand. So far we have been able to agree to support six schools, of which two are faith schools, and we are considering a number of other applications.

We have amended our guidance to school organisation committees and schools adjudicators, so that when they consider proposals there is now a strong presumption in favour of approving such expansions. We will build on those measures to streamline the process of approval, which should give popular and successful faith schools that want to expand the potential to do so. That is important in providing the diversity and choice for which I think all speakers in this debate have shown their support.

Community cohesion is an issue that often arises in discussions about denominational schools. As hon. Members have said, segregation is a challenge in our society that is caused by a broad range of factors. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Jim Dobbin): in many of the communities covered in the Cantle report, the key issue is housing policy, although sometimes it is discrimination or patterns of employment. It would be entirely wrong to regard faith schools as bearing the main responsibility in that regard. As a number of hon. Members have said, in many urban areas there are schools that have a preponderance of pupils from a particular ethnic background but are not faith schools and simply reflect the patterns of local housing.

I agree that faith schools can make an important contribution to community cohesion, by promoting inclusion and developing partnership with schools of other faiths, and non-faith schools. The Government want faith and other schools to work together to break down barriers and bring together children of different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, in order to promote understanding between different sections of our society. Since June 2003, promoters of new schools, whether faith or non-faith, have been required to show how their proposals will help to promote community cohesion. School organisation committees are required to take that into account when they consider proposals for new schools. All maintained schools are expected to promote good relations among different racial groups and, of course, to eliminate unlawful racial discrimination.

The code of practice on schools admissions allows faith schools to admit pupils based on religious affiliation, but as a number of hon. Members have said, many faith schools admit pupils who are not of their faith. The Church of England has a tradition of providing schools not only for Anglicans but for the community as a whole, particularly in rural areas. The Archbishop of Canterbury has committed all Church of England schools to give priority, for at least some of their places, to children of other faiths or none. My hon. Friends the Members for Hull, North and for Selby mentioned the Leeds diocese. Many non-Catholics attend Catholic schools, particularly in inner-city areas. We do not want faith schools to keep places empty when there are insufficient applicants for those places from pupils of their own faith or denomination. We took action to prevent that in the Education Act 2002, with the support of both the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England.

The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 requires admission authorities for schools to review their policies in order to ensure that they eliminate racial discrimination, promote racial equality and encourage good race relations. That includes assessing admissions policies to ensure that pupils from particular racial groups are not unlawfully discriminated against, and monitoring the admissions process to ensure that it is administered consistently and fairly to children from all racial groups. We encourage faith schools to be more inclusive in the ways that I have set out.

Some faith schools achieve greater inclusiveness by designating some of their places as faith places and some as open places, with non-denominational criteria. That is not a specific requirement and is still a matter for the schools' admissions authorities to decide for themselves. We would not wish artificial quotas to take precedence over parental preference. That would cause greater dissatisfaction among parents from all sectors of the community and could still result in places remaining unfilled.

We have had an excellent debate, in which many of the benefits of denominational schools have been well set out by hon. Members of all parties. I am sure that this debate will continue. Faith schools contribute very much to the excellence of our education service.

Like most Members of Parliament, I believe that I work very hard: I have a surgery most weeks, I phone 30 or so people in my constituency most nights, and I have my "meet the MP for a cup of tea" sessions. After distilling all that experience and connection with my local communities, I come up with one key question that my constituents want answered, and that we should seek to answer: how do we restore faith in the criminal justice system? In tough areas and outer estates such as mine, that faith is often absent. People's experience of courts, probation, prosecution and the police is poor or—it is probably fairer to say—based on poor perceptions. All those who work in the criminal justice system work extremely hard, and I commend their work. However, they often appear to be working reactively rather than proactively when cases come before them, when paperwork has to be processed and when offenders come into contact with the various institutions.

So far, almost all the Government's—welcome—efforts in this field have been about internal processes. They ask how fast we can get offenders through the system and where the pinch points in the procedures are? All of that effort is valuable and of course procedures should be tackled. However, of equal importance, but largely ignored so far, is the need for a proactive role for criminal justice. Above all, we are talking about the new county criminal justice boards, as well as the individual constituent services themselves.

In the context of my constituency, that means encouraging the use of special payments by the chief constable to keep the beat bobby infrastructure staffed, up to strength and motivated. It means returning some of our probation services from being HQ-based to the estates where staff know the offenders, families, acquaintances and problems. It means Crown prosecutors seeing their job not only as being in local police stations, which has been a very welcome development in my city, but as systematically engaging with our communities. It means all those connected with the courts learning to interact with and support law-abiding citizens as much as they interact with those who are accused. That in itself is a massive culture change for those connected with the courts, who tend to look inwards to their procedures rather than outwards to the community that they serve.

I welcome the letter that I received from the Minister this morning, which indicated that magistrates may make recommendations about the type of work that offenders can usefully do under a community punishment order. How many magistrates know that? Of those who do, how many attempt consistently to link offenders back to doing good works in their own neighbourhoods? The incredible assistance from the ministerial team has been very helpful; the breakdown sometimes seems to occur among local practitioners, who may not know the motivation behind certain proposals and who often lack the guidance, clarity and direction needed to make the proposals work.

Criminal justice professionals have now begun talking to each other, which is real progress that I welcome. Certainly in Nottinghamshire, that process was evident when I met the criminal justice board on Friday. However, that in itself is not enough. The criminal justice system has to be reunited with its public. That is the next step. Having got members of the criminal justice system talking to each other about their own processes, we need to take that a stage further and get the system as a whole and all its constituent parts to look outwards to the people whom it is meant to serve.

This morning, I want to give one example of how the Government and MPs can help the criminal justice system do that. It deals with the work of young offenders doing community hours. That work needs to connect far more directly and immediately with local communities, so that those communities will see that the criminal justice system is working for them at their request. That will increase the likelihood of the community working with the criminal justice system—giving evidence, helping victims, building neighbourhood watch, and reporting crime. It is about building trust and reaching out to communities, and getting the payback from the community as faith is restored, making a virtuous circle.

Much excellent work is done in allocating offenders to useful work in our communities, such as removing fly posting, litter picking and erasing graffiti. It is exactly the sort of work that a blighted outer-city estate needs to tackle the environmental degradation brought about by antisocial behaviour. Some of it is done at the behest of the community, but—with the greatest respect to those who work immensely hard with young offenders—it usually happens in a roundabout, somewhat leisurely and occasionally bureaucratic way, which dislocates the work from the neighbourhoods in which it is taking place. The aim is to get the connections cleaner, tighter, faster and more timely. When people see something happening in their community at their request, it will give a tremendous boost to the restoration of faith in the criminal justice system.

We need to build on what we have and to establish something that is far sharper arid more direct. The community, represented by Members of Parliament, local councillors and, above all, by tenants or residents associations and neighbourhood watches, should be able to ring a highly publicised hotline number staffed by a named person to nominate suitable work to be done in the neighbourhood, and offenders in orange jackets should appear within a week to do it. That is the aim that I hope that the Minister wants to set local authorities and criminal justice institutions up and down the land. We must be clear about our ambition and our targets, so that work is done because somebody in the community has recognised a need for it, and that person can then see people in the street doing it.

I must put on record the tremendous efforts of local people in Nottingham, as it might serve as an example of best practice that the Minister could help us with, or it could be used to help people in other towns and cities. There is to be a dedicated post based in street scene, which is part of one of the departments of the council. That will be the link point for both the community and the work. That officer will be the contact point for tenants associations and others who want to suggest activities or identify problems; the officer will also be proactive in reaching out to those institutions to ensure that they are aware of the possibilities open to them to have work done in the area. The officer will then ask the youth offending team to identify young people available to do the work, and to organize sessional workers for the placements. The problem with having that officer located within the youth offending team is that such a person might not know enough about the nature of the tasks to judge whether particular jobs are within the capacity of young people or whether they are suitable in health and safety terms. The effect should be the same for community groups: they will have one point of contact, and the same person will be able to make the judgment about suitability of the tasks, and to liaise with the YOT. A pilot scheme will run during the coming school holidays—hopefully in the area known as Bulwell in my constituency—to test the links and communications and to ensure that teething problems are dealt with. The aim is to roll it out across the city over the rest of the year.

We have worked through some of the barriers that we encountered locally, such as health and safety issues, potential trade union concerns that needed to be allayed and child protection concerns. The work should be about putting something back, but it is also positive for the offenders, as can be seen in the comments of some of the youths involved in clearing fly posting. They said, "This job is the most useful because it is really helping the community," "We had someone come up to us and say that what we were doing was really good," "I reckon it will stop me reoffending," and "I might consider it as a job." One youth's mother said, "He feels like he's doing something worth while. His whole attitude has changed." Such comments, I hope, are evidence that such work is useful and may lead to other employment, and gives a sense of putting something back into the community.

If we can identify the tasks that mean something to local communities, we will complete the circle in which young offenders are doing something valuable to make amends, in which they see a purpose, and which will help them to gain the skills and confidence that will steer them towards work and enhance their life chances. That process will also build confidence within communities that the criminal justice system is aware of and responding to their experience of crime, and is not some fusty thing that goes on somewhere in the courts, where there are lot of bureaucrats who are not very welcoming or friendly. Instead of, "It is a frightening experience that we do not want to be involved with," people will think, "The criminal justice system came to us and fulfilled a need to make our estate better." An immediate link will be established, which will be vital to rebuilding faith in the long term. Most importantly, the "putting it right officer", if I can use that expression, would be charged with notifying the community that work was going on at their request.

Currently—I have broached this issue with the Minister privately—we have to ensure that residents and tenants do not know when such activities are to take place, so that the identity of the young offenders is not disclosed. I do not propose the naming and shaming of offenders, as I do not think that that is the way forward, but if the scheme that I propose is to be effective, the community must be informed about where work is going to take place, so that they can see it happening—so that they can see a timely response to their requests. I would like the Minister to consider that at his leisure— although I know he has no leisure—and to think about how we can take it forward. There has to be a balance: the community should be able to witness the work taking place without it being a punitive sanction where people take photographs of young offenders, or where other problems might ensue. The matter requires some further thought, because that immediate link must be retained.

I have another, smaller, plea to the Minister: that we do not baffle the community and simple-minded Members of Parliament with too much jargon. We can surely do better than titles such as the "probations enhanced community punishment scheme" in trying to get over to our constituents the opportunities that lie behind that mouthful.

Those who suffer antisocial behaviour do not draw any distinction between young offenders and adult offenders, yet I have found that everything needs to be negotiated twice—once with the young offenders team and once with the probation service. Will the Minister consider whether that distinction might be done away with, at least in this instance, or whether we could simplify in some other way to make a reality of the practice that we all seek?

I have raised this issue with the Minister almost since the day he was appointed, and I have always had a positive and encouraging response from him. I have also raised it locally, but have occasionally felt that I was being deflected and managed by those who feel that they, rather than the community, have proprietorial rights over the criminal justice system. We need to rediscover the fact that justice is a public service, just as health and education are. It is the property not of local professionals, but of the community whom we are meant to serve. I sometimes think that we are not as outward-looking as we could be, but that is a minor caveat. That attitude is passing, certainly in Nottingham, and passing very quickly.

A massive injection of positive motivation has come from the grass roots. Bob Uden from the youth offending team and David Hodgson from the council's street cleaning team are getting on with the job—they are not waiting, they are doing it right now. Many others deserve recognition, including Ken Beaumont, Chris Bailey, the council leader Jon Collins, Val Matinson from the city's chief executive's department and many other hard-working and committed individuals who want this approach to work and who have been getting on and doing the job. I am proud that Nottingham is starting to show the way and that where problems are arising they are being tackled rather than taken as an excuse not to do anything.

The Government must not only attack antisocial behaviour, but promote social behaviour, and this is one way to do that. Local professionals, and MPs first and foremost, must not only react to cases but be proactive in reaching out to the communities they serve. Communities must not passively have services done to them, but should initiate and experience the benefits of a criminal justice system as a public service. Yesterday, the Prime Minister talked the talk about the law-abiding citizen being the boss and being at the centre of the criminal justice system. The Minister knows me quite well, and he knows that I will follow this specific practical example closely in order to judge how real the follow-through is to the Prime Minister's fine words.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on obtaining this debate and on the assiduous way in which he pursues these issues, not only in Westminster but in his constituency. His speech this morning and the information that he has shared with the Chamber are based on his daily experiences in his constituency. I endorse entirely the role of the Member of Parliament in making the connection between policy making at the centre and what happens in local communities. Unless we make those connections, we do not learn the lessons or make the improvements that we need.

Throughout his speech, my hon. Friend kept coming back to the need to restore faith and confidence in the criminal justice system. He mentioned the comments made by our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister about making sure that at the heart of the system is the ordinary law-abiding citizen, rather than the offender, as has happened too often in the past. The community should be at the heart and we should be doing everything that we can to restore confidence.

I join my hon. Friend in his generous thanks to the professionals in his constituency and city who deliver the service. However, he was right when he said at the outset that the public do not always perceive their work. Sometimes they do not see all the decisions that are made and the programmes that are carefully put together. We have to change that and make sure that they see what is happening and can make a connection with it.

My hon. Friend argued forcefully for a service that is proactive, not just reactive, and I agree entirely. It is important that young people who have committed crimes and offended against individuals or the wider community should be punished. It is also important that that punishment, wherever possible, should be a form of payback to the community where those offences were committed. I agree that we have to continue to develop our probation service as a neighbourhood service—not as something remote, but as something that is closely connected with, and deals with, offending behaviour problems in the communities.

All those things fit together. The five-year strategic plan announced yesterday by the Home Secretary, which puts an emphasis on neighbourhood policing, the new antisocial behaviour prosecutors whom we are developing at local level, and the extra 20,000 community support officers are all important ways of building up the capacity of the system. However, we have to join them all together in a way that makes a difference and connects with the lives of local people.

I am glad that my hon. Friend has received the letter that I sent to him at a late hour yesterday. I was certainly interested in the proposal that he made in his letter to the Home Secretary. I can confirm that there is no reason why a bench that is in full possession of information about what is available in the community should not recommend the type of work that the offender should do. Clearly, we could not allow an order to depend on a particular type of work, because that would be difficult to organise and enforce. A fully informed bench would, however, reflect the connectivity for which my hon. Friend argued. The magistrates would know what was going on and, on behalf of the community, could impose penalties that really meant something to the offender and the wider community.

Do magistrates currently know of that possibility? If not, would it be possible to send them a copy of the letter or a guidance note? I suspect that they are not fully aware of the possibilities in their hands, not least because of the pressures of work.

I am happy to look into that. I suspect that their training will confirm that magistrates can make use of such possibilities, although that relies on their knowing what is available on the ground and being well informed by those who prepare court reports. However, I will take a close look at the issue.

My hon. Friend argued cogently for us all to make connections between policies, the agencies that deliver them and the local community. He captured the mood very accurately in one telling phrase when he talked about the need for the criminal justice system to be "reunited with its public". We should all share that aspiration and work to achieve it. What better way could there be of dealing with young offenders than enabling them to put something back into the community, make good the damage that they have done and improve their community's environment through practical enhancements while changing their own behaviour and attitudes so that they can be more successfully integrated into their community?

My hon. Friend suggested that members of the community or a community association could have access to a readily known local phone number so that they could put in a request for work that needed doing and get a response. That is a sensible and practical idea, and I hope that it can be developed in his area. I recently visited Cardiff and saw how the probation service had developed a graffiti-busting project. With funding from the crime reduction partnership, it had bought the equipment required to remove graffiti. Community groups need now only make a phone call, and the team can get out there and make a difference, with offenders putting something back. We need probation services to be fully integrated with crime reduction partnerships and other local partnerships so that people have the information and confidence to make contact. My hon. Friend outlined arrangements in his area, which I fully endorse, and I hope that they can be deepened.

I was interested in my hon. Friend's comments about the pilot project in his area. Indeed, I am sure that people throughout his city of Nottingham will be interested in it. He said that it would be rolled out in due course. I will certainly be interested to find out how it goes and I am sure that he will keep me informed, as he frequently does. If we can learn from the project nationally, we should do so.

My hon. Friend listed a number of people who are making a real difference in his city. I am aware of the leadership of Councillor Jon Collins and of his work in tackling the difficult issues that sometimes get in the way—the health and safety issues that my hon. Friend mentioned and the reservations that trade unionists in the city may have. Councillor Collins likes to cut through such things and try to provide a practical solution. With my hon. Friend, he can make a real difference.

My hon. Friend quoted the views of local young people whose lives and attitudes have been changed by the work that they have done. What could be better than putting something back, learning a new skill, perhaps gaining in confidence and seeing new opportunities and horizons opening up? Amends are made for the wrong that has been done, and new opportunities arise for the young offender. The youth offending team in my hon. Friend's constituency wants to co-operate closely with him in putting schemes together. I commend the team for that and him for the work that he has done.

My hon. Friend raises an interesting question about how the local community can be better informed about work that is being done. There is a balance to be struck between ensuring that people are aware of such work and ensuring that the young offenders involved are not demeaned or exposed to ridicule, because that could subvert the positive work that we are trying to do to change their lives and attitudes. I am not an advocate of yellow jackets, which my hon. Friend mentioned, but it is important to brand the work that young offenders do. The local community should know if litter has been picked up or a piece of land restored by offenders and should be able to celebrate the fact that amends have been made and something has been put back.

My hon. Friend made a plea for limiting jargon and bureaucracy, and I endorse what he said. All this is best summed up by the term "payback", because everyone knows what it means. We should focus on simple words such as that to ensure that people understand that this is about restoring our communities and putting something back.

By accident, I headed some of my e-mails "Putting it right". That phrase seems to have caught the imagination of many people locally and they are using it. Whether we talk about "putting it right" or "payback", we must use words that the community understands, rather than talk about the community liaison strategic partnership review community offender operations programme sub-officer. "Putting it right" is probably a snappier phrase than some we have been used to in the past.

Indeed. It may well be my hon. Friend's experience—it certainly is mine—that local communities are intolerant of young people when they are committing offences, but as well as punishment they want a real effort to be made to turn offenders' attitudes and behaviour around. Payback really resonates with them. If local communities see people putting something back to make amends for what they have done, they are happy that justice has been done and there is a chance for the young offenders to make progress and move beyond their offending behaviour.

I have been happy to respond directly to the questions that my hon. Friend has raised. Of course, all this must be seen within the wider environment of policy, the development of the Youth Justice Board and our whole approach nationally and locally to all these questions. That approach has been transformed in recent years. We have put the prevention of offending at the heart of the system and sentencing policy. It is important to consider other issues to do with welfare and, as we have emphasised, restoration and reparation are important, but the prevention of offending should be at the heart of everything that we are trying to do.

My hon. Friend has been generous in giving way. On the assumption that he is not promoted to the Cabinet by the end of the week, as many of us would like him to be, and he continues in the same job, will he consider coming to Nottingham some time before the end of the year to see whether we have been able to make this system work and whether there are lessons that he could transfer to elsewhere in the UK?

It is kind of my hon. Friend to talk about promotion, but I hope to be able to take up his offer of a visit. When I come to Nottingham, I will be able to meet members of the youth offending team. I know that 90 staff now operate in the team, including social workers, probation officers and police as well as specialist staff such as mental health staff, substance misuse workers and victim liaison workers. They all work together at local level to try to make a difference.

We have developed a range of court disposals, such as the reparation order and the action plan order. The referral order is a new and effective initiative used when offenders are in court for the first time and admit the offence. Again, we are involving the community in referral orders: 5,000 volunteers nationally serve on referral order panels. I understand that, in Nottingham, 64 local people serve on the panels and work out appropriate interventions for young people who have been in trouble. Again, that is about trying to change young offenders' lives.

Accountability and openness are two of the key responsibilities of holders of public office. They form two of the six principles of public conduct, so I am delighted that we are joined this afternoon by my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young), the Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee. One of the means by which accountability and openness are facilitated is through objective accounting and statistical standards. They are what underlie this debate.

What is a public corporation? Is it different from a nationalized industry? How should Ministers monitor public corporations? Fortunately, I do not have to invent the answers to those questions; they are set out in the Treasury document, "Public Expenditure: Statistical Analyses 2004". That document defines a public corporation as

"a term from national accounts—the European System of Accounts. So it is the Office for National Statistics that determines which bodies are public corporations. The characteristics of public corporations are: they are mainly trading bodies, largely recovering their costs from fees charged to customers…they are owned or controlled by central government, local authorities or other public corporations; and they have substantial day to day operating independence so that they should be seen as institutional units separate from their parent departments."

In terms of public finances, a nationalised industry and a public corporation are no longer treated differently. The PESA document goes on to set out the controls in place over public corporations, and I draw hon. Members' attention to the following paragraph:

"Monitoring plays an important role in controlling public corporations' performance in the interests of the taxpayer and the consumer. Sponsor Ministers"

and

"departments… continuously monitor bodies' performance against all aspects of the controls described."

It is up to Departments to set individual financial targets for public corporations and any dividend or interest payments required. It is significant that where public corporations compete in the same market as a private company, there can be an issue of fair competition.

That sets out some of the background behind the subject, but does any of it make any difference in practice? It certainly does. There was a headline report in newspapers earlier this year about the change in the definition of Network Rail. On 27 February 2004, the ONS announced that Network Rail would be regarded as a public corporation until 31 March 2003. As a result, £9 billion—a lot of money in anyone's language—has to be put on the balance sheet in the national accounts to reflect that ruling. I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire intends to say more about the conundrum presented by that decision. I find it amazing that it took a newspaper editor digging behind what appeared to be an innocuous statement by the ONS about the classification of Network Rail to highlight the issue. When one examined the statement and the attached document closely, one saw that it was not so much a statement about classification as a change in classification with the implications that I described. I use that as an example of how significant a decision on whether an organisation is a public corporation can be.

Whether enterprises are in the private or the state sector is relevant to the definition of capital business investment. Are state-controlled enterprises crowding out the private sector? Is business investment as a share of gross domestic product rising or falling? Recent statistics reveal that business investment by public corporations is rising compared with capital expenditure by private companies, especially in the manufacturing sector. I hope that I have shown that we are able to have proper accountability by having a robust and accurate definition of public corporations.

One may ask, "What has been happening?" I shall illustrate my argument using trust ports. On 26 October 2000, the ONS decided to classify certain major trust ports as public bodies whose financial transactions were to be included in the public sector borrowing requirement. The background was set out in reply from the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to a written question of mine. She enclosed a copy of a letter from John Pullinger, the national statistician. In explanation of the decision taken on 26 October 2000, John Pullinger stated:

"Classification decisions are made by applying international standards for National Accounts … The classification of corporations to either the public or the private sector is determined by control. The public sector has control over the major trust ports, usually through both appointment rights and powers contained in the Ports Act 1991."

I asked which major trust ports had been reclassified as public corporations, and the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson), replied:

"In discussion with the Office of National Statistics, we have identified 21 trust ports in England and Wales that might fall within the classification as public corporations at the present time. These are:

• Bridlington
• Caernarfon
• Chichester
• Dover
• Falmouth
• Flamborough (North Sea Landing)
• Harwich
• Hope Cove
• Langstone
• Littlehampton
• Milford Haven
• Newlyn
• Orford
• Poole
• Port Isaac
• Port of London
• Port of Tyne
• Sandwich
• Sandersfoot
• Shoreham
• Teignmouth."

I asked what the financial reporting arrangements were for the trust ports that had been reclassified as public corporations. The Under-Secretary stated:

"As we are still working to assess what the impact of this classification might be, there have been no changes to the financial reporting arrangements at this time."

That was in March 2003, although the classification change had been made in 2000. I asked what progress had been made on discussions with the ONS. The Under-Secretary stated:

"We have now identified with the Office of National Statistics which trust ports might fall within the classification as public corporations, and my officials are currently working to identify the financial and resource implications of this classification for those ports and the Department."

I asked

"why there is no reference to the trust ports classified as public corporations in the Resource Accounts … of the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions".

The Under-Secretary's answer was that, at the time of preparing the resource accounts,

"we were still discussing the proposed classification with ONS, including trying to identify which ports would fall within that classification. Therefore we were unable to include any reference to the trust ports in those accounts."—[Official Report, 5 March 2003; Vol. 400, c. 1025–1026W.]

I hope the Financial Secretary shares my concern that the Department for Transport resource accounts for 2002–03, which were published on 29 January this year, make no reference whatsoever to any of the trust ports being defined as public corporations. Indeed, the only public corporations referred to—on page 55, note 26—are the Air Travel Trust and the Civil Aviation Authority. Why do the resource accounts for the following year make no reference to the classification of the trust ports as public corporations and to all the things that flow from that, including returns on capital and so on? I have not had an answer to that question, but I hope that the Financial Secretary will be able to give me one today.

We are not talking about insignificant organisations. In answer to my question, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport said:

"The latest published accounts we have received from the major ports defined as public corporations show on the balance sheets that the net worth of each port is as follows:

Port	£million net worth
Port of London (at 31 December 2003)	48.3
Dover (at 31 December 2003)	124.8
Milford Haven (at 31 December 2002)	31.9
Poole (at 31 March 2003)	11.8
Tyne (at 31 December 2002)	47.6
Harwich Haven (at 31 December 2003)	33.8".

—[Official Report, 13 July 2004; Vol. 423, c. 1016W.]

Only those six ports are listed as major ports that are defined as public corporations, but at least for the first time there is an implicit admission by the Department for Transport that they are public corporations rather than potential public corporations. This is not merely an academic or semantic dispute; it is serious and important, because a significant part of the ports industry is in limbo as a result of doubts about whether major ports are classified as public corporations. If they are, why is the Department for Transport not requiring a rate of return or monitoring them, as required by Government convention?

The confusion still exists, certainly in Dover, the largest of the trust ports. On 16 June 2003, I asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer to what extent the borrowing authorisation of £50.4 million to Dover Harbour Board is included in the Government's public sector borrowing requirement. The response from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury stated:

"Dover Harbour Board is classified to the public corporation sector in the national accounts. Thus spending and borrowing of Dover Harbour Board is public sector spending and borrowing, in particular its borrowing from the private sector is included in Public Sector Net Borrowing. While facilities to borrow do not themselves impact on PSNB the draw down of that facility to finance expenditure would."—[Official Report, 16 June 2003; Vol. 407, c. 37W.]

Yet the annual report and accounts of the Dover Harbour Board for 2002 contain no reference to the fact that it may be a public corporation. Picking up on the answer in June 2003 from the Chief Secretary, Mr. C. Madderson, managing director of George Hammond plc, a user of the port of Dover, wrote to Dover Harbour Board about the situation, asking whether it affected the board's ability to borrow or whether a return on capital was needed. About a month later, he received an interesting reply from Mr. Bob Goldfield, chief executive of Dover Harbour Board, who said:

"With reference to your letter of 17 September regarding Trust Port status, I apologise for the delay in replying but I was checking the latest position with Ports Division"—

that is a reference to the Department for Transport—

"and they were slow!

It is true that there is a proposal from the National Audit Office"—

I think that should have been the Office for National Statistics—

"to have the major trust ports redesignated as public corporations. This proposal is based upon the fact that, for those ports, the Secretary of State appoints the majority of the Board. However, the Department for Transport are vigorously rejecting the proposal and they have stated publicly that they will withdraw from appointing Board members, thereby removing the rationale for redesignation, should the proposal receive serious consideration.

We therefore see no prospect in the immediate future of any change to the status of Dover Harbour Board as a Trust Port."

That extraordinary response from Dover Harbour Board was sent, it seems, on the advice of officials at the Department for Transport.

What is going on? I asked the Department for Transport whether it had it mind to change the board membership of Dover Harbour Board. On 28 October 2003, I received this answer from the Under-Secretary:

"Seven board members, including the Chairman, are appointed by the Secretary of State to the Dover Harbour Board … Government appointments to the DHB are made in strict accord with its policy on the appointment of all non-executive directors and board members of public bodies and we abide by guidelines set out by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments … We have no current plans to alter this policy."—[Official Report, 28 October 2003; Vol. 412, c. 154W.]

Any suggestion that the Department would try to alter its control over the board to change the classification of Dover Harbour Board as a public corporation seems to be without foundation.

In March, I had the privilege of attending the annual lunch of the British Ports Association. If I say that at that lunch before the Under-Secretary spoke there was an air of expectancy, I understate the position. Everybody at that lunch was expecting an announcement on the status of ports as public corporations and the implications that flowed from that. The Minister made no such announcement, and in correspondence that I have had with him since all he has said is that the issue is still under consideration and discussion. How, almost four years after a ruling by the Office for National Statistics, can the Department be saying that the issue is not clear? As a result, it is defying the conventions and, indeed, the rules.

Can the Minister confirm that the major trust ports have been public corporations since 2000, and still are? As her Department, the Treasury, has responsibility for the ONS, can she confirm that neither the Department for Transport nor any other Department should be acting in defiance of an ONS ruling? What sanctions are available, and what will her Department do about the action of the Department for Transport in not complying with that ruling?

The implications for public expenditure are relevant, because the Minister's Department provides money to the Department for Transport, and it is clear that that Department, by not demanding a rate of return on capital employed by the public corporations under its control, is depriving itself of important income. One wonders why, particularly as just today we have had another statement from the Secretary of State saying that he is strapped for cash and there is a lot he would like to do but he has not the resources with which to do it. That seems to be an area in which some saving could be made immediately—a subject on which Members on this side of the Chamber are expert.

If the Minister cannot respond in substance to my concerns, what else can one do? I could take the matter to the Comptroller and Auditor General and ask for it to be referred to the Public Accounts Committee, but do I really need to go that far in the light of the clearest possible guidance to Ministers under the rules for people in public positions? Why can we not just get a Department to comply with the rules that are already laid down? That is the burden of my concern.

If the Department for Transport is defying the Government on this issue, that puts a question mark over what is happening in respect of Network Rail. We know—I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire will refer to this in more detail—that the ONS found out exactly what was going on with Network Rail only when it came across an item on another website. The information was not given to it fairly and squarely to enable it to determine whether Network Rail was a public corporation or a private company.

One is particularly suspicious at the moment about what is happening in the Government. We know from the Macpherson report that racism in the Metropolitan police was institutional: people did not realise that they were being racist because it was so much part of the arrangements and the culture. I fear that we are getting into a situation in which deception by Departments is almost institutional. Departments do not deliberately deceive, but they encourage attitudes and a culture that are designed to minimise the information available to Members of Parliament and the scope for proper public accounting and accountability.

On the day when the Butler report is to be debated in the main Chamber, I hope that the Financial Secretary to the Treasury will be able to assure us that, in this relatively small field of activity, her Department is on the case and will ensure that the rulings of the Office for National Statistics carry weight and are implemented by the Departments that are given the responsibility for individual public corporations.

I should like to add a brief footnote to the excellent speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope). I begin by commending him on his choice of subject. He might not get the coverage that he deserves in tomorrow's press because of rival attractions—indeed, we might be asked what we were doing when the House was debating Iraq, and the answer will be that we were debating definitions of public expenditure.

However, as my hon. Friend said, the topic is important because the Government have set themselves standards of probity in fiscal and monetary policy. They have set themselves many rules, and it is important to know whether and how they are being adhered to. If the public, the City and financial commentators suspect that the rules are being kept through some accounting sleight of hand—I have a quotation to support that notion—the whole purpose of having rules, which is to maintain confidence in financial prudence and integrity, begins to disappear. Yes, the Government might be keeping their rules, but they might be doing so in such a way that their behaviour and borrowing are put in a very favourable light, and the totality of the commitments into which they are entering on behalf of the taxpayer of the future is not revealed.

I shall focus on Network Rail and whether it is a private or a public sector company. There have been two views on that question. I go back to 21 June 2002 and quote from the Financial Times:

"But in a move that shocked financial experts, the Office of National Statistics acceded to Treasury requests that the big liability would not be included in the government's accounts. The row concerns the Strategic Rail Authority's role in underwriting the debts of Network Rail."

We were then talking about some £9 billion. The ONS view, as stated in its press release of 5 July 2002, was that Network Rail's borrowing would be classified as private sector borrowing in the national accounts. That decision was taken after advice from the head of accountancy profession at the Department for Transport, whose view was that that support was considered a contingent liability of Government and so was unlikely to be called on. It goes without saying that had that decision gone the other way, the finances of the Department for Transport would have been in serious difficulty, because it would have had to find £9 billion from the rest of its budget.

The reasons for that decision were amplified in the statement "Setting the record straight on Network Rail" on 11 July 2002. In it, the ONS said:

"In national accounts, the guiding principle for classifying institutions as public or private is who exerts control over general corporate policy, including the appointment of directors."

I shall return to that in a moment. However, the National Audit Office took a different view. The Financial Times said on 5 December 2002:

"Sir John Bourn told the Commons Treasury sub-Committee that Gordon Brown should make it clear that the Government might have to raise an enormous sum of money, over and above its published estimates for debt, in certain circumstances."

Sir John said:

"If this had been in the private sector, and I had been auditing this, I would have said that this is essentially a subsidiary company and I would have expected it to be put on the balance sheet."

He continued:

"The government is providing security through the SRA to the providers of debt and it is acting as a lender of last resort to Network Rail so it is assumed that there are liabilities that could accrue."

The NAO went on to classify Network Rail's debts as public sector borrowing, taking a different view from the ONS. I wonder who would have lent any money at all to Network Rail without the Government standing behind it, particularly after the Railtrack debacle. The NAO also determined that Network Rail would be on the balance sheet of the SRA—indeed it now features on the SRA's consolidated Companies Acts-style accounts, because of the degree of influence that the SRA could exercise over Network Rail.

The disagreement between two professional accountants caused some concern to the Treasury Committee, on which the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) then sat. A rather unsatisfactory truce was agreed after the intervention of the Statistics Commission and a joint statement was issued in October 2002, in which they agreed to disagree because they came to the issue with different perspectives.

Last Thursday, the Secretary of State made a statement on Network Rail. I want to deal first with the balance sheet issue. The Secretary of State announced:

"It follows, therefore, that the Strategic Rail Authority will be wound up, and that the majority of its functions, including all its financial obligations, will be transferred to the Secretary of State."—[Official Report, 15 July 2004; Vol. 423, c. 1547.]

One might therefore assume that, if the SRA's liabilities were absorbed into the Department for Transport, Network Rail would end up on the balance sheet of the Department, which is of course part of the Government. In that case, it would be on the Government's balance sheet. Perhaps the Minister can confirm that that is what will happen. On control, the position has fundamentally changed. Whatever it may have been in the past, the Secretary of State's announcement last Thursday fundamentally changed the position of Network Rail, and the ONS should now review its earlier decision. The White Paper that was published last week, "The Future of Rail", states:

"Under this new structure: Government will have clear control of the strategy for the railways".

Chapter 3 states:

"The Secretary of State … will take responsibility for setting the national-level strategic outputs for the railway industry, in terms of capacity and performance."

Elsewhere the White Paper states:

"This means that the Government will be responsible for deciding the overall size and shape of the network; the key timetable outputs; policy on regulated fares; minimum performance targets; enhancement priorities; and policy on information provision and accessibility."

Later, we read that

"The Government will specify the very largest projects, such as the construction or upgrades of major lines, and will determine the overall approach and by whom they are delivered".

Any notion that Network Rail is an ordinary private sector company is strictly for the birds. It is a company that does what the Government ask it to do. It is not a company that is controlled by its directors or members, which is the key definition used by the ONS. The question asked by ONS is: who is exerting control over general corporate policy? There is only one body doing that, and it is the Department for Transport. One of the reasons for the Secretary of State's statement last week was that the Government felt that they did not have enough control over Network Rail. Can the Financial Secretary confirm that the time has come to end the fiction that Network Rail is a private sector company? Will she give an undertaking that the borrowings will in future score as Government debt?

Like the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young), I congratulate the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) on raising this particularly important topic. He began his speech by saying that the subject was important because of principles of objective accounting and transparency, which are important in their own right, but he went on to describe how the way in which we classify public corporations and other entities on the dividing line between the public and private sectors has real effects in terms of public borrowing and public expenditure. He has extended the list of areas in which there are concerns about Government policy from the traditional ones of foundation hospitals and Network Rail to trust ports. He has set out clearly some of the issues, to which I hope the Financial Secretary will respond later.

The definition of a public corporation is set out clearly in the public expenditure statistical analysis. I shall not read that into the record because it is relatively lengthy and hon. Members can look it up for themselves. In the Government's definition, and in statements made by Treasury Ministers and advisers, there is a sense that the classification of public and private sector bodies is fairly clear and straightforward.

When the subject of foundation hospitals was at the centre of public and political debate about a year ago, the Secretary of State for Health wanted to put them outside the public sector so that they could borrow more easily, and the Treasury resisted because those bodies would be outside the Government's control over borrowing. The then chief economic adviser to the Treasury—Mr. Balls—described the distinction between public and private sector entities in very clear terms. On 27 February 2003, in the evidence that he gave to the Treasury Committee's inquiry into the euro, he said:

"if you are running a sound fiscal policy and, therefore, you are looking at all borrowing by public bodies, then there are only really two categories, either institutions in the public sector or there for the purposes of the public accounts in the private sector. If bodies are in the public sector, whether that is central government, local government or hospitals, then they count as public borrowing, and if they are in the private sector, they count as private borrowing."

He went on to make it absolutely plain that the only way in which bodies could not be in the public sector was if they were in the private sector, and that they would have to be in the public sector if they were not in the private sector. It could not really be any clearer than that. On that basis, the Treasury managed to resist foundation hospitals sneaking out of the public sector and borrowing willy-nilly as if they were private sector bodies outside the Chancellor's control.

Unfortunately, as the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire pointed out, when we are dealing with Ministers who are in the Chancellor's favour—such as the Transport Secretary—or when the Government are particularly keen to keep public borrowing out of public accounts because it has been inherited from some other entity, it seems that the Government are willing to stretch definitions that ought to be clear in order to achieve their own priorities. The hon. Member for Christchurch cited the Treasury Committee's report on Network Rail, and the disputes and controversy at the time. We ended up with the extraordinary position of the ONS classifying Network Rail as a private sector entity based on the fact that the directors were private sector directors, even though the body that appointed them was selected by the Secretary of State for Transport, while at the same time the Comptroller and Auditor General was insisting that, on the basis of the substance rather than the form of the transaction, Network Rail should be in the public sector.

Briefly, I remind hon. Members of the forceful words used by the Comptroller and Auditor General in his evidence to the Treasury Committee on 4 December 2002. He said:

"In essence, my point was this: if Network Rail goes down, we are not going to have no railways in this country—the Government will provide them—and it is stacked up to the extent of £21 billion in the last analysis to do it. For those reasons I thought that, since that liability could accrue to the Government, it was right to make it clear and, indeed, there is a financial reporting standard, and I do my work in accordance with the financial reporting standards in the United Kingdom, that urges the principle of substance over form: that the auditor should, as it were, tell it how it is in his own judgment but should not seek to find mechanisms to, as it were, produce surprising results."

It was quite clear what the surprising results were. The Government had created a structure that led to the appointment of supposedly independent private sector directors, whose presence on the steering group of Network Rail allowed the ONS to insist that that body was a private sector body even though the risks that it was taking would fall to the public sector balance sheet if Network Rail came a cropper.

The right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire has underlined how the Government have got themselves into an even deeper hole as a consequence of removing the Strategic Rail Authority from the equation and giving the Secretary of State for Transport direct control. The Strategic Rail Authority already had a long list of direct responsibilities for Network Rail, which included not only appointment of non-executive members of the board but the right to remove the chairman and chief executive of Network Rail in certain serious circumstances, receipt of information from Network Rail, provision of grant support payments, and provision of credit facilities. Now, as the right hon. Gentleman said, those responsibilities have been transferred to the Secretary of State for Transport, making it even more difficult for the Government to argue that Network Rail is a private sector rather than a public sector entity.

All those examples—trust boards, foundation hospitals and Network Rail—demonstrate the importance of having objective accounting standards and transparency, not least because the way in which those standards are applied has a real effect on the way in which public borrowing and public expenditure consequences appear on the public balance sheet. It is incumbent on the Financial Secretary to explain to us today how the Government's existing rules give priority to substance over form rather than form over substance, which seems to have been the case with Network Rail and, to some extent, foundation hospitals. I hope that the Financial Secretary will respond to that, not least in the context of trust ports, which the hon. Member for Christchurch raised today.

This has been an excellent debate, ably opened by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope). It is a debate about accountability and openness, and many of the important issues that have been raised lie on the public record. We look forward to the Financial Secretary answering some of the questions that have been asked today.

My hon. Friend referred to the relationship between public corporations and nationalised industries, their relationship with their Department and the need for a robust definition of public corporations. My right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young), who is a distinguished former Transport Minister, spoke about the absolute requirement for transparency in public accounts. He drew our attention to Network Rail, as did the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws), the Liberal Democrat spokesman, and the difference between classification by the ONS, which said that borrowing would be classified as private sector borrowing, and the different view taken by the National Audit Office. In passing, I draw the Chamber's attention to an article on other work done by the ONS, which appeared in the Financial Times last week and which made it clear that the ONS has massively overestimated the amount of pension savings in the economy: the organisation is clearly under some pressure at the moment. My right hon. Friend also made a point about transparency in public accounts. It is clear that, as he said, since last Thursday Network Rail is no longer a private company.

I want to dwell briefly on the important issue of trust ports, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. Although trust ports play a relatively minor role in the industry, handling only 13 per cent. of UK trade and accounting for less than one third of commercial facilities, they are, nevertheless, an extremely important part of an important industry—UK ports. Just one trust port features in the top 10 UK ports, which together handle 67 per cent. of UK freight tonnage. However, those mainly small and medium-sized ports have considerable regional and local significance and are considerable economic players. They provide particular benefit to their areas because they are free to reinvest their profits for the benefit of all port users and wider regional and local interests.

As a result of the Government retaining appointment rights and the nature of the Ports Act 1991, which allows the Government to compel the conversion of trust ports to private companies, the ONS has classified major trust ports with a turnover of £6.6 million or more as public corporations. In 2003, the Government identified 21 trust ports in England and Wales that might fall into the classification of public corporations at that time. My hon. Friend identified a number of them. Together they have a total annual net worth of almost £300 million. That classification, however, has been confined to the national accounts and, as my hon. Friend explained, the Department for Transport has as yet neither tackled the issue, nor given any guidance to trust ports on the implications of reclassification. As I am sure the Financial Secretary will acknowledge, that uncertainty is damaging.

Ports have been advised by the Government to continue to operate as normal, but they are uncertain about the future and about the possible consequences of classification. There is, I believe, no good reason for that continued delay after nearly four years. The Financial Secretary has been asked a number of important questions both on trust ports and on Network Rail and the most appropriate thing that I can do is sit down and let her answer those points.

We have had an excellent debate. I thank the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) not only for securing it, but for introducing it in a fairly reasonable fashion. However, while listening to him I sometimes felt that a Transport Minister should have been present to respond to some of the issues he raised. I am the Minister responsible for the Office for National Statistics, although I emphasise that the ONS is independent of Government.

The hon. Gentleman is concerned about the ONS classification of bodies in the national accounts and what that means for trust ports. Before tackling the precise points that he made, it may be useful if I provide him and other Members with a little background about how public corporations are defined. I will not go through the detail of how they are defined, because he covered that in his opening remarks.

The decision on whether a particular body should be classified as a public corporation or a private one is taken by the ONS. As in all other matters, it makes its decision free from any political interference, as is only right and proper—I am sure the hon. Member for Christchurch agrees—and uses internationally recognised standards. The classification of bodies and their transactions and the production of those statistics is, therefore, a matter solely for the ONS. In new, novel or contentious cases, ONS may refer to EUROSTAT, the EU body responsible for the compilation of EU economic statistics. As such, it would not be right or proper of the Treasury to attempt to influence or put pressure on the ONS on issues pertaining to the national accounts.

I emphasise that statistics are used for different purposes. The ONS classifies public corporations as being in either the public sector or the private sector according to a national accounts definition on international best practice. It refers to EUROSTAT work where necessary. The National Audit Office has a different remit. It classifies organisations for a different purpose. After the debate that the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) and the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) referred to, that issue was raised in the context of Network Rail. Len Cook from the ONS and Sir John Bourn issued a joint statement saying that they were considering the same issues but had different purposes when classifying the organisation, so it was entirely appropriate that they came to different conclusions.

As all hon. Members know, the activity of all public corporations is included in the Government's key fiscal indicators and impacts on the fiscal rules. That gives a full picture of Her Majesty's Government's transactions, assets and liabilities, measured to include all public sector bodies, and ensures that the UK public sector's fiscal position is fully reported. So it is essential that we ensure that the activities of public corporations are properly reflected in our controlling and reporting of public expenditure.

The hon. Member for Christchurch raised particular issues about the classification of trust ports. That issue has been debated between the ONS and the Department for Transport—since 2001, I believe, rather than since 2000. He rightly points out that the question is complex. The answer depends on exactly how those corporations are controlled. The ONS was in discussions with the Department for Transport for a long period—until spring this year—about the appropriate classification. Initially, it thought that all 100 trust ports ought to be in the public sector. Once the Department for Transport had gathered and presented evidence from the ports, the ONS agreed that only 18 ports fell within the definition of a public corporation.

The matter has taken a long time to sort out, but now, I understand, the Department for Transport is completely content with the ONS decision. It is right that the ONS takes the decision, and that the Department abides by it.

The Financial Secretary has already given more information than I have been able to gather from Transport Ministers, for which I am grateful. She referred to the fact that 18 ports come within the classification. Can she say which of the 21 to which I referred have been excluded from the 18?

I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman here and now, but I will write to him with the classification agreed by the ONS. How the Department for Transport accounts in its resource accounts is an entirely different question, does not relate to the national accounts definition of a public corporation and is a matter for the Department and its auditors.

The Department for Transport is working closely with trust ports to identify why those 18 have been classified as public corporations and whether that is the appropriate structure for them. However, it is completely content with the ONS interpretation and classification. There is nothing further that I can add as Minister, except to say that the Department is now working closely with the trust ports. I am sure that any issues that the trust ports have with their classification will be dealt with directly by the Department for Transport.

I welcome the chance to raise this subject, because I have been inundated with letters from constituents who are angry about funding being slashed for courses that they are attending. In approaching the debate, I originally intended to amass lots of evidence of the benefits of non-vocational adult education to make my case. However, the evidence that I came across very much echoed my constituents' sentiments, so I decided to let my constituents speak for themselves. That will be the main thrust of my speech.

I know that some of my constituents have written to the Prime Minister on this matter, because many of the letters that I have received are copies of letters to him. Often, they point out that the mantra of "Education, education, education" has a hollow ring to it. The gist is that education is not the preserve of the young and that it should be available in all forms to all ages. Clearly, the title Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education is something of a misnomer, and we should perhaps refer to the "Minister for All Sorts of Learning—As Long as We Approve of it and Think You're Young Enough to Enjoy it".

Let me quote from one of the letters to the Prime Minister, which sums up the situation and the concerns of many:

"I attend a day time Art Class in Romsey, Hampshire and have been advised that the charges are being increased significantly next term as the Learning and Skills Council is withdrawing funding from such courses. I understand this is because of your Government's policy that funding should be redirected to education for 16 to 19 year olds and be concentrated on courses that lead to a qualification. The result of this increase will reduce the number of people able to participate in Adult education, as many are living on fixed income so they will no longer be able to afford the fees."

That is a commonly held sentiment.

"For someone who constantly reiterated that education was an essential part of your government's plans, this policy change can only be regarded as a U-turn. If your definition of education includes only courses which result in a paper qualification then the country is in a sorry state".

How will be people be affected financially? I received a letter from a lady called Janet Hoskins, who happens to be heavily involved with the Romsey Disability Forum:

"For fifteen years I have attended Yoga lessons at Romsey community school which I am positive has been of immeasurable benefit in keeping me active and mobile. As a disabled person on a basic pension I have been paying a concessionary price of £7.95 per term but from September 2004 I will have to pay £52.50 for 10 weeks of lessons—or £157.50 a year which would entirely wipe out my pension increase for this year".

She goes on to talk about other things that will wipe out that increase, but I will not hold the Minister responsible for them; I will stick to the point.

Clearly, that course was subsidised, and the loss of such subsidies will be felt hard by many of my constituents. I acknowledge that many people are not subsidised and have been happy to find the fees from their own pockets. That said, the old non-subsidised rate for such classes was £32 a term, so there will be a 64 per cent. increase in fees, which many people have told me they can ill afford.

As I said, the courses that will be affected this year are non-academic adult education classes, and they include subjects such as yoga, art, flower arranging, dance, meditation, antiques, garden design, woodwork, textiles, cookery and exercise. As I said, the fee increases are swingeing. I readily admit that some constituents can afford the fees and will pay them, but they too may be deprived of the opportunity to take such courses, which will simply not be run if there are insufficient subscribers. It seems that everybody is a loser.

Although finance is the motivating force behind many of the letters that I have received, I have been struck by people's reasons for being so upset about not being able to access their courses. I have had a lot of letters from people who took up yoga; I do not know whether they got together to write to me, but I was struck by the frequency with which the theme arose. One of the letters stated:

"We think that this is a very short sighted move, especially as applied to fitness activities such as yoga which we are urged to take up and must reduce the burden on the already hard pressed NHS. I speak from experience on this latter point because yoga has cured a back problem which had troubled me for years."

Another said:

"Not only does yoga provide exercise, it also teaches techniques for coping with the stresses of modern living so avoiding the need to visit our GPs for tranquilising drugs."

Yoga classes are not the only classes that are being hit; all exercises classes are being similarly affected. That seems most peculiar at a time when the Government are supposedly concerned about the levels of obesity in the country. Their early mantra was "joined-up government," so I am particularly disappointed by their withdrawal of funds from exercise classes, which will have an effect elsewhere and will be detrimental to other Government policies. As one constituent put it:

"I hope that the County Council"—

I might return to county councils in a moment—

"will be able to find some way forward to meet the needs of all students and not just those who are financially advantaged, otherwise the number of obese couch potatoes in Hampshire is likely to increase."

A 72-year-old said:

"I need gentle exercise—as do many other pensioners. Please get the people who have thought this up to give it more thought as it will damage the elderly and people who could never pay these costs."

Another constituent said that

"people who attend them are mentally and physically stimulated and enjoy life more. I believe that some local doctors are already voicing their concern."

Many of the people who wrote to me to complain about the changes were elderly, but that was not exclusively the case. Courses are often accessed by people with young families, and can provide all-important "time for me" as well as an opportunity to learn a new skill that might lead to other things. I would go so far as to say that some young people might have missed the 14 to 19 boat and not made the most of the opportunities available to them at school. Such courses often provide an unchallenging environment in which the individual does not have to pass or fail. That is a very important factor for anyone who believes that they failed at school.

My local adult education partnership knows of several occasions when a non-vocational course has led to something more formal. By threatening the viability of these courses, the Government have cut off a possible lifeline to some people who might now never take that first small step towards another qualification. As one constituent put it:

"it has always been that those whose years of compulsory education were unsatisfactory or curtailed in any way, had the opportunity in later life to rectify shortcomings if they were prepared to sacrifice their free time. Soon, that opportunity will be available only to those with sufficient finance."

That constituent was talking more broadly, but he was referring to the fact that some people introduce themselves to something that does not have an examination associated with it.

I was also told that some people have used courses such as flower arranging as a starter into a business opportunity. I know of a lady from Angie's fruit and vegetable shop, which provides very nice bouquets. She learned her skills on a so-called non-vocational course and used them to add value to a business that was not doing as well as it might. Others have developed catering and cake decorating businesses or have gone on to teach classes of their own. Some have even taken art degrees. Particularly inspiring is a woman who teaches textile arts. At the weekend, I visited an exhibition that showed some of the students' work. I was very impressed. She started with a leisure course on her one free day a week while caring for a disabled husband. She gained confidence and went on to take a City and Guilds qualification. She took an adult teaching qualification after her husband's death, and now teaches to very high levels. She is in great demand. People ask her to work more than she feels she can.

Another person studied several languages, starting with a beginners' conversation class and moving on to more formal qualifications once confidence was gained. Language classes are safe for this year, but I gather that the plan for next year is to withdraw funding from "non-qualification courses", such as computer and language courses, which currently contribute to the skills strategy. This is a seriously retrograde step, as courses such as the local course on creating websites will be affected. On that course, four people from local IT companies came along in their own time to find out more about an aspect of IT that they were thinking of branching into independently. As one constituent put it:

"Was it not an aim of the Government that we should all become computer literate, and are we to continue to be the laughing stock of the world by our inability to cope with other languages."

I received an e-mail this morning from someone who has studied a number of languages in an adult education setting and has just sat the GCSE Spanish exam. I quote:

"I asked the Head of Department about the next level, and said that having got the Institute of Linguists Advanced Level Certificate in French back in 1996 I would now like to proceed to do the same thing in Spanish. She said that Eastleigh college had decided against putting on any examination based courses for adults, on the grounds that adults such as me only learn for fun and don't want to take exams: It's only 'Holiday Spanish' or 'Holiday French' I suppose. This ignores the fact that running a course leading to an exam gives the likes of me the opportunity to take it; and those who don't want to sit it can just do the course and opt out of doing the exam."

Either way, the skills base has been improved.

However, the vast majority of people who have written to me on this subject are the elderly—the pensioners. Their words say it all and I shall quote from some of their letters:

"These courses are a lifeline to many older people who not only enjoy the challenge of learning but the opportunity to make new friends."

"Why are older people (who are generally the ones who do day time adult education) given less priority than youngsters?…Is this another example of ageism that the Government is always arguing it wants to stop?"

"The Government wants pensioners to remain active both physically and mentally (use it don't lose it) to reduce the costs of the NHS and elderly care services. They do not want a lot of people vegetating and so becoming infirm and unable to cope."

"One of the benefits of the adult education scheme is that it gives people an interest and something they enjoy doing. This has the benefit of keeping brains active, making them go out and keeps bodies healthier, and providing an enjoyable hobby and companionship keeps people happy and less likely to sink into depression. Is this not a benefit to the NHS? I understood that it was preferable to keep the elderly members of the country fit, well and healthy—rather than having them atrophy in their armchairs."

"People who attend adult classes are often full time carers."—

I was surprised by the frequency with which that was mentioned; it had not occurred to me—

"The class is one of the few times that they are able to do something for themselves and forget the daily grind of looking after a loved one."

Another person says:

"I was widowed in June 2001, and retired in Dec 2001. I sincerely believe that attending these so called recreational adult classes has kept my mind sane, and my body fit, during the most difficult period of my life. Like many others of my generation I left school at 15 and these classes also give access to areas of learning that were simply not available to us when we were younger."

We sometimes forget that a whole generation left school at 15 or 16. Many people from that generation, because of their class background, did not have many opportunities. I am glad that the situation is not the same today, but it seems a shame for those people to miss out indefinitely.

Another person said:

"Such action, and the resulting increase in fees, will particularly affect pensioners, carers and many on income support and will be detrimental to the physical and mental health and well-being of many people."

I tabled some parliamentary questions on the subject. Initially, the rhetoric was positive, which I thought might be a good sign. I quote from the response to my question from one of the Minister's colleagues:

"The results from both areas of work confirm the positive impact of adult learning e.g. on health and civic participation and on the individual's confidence and motivation to undertake further learning. That is why we remain committed to safeguarding a varied range of learning opportunities for personal fulfilment, community development and active citizenship."—[Official Report, 8 June 2004; Vol. 422, c. 291W.]

However, when I asked a more specific question about withdrawing funding from adult learning courses, the response was more defensive:

"Where there is a need for more vocational provision to meet the needs of learners and employers I would expect local LSCs and learning providers to re-direct resources to meet those priorities."—[Official Report, 15 June 2004; Vol. 422, c. 907W.]

Although I fully acknowledge the needs of the young, I must point out that Hampshire is an area of relatively low unemployment. There is a skills gap but, for the reasons I mentioned earlier, it is a retrograde step to withdraw funding from adult education courses. There are many benefits to those classes. My constituents have spoken for themselves: the benefits are health, mental stimulation and social inclusion, as well as a less formal way of obtaining access to continuing education.

I hope that it is not too late to retrieve the situation. I urge the Minister either to obtain funding so that courses can go ahead, or give the Learning and Skills Council the clear message that the courses are important and should not be sacrificed because of the requirements of 14 to 19-year-old education.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Romsey (Sandra Gidley) on securing the debate, giving me an opportunity to speak about the Government's commitment to maintaining appropriate provision for adult learners, not just in Hampshire but across the country. Our starting point must be our White Paper, "21st Century Skills: Realising Our Potential", which was published last July and was welcomed by the Liberal Democrats, the trade union movement, employers and almost everyone involved in post-16 education.

We undertook in the White Paper to safeguard adult learning provision that does not lead directly to a qualification—the courses that the hon. Lady mentioned. We are committed to ensuring that people of all ages continue to have the opportunity to benefit from courses that will improve their lives and help them to sustain active roles in their communities. We know that participation in high-quality learning leads to positive social outcomes such as better health, reduction of child poverty, lessening of crime and a stronger sense of citizenship and personal security, especially for those living alone.

There is nothing between us on this; we also need to support and develop learning that leads to skills— including literacy, numeracy and use of information technology—that are relevant to the modern workplace and will help individuals who return to learning to take the all-important first step on the learning ladder. We also recognise the importance of giving people the chance to learn for its own sake, for personal fulfilment and, indeed, for fun. There must always be a place in every community for that kind of learning.

That is why we have agreed with the Learning and Skills Council a budget of £207 million from within the funding allocations for 2004–05 to safeguard non-qualification-bearing provision provided through local education authorities and family and neighbourhood learning. That compares, incidentally, with £206 million in 2003–04 and represents an increase of 43 per cent. on the £145 million that was provided at the turn of the century.

About 1 million adults attend such courses every year. The total funding for Hampshire local education authority for 2003–04 was £2,040,878. Despite other pressures Hampshire LEA's funding has risen to £2,074, 495 in 2004–05. I am assured by Hampshire and Isle of Wight Learning and Skills Council that there is no intention to withdraw funding from non-vocational learning in Hampshire. However, it is rightly working to ensure that funds are distributed fairly and effectively across the county, according to national priorities and local needs.

I am pleased that the Minister has received that reassurance, because when I spoke to the Learning and Skills Council it was made very clear that the total moneys that it had been given meant that it needed to prioritise; it was working with the county council to do so. Clearly, something has gone wrong somewhere. The money does not seem to be getting forward to the courses. Will there be a catch-up?

If the hon. Lady listens to my entire speech, I think that all will be explained. The view is sometimes projected—although this is not what she argued—that we are to withdraw all funding from non-vocational adult learning and direct everything towards education for the 14 to 19 age group. That is not true; it is not even true that the 14 to 19-year-old group is our particular priority.

We are still putting an incredible amount of funding into the provision—far more than three years ago and more than last year; there is a 45 per cent. increase. It is important to realise that we cannot fund everything, but we set out some priorities in the White Paper on the 21st century skills strategy, which I shall deal with in a moment.

According to the local education authority, of the 26,000 learners attending courses in 2003–04, some 20,000 followed traditional courses of non-vocational learning—leisure learning—with the remainder taking up family learning and other provisions. Hampshire and Isle of Wight are now re-assessing priorities, and some of the funding received from the LSC will not be used to support leisure learning but will instead be directed to provision for learners in line with the LSC's aim of widening participation in learning, and supporting the level 2 entitlement.

The 21st-century skills White Paper says yes to funding adult learning and non-vocational learning—it is an important part of our policy—but our priority must be to tackle the almost 7 million adults mentioned by the hon. Lady who, like my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. Laxton) and me, may have left school without qualifications and find themselves in the workplace without the equivalent of five good GCSEs.

That group has been passed over by various strategies. People have spoken wise words, not to mention a few platitudes. The point about the skills strategy, which has been developed with the social partners—the CBI, the TUC, the educational establishment and others—is that it will tackle the issue once and for all. From next year, therefore, any adult who does not have at least an NVQ level 2 qualification will be entitled to training. They are not 16 to 19-year-olds; they are adults. Their training will be provided free of charge, and they will receive financial support. That is the big priority.

The LEA will continue to support learners in traditional leisure learning provision using its own resources, although there will be some increases in fee levels and some provision may not be offered in future. It is a fact of life that resources will always be finite and that, along with new commitments to investment, hard choices sometimes have to be made between competing priorities.

We have never said that no one will pay more for their learning, nor that the future of individual courses can be guaranteed. It is inevitable that some learners will pay a higher contribution to the cost of their learning, but not those who cannot afford it. Indeed, the priority for the LEA and the LSC is to protect those people mentioned by the hon. Lady who cannot afford to pay. However, as she pointed out, many can afford it. If we are serious about the skills strategy, those hard choices have to be made.

It is inevitable that some LEAs will need to refocus their provisions in order to address those new priorities. As set out in the skills strategy White Paper, we intend to achieve a new and fair balance of responsibilities for funding between Government, employers and learners. That is underlined in our recently announced five-year strategy, which places adult skills high on the agenda. Colleges are central to achieving our goals, and we want the sector to be better attuned to the needs of business and of learners. The strategy means that we shall have to review the national funding framework. Although we need to protect those in greatest need, the new framework will encourage and incentivise colleges to increase and diversify their income, with contributions being made by employers and those learners who gain most and who can afford it.

Later this summer, the Learning and Skills Council intends to consult widely on proposals for the reform and planning of non-vocational education for adults. That will include learning for personal fulfilment as well as opportunities for those who want to take a first step on the learning ladder or who want to try out learning before committing themselves. The aim is to establish a more consistent, more coherent and more equitable distribution of funding, which will iron out discrepancies—for example, between LEAs—and protect the provider base.

We are also working with the LSC to determine more accurately and in more detail the nature and scale of non-vocational learning. That will assist the LSC, its local offices and their partners in determining future priorities, including the balance between learning for personal fulfilment, and first steps and return to learn opportunities.

The spending review is a good settlement for education and skills. The total funding for colleges is planned to rise to £5.6 billion in 2005–06, which is an increase of £1.2 billion compared with the beginning of the spending review period and a totally unprecedented 19 per cent. real-terms increase. The settlement goes along with a 60 per cent. increase in capital and is a real vote of confidence in the FE sector.

Through the LSC, we are investing more than ever in learning and skills. Its learning participation budget has risen to £6.3 billion this year, but we must get the resource allocations right in order to redistribute and rebalance the contributions of the state, the learner and the employer and to recognise our shared responsibility.

The Government and the LSC will have to make decisions that are based on accurate and effective planning and monitoring. I am sure that they will be the right decisions, but we cannot promise that they will always be popular with everybody. Although we recognise that the benefits of learning reach beyond the economic agenda, we must prioritise public funding in areas where we believe it will have the most impact, and many of them involve developing the skills of our workers and potential workers.

I am interested in the skills argument, but many people have raised health arguments. Has the Minister considered consulting Health Ministers about a portion of health funding going towards at least some of the exercise courses for older people—a sort of course on prescription, which would help the Department for Education and Skills?

The skills strategy was actually signed by four Departments. It was unique, as it was signed by the Treasury, the Department for Education and Skills, the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department for Work and Pensions. The Department of Health was not one of those four, but the hon. Lady makes an important point.

We do not know what we are unleashing. There is the potential for 7 million adults to return to learning and obtain a level 2 qualification. Many of them need entry to employment—a pipeline—before they even get to level 2. We estimate that 1.5 million people will enter the system in the first year, but the point is that we are trialling the level 2 entitlement in two regions, precisely to examine how it impacts on the issues that the hon. Lady mentions. One region is the south-east; the other is the north-east. One could not get two more different regions, geographically and socially. The trial will have an important effect on how we tackle issues.

The White Paper set out our plans for the introduction of a new entitlement to free learning for all those seeking to achieve their first level 2 qualification and some free learning for those in level 3 where there are real skills shortages. Level 2 is the foundation qualification for skills and employability and it will be supported by the introduction of an adult learning grant.

The latest data from the labour force survey states that 71.3 per cent. of adults in the work force are qualified to at least level 2, which is an increase from 70.6 per cent. at the same time last year and from 68 per cent. just over five years ago. However, as I have said, almost 7 million adults remain unqualified to that level, and, as the hon. Lady said, 400,000—the highest level—of those are in the Hampshire and Isle of Wight area. Some 235,560 people have a low level of basic skills, and we must attract those people back to learning and education. The trials will be crucial to getting the balance right, but I hope that the hon. Lady agrees that if we have a priority, we must pursue it, and that means hard choices.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to debate the recent ICJ ruling on the Israeli security barrier. On 9 July, the ICJ ruled by 14 votes to one:

"The construction of the wall being built by Israel … in the occupied territories"

is

"contrary to international law".

The ruling is important for the jurisprudence of the ICJ. It provides the international community with a clear and unifying judgment and, importantly, it judges that the wall is illegal.

I welcome Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan and hope that the Quartet's road map succeeds. However, intentions and hopes do not justify ignoring the illegal status of the Israeli wall now. I want to use this debate to ascertain the Government's position on a number of key points. First, can my hon. Friend the Minister confirm that the British Government accept the legal legitimacy of the ruling? The wall not only cuts inside the green line, confiscating Palestinian land, but snakes back on itself to form 11 completely separate enclaves, which in effect imprison the Palestinian residents, whose only access is governed by the use of gates opened at set times at the will of the Israeli defence forces. The building of the wall continues to destroy and annex de facto Palestinian land and to separate communities from their lands, hospitals, schools and family members.

The United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs report entitled "Preliminary Analysis of the Humanitarian Implications of the latest Barrier Projections", dated 8 July 2004, refers on page 4 to the "Humanitarian consequences". It states:

"The Barrier … fragments communities and isolates residents from social support networks."

In effect, the Israeli wall is destroying civil society, causing a humanitarian catastrophe, and it acts as a de facto catalyst for the extremists of Hamas.

More widely, the conflict is severe and escalating. Since September 2000, 15,000 people have been made homeless in Rafah. After the wave of incursions in May in revenge for the blowing up of 13 IDF soldiers in Gaza, more than 30 Palestinians were killed, including children, and about 1,400 people were made homeless by demolitions. Since September 2000, more than 670 children have been killed, of whom 573 were Palestinian and 105 Israeli. Almost 2,000 Palestinian children have been arrested, interrogated, detained or imprisoned. Currently, 337 Palestinian children are in Israeli prisons.

The building of the wall simply exacerbates the conflict. According to the ICJ, Israel's actions constitute a

"threat to international peace and security".

In such circumstances, the UN Security Council must act. However, the Court said that the Security Council had been prevented from acting by American vetoes. The United States has vetoed 79 Security Council resolutions, and almost half the vetoes were cast on Israel's behalf.

Will the Minister assure me that Her Majesty's Government will put as much pressure as possible on the United States to try to ensure that it does not veto any future Security Council vote on the ICJ's decision? The ICJ ruled:

"The United Nations, and especially the General Assembly and the Security Council, should consider what further action is required to bring to an end the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall."

What action will the Government take to end the construction of the wall and what representation will they make?

The ICJ's ruling goes on to say that all nations

"are under an obligation not to recognize the illegal situation arising from the construction of the wall, and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining that situation."

Does the Minister support that ruling and the Select Committee on International Development's second report of Session 2003–04, which argues that Israel's preferential terms of trade with the EU should be suspended until Israel lifts the movement restrictions placed on Palestinian trade?

The formalism that underpins the court's ruling advances jurisprudence in a key international area. It is, therefore, an important ruling that, with the support of the international community, can further the development of an international jurisprudence based on the affirmation of normative values fundamental to the equality of universal and individual human rights and a just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The advisory opinion represents a triumph for Israelis and Palestinians alike. By rejecting Israel's construction of the wall, the court emphasises the humanity of both peoples. Israel may build a wall, but only on its own territory, within the confines of international law. I call on my hon. Friend the Minister to make strong representations to Israel to acknowledge the ICJ ruling, to cease the construction of the wall and to seek a solution to the conflict in the occupied territories.

On 28 January this year, the Prime Minister responded to my question in the House of Commons, saying:

"we do not agree with the building of the wall on Palestinian land and we have urged the Israeli Government to reroute the fence away from Palestinian land."—[Official Report, 28 January 2004; Vol. 417, c. 308.]

The Prime Minister has repeatedly called for the international community to work together against threats to international peace and security. Will my hon. Friend now confirm the Government's support for the ICJ's ruling, given the Prime Minister's clear and unwavering support for the unity of the international community against threats to international peace and security?

The United Kingdom's written statement, submitted to the United Nations in January 2004, opposed the hearing of the case in the ICJ. The objections were based on three points, the first two of which I wish the Minister to clarify. The UK statement reads as follows:

"An opinion is not necessary to assist the General Assembly in the exercise of its functions, and would be as likely to prove detrimental to the work of the UN as a whole".

Why is that the Government's position? Why would it be detrimental to the work of the UN, when the UN itself is proposing it?

Secondly, the written statement asserted that

"The present case concerns a bilateral dispute".

How does my hon. Friend define a bilateral dispute? A range of resolutions has been passed by the UN on the issue. Bilateral dispute or not, the ICJ is an appropriate body to make such a judgment. Will my hon. Friend explain why a clarification of the law is unhelpful to negotiations? Paragraph 3.25 of the road map, which the Government support, says:

"The emphasis is upon future action, rather than responsibility for what has happened in the past."

The EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said:

"We have underlined that the wall not only results in confiscation of Palestinian land and causes untold humanitarian and economic hardship, but also could prejudge future negotiations and hinder a just political solution to the conflict."

Is not the request for an advisory opinion concerned with the consequences of the ongoing construction of the wall, and does it not, therefore, look to the future rather than to the past? How does my hon. Friend the Minister rationalise the Government's support for the Quartet road map and their simultaneous opposition to the ICJ's hearing the case? The written statements submitted to the court by other members of the Quartet do not contain evidence that giving an advisory opinion will be detrimental to the work of the UN. Indeed, the United States' written statement did not oppose the jurisdiction of the ICJ in this case as that of the UK Government did. Paragraph 4.2 of its submission provides a route for the court to give an advisory opinion. It states:

"Should the Court decide to provide an advisory opinion, the United States would urge the Court to keep in mind two key aspects of the peace process".

Clearly, the United States accepts that an advisory opinion can go ahead and the court can decide.

Our Government argue in point 2 of their written statement that the case concerns a bilateral dispute. The term bilateral dispute presupposes that the dispute is between two sovereign states. Israel is both a sovereign state and a member of the United Nations, and is recognised as such by Her Majesty's Government. However, Palestine is not recognised as a sovereign state by Her Majesty's Government. Can my hon. Friend the Minister explain why the Government objected to the ICJ's hearing the case, given that Her Majesty's Government do not recognise Palestine as a sovereign state, so the conflict cannot be defined as a bilateral dispute?

Do not Her Majesty's Government have an obligation under article 1 of the fourth Geneva convention 1949

"to respect and ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances"?

Is not this one of those circumstances?

Last July, I visited Palestine and saw for myself at first hand the grotesque sight of the concrete wall, barbed wire, electrified fence, patrolled roads and watchtowers, all of which have been built illegally on Palestinian land. The Israeli Government ignore the international community's opinion. It is essential that the peace process should succeed, but the continued building of the wall by Israel must be dealt with as a current issue. Future hopes of peace and the so-called peace process cannot be used as a justification to ignore the illegality of the wall and not to take action. If the International Court of Justice had agreed with the UK Government's written statement and not ruled on the Israeli wall, it would have been in breach of article 1 of the fourth Geneva convention. The court would have risked its own integrity by ruling against the weight of international law. Will my hon. Friend the Minister advise me of the Government's position on that point?

The ICJ ruling advances normative jurisprudence, which the Government should welcome, as it is underpinned by the ethics of equality and further entrenches human rights values.

The wall and fence, now termed a security barrier, are an affront to humanity. For the United States and the United Kingdom to wring their hands and talk about a peace process while people are losing their lives and livelihoods is an outrage and will fuel deeper resentment in the middle east and in the Muslim world as a whole, breeding new terrorism.

If the wall is allowed to be completed on Palestinian land, it will have annexed land that was agreed by both sides to belong to the Palestinians according to the 1967 borders. I call upon the UK Government to use all their influence with the United States to bring pressure to bear on the state of Israel and to use their important role in the European Union to do the same. In this so-called dispute, we are nearing the point of no return and I ask the Government to use all available means to stop us reaching that point.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Mr. Hendrick) on securing a debate on a subject of enormous concern to hon. Members on both sides of the House, as is attested by the number of parliamentary questions and debates that are initiated on it. There is genuine and enduring cross-party concern about the issue.

I shall try to respond to some of the points that have been made and to set out the Government's position in our response to the ICJ ruling. Although we understand Israel's need to take steps to protect itself from terrorist attack, over a long time we have made it clear that it must do so within the confines of international law. Bluntly, it is our clear view that building the barrier—wall or fence—on occupied land is illegal; there is no other way of putting it.

The European Union and the United Nations General Assembly said the same thing; therefore, it is no surprise that the ICJ advisory opinion of 9 July reached the same conclusion. Within that context, the Government continue to call on the Government of Israel to reroute the barrier so that it does not run through occupied land. There is no equivocation whatever on the issue.

I thank the Minister for giving way. His statement that the barrier is illegal is welcome. In that context, what advice would he give to any British contractors or suppliers who might be involved in the construction of what is clearly an illegal wall?

I have made our view clear; the wall is illegal if it is built on occupied land and I would hope that contractors would take account of that view.

Let me make it clear that not only does the barrier on its current route contravene international law, it also inflicts terrible humanitarian hardship upon thousands of Palestinian families. The confiscation of Palestinian land associated with the construction of the barrier and the impact on Palestinian freedom of movement within the west bank have taken a dreadful toll on the daily lives of ordinary Palestinians. Even taking into account Israel's genuine security concerns, the way in which the wall is being constructed and its route are extremely counter-productive from a political point of view. It simply inflames Palestinian public opinion and harms genuine prospects for peace.

I welcome my hon. Friend's statement. The illegality of the route of the wall is unquestionable, but the genuine security concerns of the Israeli population are equally unquestionable, as is the suffering and hardship of the Palestinians. What weight does the Minister give to the recent Israeli High Court ruling, and to the likely influence of a Shimon Peres coalition on the future route of the wall? We have not seen the end of the wall—or fence or barrier—and it has a long way to run. Where does he think that it will go following the ruling?

I will come to the ruling later. The Israeli Government, however they are constituted, need to move forward on their commitments under the road map, as do the Palestinian authorities, as it is the only viable way towards resolving this issue. The continued settlement and road building and construction of the barrier are in danger of carving the west bank into isolated cantons, so that a negotiated settlement involving a viable and contiguous Palestinian state looks ever harder to achieve. That has to be an element of what we seek to secure with the overall peace settlement in the middle east.

In the UK's written statement to the ICJ of 30 January—this comes to the nub of the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Preston—we said that it should decline to give an advisory opinion. The written statement expressed our view that it was inappropriate for the ICJ to resolve a bilateral dispute between parties when one of those parties has not consented to the jurisdiction of the court. That is a point about the ICJ's role and how it works, not about the barrier.

My hon. Friend is perfectly correct to say that one party did not consent to the ICJ hearing but, in terms of the rules and operation of the ICJ, in cases of doubt as to whether it has jurisdiction, it is the court itself that should decide whether it should give a ruling.

That is absolutely right but, if we have a view about the modus operandi, terms of ruling and remit of the ICJ in a particular case, it is right that we should make our view clear when we give our submission to the court, and that is what we did.

I may disagree with my hon. Friend on that last point, but the fact is that the Court did rule. It has given its opinion, after which Kofi Annan said:

"I think the decision of the court is clear … While we accept that the government of Israel has a responsibility and duty to protect its citizens, any action it takes has to be in conformity with international law and has to respect the interests of the Palestinians."

Given that my hon. Friend said that the British Government's position is that the wall is illegal whether the court has ruled it so or not, and given that Israel has said that it will take no notice of the ICJ ruling or of international opinion, what do the British Government feel that we should do?

Order. That was a rather long intervention.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I shall come to that issue. I am making the Government's position abundantly clear, and I will go on to articulate what I think should happen.

Let me make it clear that, notwithstanding the procedural point that we made about the ICJ, we also made clear our view that the barrier along its current route contravenes international law. We have closely studied the ICJ's advisory opinion on the legality of the barrier, which was published on 9 July. In response to the key questions that my hon. Friend the Member for Preston raised, overall, the ICJ conclusions in law are broadly in line with our own, but we do not agree with all the legal analysis. We were also disappointed that the advisory opinion made so little reference either to the real security threat that Israel faces or to Israel's absolute right in international law to defend itself against terrorism. Indeed, no mention is made of Palestinian responsibility to act where possible against terrorism.

My hon. Friend the Member for Preston also asked whether there was a need for the clarification of the law, through the ICJ. I do not believe that that is necessary, since the Government and the EU have made clear their positions on the legality, and the UN General Assembly has already concluded that the barrier is illegal.

Notwithstanding that, the Palestinians have put a draft resolution to the General Assembly, which was looked at yesterday and will be deliberated on later today. The Government and our EU partners have looked at the resolution closely, as we should, and have suggested some amendments, primarily to ensure that there is no ambiguity about the status of the ICJ advisory opinion and to introduce a recognition that the Palestinian Authority, as well as the Israeli Government, should act according to international law. If our amendments are accepted, we will support that resolution, which I would hope would reassure hon. Members present at this debate.

It is also true that Israel faces a deadly terrorist threat. That fact should not be lost sight of in this debate. Israel's citizens live in fear of indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets anywhere in the country. The Israeli Government have the right to do all that they can within international law to protect their citizens. We should not ignore the decision by the Israeli High Court to rule in favour of Palestinian petitioners who brought a case against confiscation orders issued by the Israel defence forces for a 30 km stretch of land to be used for construction of the barrier around Jerusalem. It is encouraging that the Israeli Government have accepted that ruling and are reconsidering the route of the barrier in that stretch of land.

I hope that Israel will pay equal attention to the impact of the barrier elsewhere in the west bank. According to recent UN figures, the total projected barrier, of around 700 km, which would run down the south of the west bank, would result in approximately 16.6 per cent. of the entire west bank being de facto annexed. The number of Palestinians living between the barrier and the green line would total about 237,000, of whom 220,000 would be in East Jerusalem and 17,000 would be in the west bank, and another 160,000 Palestinians would live in enclaves. Israel's military order of 2 October 2003, which declares land between the barrier and the green line a closed zone and requires those Palestinians who live on or farm it to apply for a permit to access their land, is a particular issue of concern.

Let me be clear: destruction of property in the construction of the barrier in occupied territory is not justified by absolute military necessity and is therefore unlawful under the terms of the fourth Geneva convention.

Israel points out that in recent months there has been a dramatic decrease in the number of suicide bombings and attacks by terrorist organisations. I do not dispute that a security barrier might prevent attacks. It is indeed likely that the barrier has prevented some attacks or made it easier for the Israeli authorities to intercept them. However, it is the route that Israel has chosen for the barrier—in large part through occupied territories— that the UK remains opposed to. That is a view that we strongly hold. We will press it in all forums, as strongly as we can, and also through the Quartet.

Where the barrier separates Palestinians from Palestinians, rather than Palestinians from Israelis, it does not appear to have taken a route decided solely on grounds of security, and the impact on the daily lives of Palestinian people has been dreadful. Palestinian farmers are being separated from their fields, children from their schools and the sick from hospitals. The Government believe that building a barrier on occupied land is illegal, that the humanitarian impact is unacceptable and that routing the barrier through Palestinian land is not necessary to protect Israeli security.

We continue to recognise Israel's right to defend itself, but reiterate the need for Israel to act in accordance with international law. We call on Israel to reroute the barrier, away from the occupied territories. We also call on the Palestinian Authority to meet its security responsibilities. The Palestinian Authority must continue with the reforms—especially security reforms—and demonstrate 100 per cent. effort to act against violence and root out terrorism. Attacks against civilians, including suicide bombings, are utterly unjustifiable and we rightly condemn them.

The UK has worked with the Palestinian Authority to improve its security capacity. We recognise the security successes where we have seen them, but the picture is not yet one of 100 per cent. consistent effort; we urge further efforts in that direction.

My hon. Friend is aware of the desperate situation inside Gaza. What are the British Government and the international community doing to try to bring some stability to Gaza?

We continue to have genuine concerns, and we are in contact with all sides to press those concerns and ensure that those issues are acted on. We also call on the Palestinian Authority to deliver in full on its security commitments under the road map. In the past few days, we have seen some changes in the structure of the Palestinian security services and a number of new appointments. It is not yet clear what will be the practical outcome of those changes, but we have made it clear that if the changes lead to an improved Palestinian security effort, we will welcome them.

The picture on the ground remains appalling. As I said earlier, although I do understand genuine Israeli security concerns, it is nevertheless a fact that both sides continue to suffer. In the past two weeks, three Israelis and in excess of 50 Palestinians have been killed. The latter figure may well include some terrorists, but it also includes six children, one mentally handicapped person and one elderly disabled man, which should be a cause of concern to us all.

Among the Palestinian community, poverty remains at unprecedented levels. Some 60 per cent. of Palestinians now live on less than $2.10 a day. Families have sold their assets, borrowed from friends and neighbours and cut their intake of food. The people are running out of coping mechanisms. The UK rightly responds to that humanitarian need. This financial year's planning figures for the UK aid programme are £28.5 million. The UK is the second largest bilateral donor after the United States, and we also contribute nearly 20 per cent. of European Community support to the Palestinians. Emergency donor budget support has helped to prevent economic collapse, but longer-term economic recovery is dependent on the lifting of the closures and the free movement of goods and people.

The EU trade agreement was raised. That issue has consistently come forward, and the Government genuinely do not believe that sanctions would help both parties to reach a solution. We need movement on the road map from both sides, and intervening in such a financial way at the moment would not help that process.

The real objective for us all is a comprehensive negotiated settlement. The Government continue to work to remove the obstacles to the resumption of a political process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. From the Prime Minister down, we continue our close engagement on the middle east peace process through extensive contacts with the parties, the quartet and other international players, working to push forward the road map process.

We believe that Israeli Prime Minister Sharon's proposals to withdraw from Gaza settlements, and from some settlements in the west bank, should provide an opportunity to break the deadlock. Withdrawal must not be a first and a last step, but the first part of a process leading back to true progress on the peace process, and that means progress on the road map. If the road map did not exist, a similar mechanism would have to be established. We continue to press both sides to honour their commitments.

The international focus on the prospect of withdrawal from Gaza in no way negates the need for Israel and the Palestinians to meet their road map commitments in full, nor does Gaza withdrawal affect the position on the final status issues. All final status issues, including borders and refugees, must be agreed in negotiations between the two parties. The international community needs to continue to press to make Gaza withdrawal a success and to make sure it leads to further withdrawals and a proper political process. The Quartet plans that were set out for the way ahead after the meeting in New York on 4 May are an important step forward. The UK will continue to work alongside the US, the EU, the UN and regional players to help the Israelis and Palestinians to break the vicious cycle of violence and resume negotiations. I genuinely do not believe that there is an alternative way forward—