This morning, my noble Friend the Attorney-General made a statement in another place about the review of infant death syndrome cases. His statement is as follows:

"On 19 January this year the Court of Appeal published its judgment allowing the appeal of Angela Cannings against conviction for murder of two of her children.

Following that judgment I did two things. First, I asked the Crown Prosecution Service to review all current cases where a parent or carer was being prosecuted for killing an infant aged under two. The CPS has done that and has decided not to proceed in three of those cases. Those are the current cases.

Secondly, I have, as the House will be aware, established a review of past cases where a parent or carer had been convicted of killing an infant under two in the last 10 years. The aim of my review was to identify whether other cases of infant homicide bore the hallmarks described by the Court of Appeal in the Cannings case as making a conviction potentially unsafe. I instructed the reviewing team to identify any cases where there was concern, even if it was not strictly a so-called sudden infant death syndrome case.

That identification process involved all CPS areas, the Home Office homicide register and the police. A total of 297 cases of past convictions have been identified and reviewed. Of those, in 180 cases I propose to take no further action as I consider that they give no cause for concern. The fact that I do not propose to take any further action on these cases in no way precludes the defence appealing to the Court of Appeal if they have not already done so, or applying to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

In 28 cases action has been taken as I considered that there was cause for concern in those cases. We have notified our concern to the defence solicitors, notified the CCRC and notified the Court of Appeal. It is now for the defendant to decide whether to take the case to appeal either directly or through the CCRC. The fact that these cases have been referred does not mean that the conviction will automatically be overturned. What it means is that it will be looked at again by the CCRC, if the defendant so wishes. Either the CCRC or the defendant may make a reference to the Court of Appeal. At that point it will be for the CPS to decide whether they will resist such an appeal. Of these 28 cases, three are convictions closely analogous to the case of Angela Cannings, i.e. sudden infant death cases. In the other 25 cases there were other concerns about the medical evidence.

Of the 297 cases reviewed, there are 89 cases which we have identified as shaken baby syndrome cases and which I have decided not to refer at this stage. Although shaken baby syndrome cases differ in a number of respects from sudden infant death syndrome cases there is a similarity in that there has been growing medical controversy about the identification of the cause of the injuries. Knowledge of shaken baby syndrome will continue to grow over time and I appreciate that any determination I make on these cases is based on current knowledge. I am aware that the Court of Appeal is to consider four joined cases on shaken baby syndrome in summer 2005 and there is the prospect that they will give general guidance on shaken baby syndrome issues. If that is the case then I will of course consider very carefully for these cases any conclusions the court draws from its considerations.

Again, in these as in all cases, it is open to the defence now to appeal or to refer to the CCRC.

My report and the accompanying report to me by the central review team, which I established, explains the procedures and processes by which the review has been conducted. I would like to express my gratitude to the review team and those who provided assistance to it.

Young and vulnerable children need the protection of the law. Yet if unfair accusations or, worse still, wrongful convictions for the death of a child occur, it increases the tragedy of what is already a devastating event."

I thank the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General both for the statement and for giving me prior notice of it and sight of the accompanying report. The report is a model of its kind, both for clarity and for explanation of the Attorney-General's actions.

Can the right hon. and learned Lady help the House a little further in respect of the Cannings-type cases that have been referred? She says that only three cases referred are on a par with the Cannings case and another 25 have some features analogous to it. Will she amplify that statement? Is there a common thread or theme running through the cases about which she can inform the House at this stage, or is that not a matter on which she can provide greater clarity? The public will want some reassurance and understanding of what those cases are about.

After the 297 cases were considered, 180 were deemed to require no further action; therefore 117 are currently under some form of review. As the right hon. and learned Lady has made clear, 89 of those relate to shaken baby syndrome—a subject that, although it has been touched on in the House before, has not formed part of any clear statement. I appreciate her point that we must wait for the decision of the Court of Appeal, but there is a risk of public disquiet about that category of case. Can she provide an assurance that the Attorney-General and she are satisfied that the Court of Appeal will be able to examine all the issues surrounding those 89 cases and will therefore be able to provide some answers; or does her Department need to do further work on some of those cases, because they might not be on a par with the cases that are to be considered in the summer? Can she also provide an assurance that, after the Court of Appeal has made its decision, there will be a further statement to the House on what her Department and the Law Officers will do then?

Will the Solicitor-General provide some guidance on what is to happen to cases that were not considered because they were more than 10 years old? I appreciate that the Law Officers had to draw a line somewhere, but is it not likely that there are cases more than 10 years old that fall squarely within the relevant areas? In those circumstances, can we be sure that those who might have been wrongly convicted, and indeed served their sentences and been released, will be able to bring their case to the attention of the CCRC or to the Court of Appeal? What facilities will the Law Officers make available to such people to help them?

As I said on an earlier occasion, these cases highlight the problem that arises, or may arise, when the opinion of consultants or doctors, however eminent, substitutes itself for the scrutiny of the evidence before a court. It is greatly to be hoped that in future this sort of problem will not arise again because of a greater awareness of the fallibility, or potential fallibility, of expert witnesses.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for thanking us for giving prior notice of the report. Generally speaking, that is how we work. Whatever else he gets up to in other parts of his work, we have a non-partisan relationship, and similarly with the Liberal Democrats, on Law Officer matters. I thank him also for saying that the Attorney-General's report is a model of its kind. It is.

It is important to bear it in mind that many people said, "Let sleeping dogs lie. The Court of Appeal has given its judgment. If somebody knows that they are one of these cases, let them take it up. Don't go to all the time, trouble and expense of looking for a needle in a haystack, going back 10 years and involving every part of the country." We were clearly of the view that we had to do more than wait for people themselves to say, "Has there been a problem with the case?". We wanted to ensure that no stone was left unturned, that we identified similar cases and that we actively reviewed them and referred those where there was concern.

Of the 28 cases where there was concern, three were sudden infant death syndrome cases, while the 25 were not directly analogous to the Cannings case. The hon. Gentleman asked me what sort of cases they were. They were cases where there were other issues of difference of view or concern about medical expert evidence. For example, there is damage to the child's head, internal and external, and experts differ as to whether it was caused by a blow or by a fall. The House will understand that that is not analogous to the Cannings case. It is where there is not evidence other than the evidence of experts and where the experts disagree, but where it is not sudden infant death.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the 89 shaken baby syndrome cases. As the law stands, these cases should not give us cause for disquiet in terms of what has been said so far by the Court of Appeal. As the law stands, these cases need no further action. There is a shaken baby case that we have referred. We are not saying that we will not refer. If there is cause for concern and if it is a shaken baby case, we will refer it. However, there are cases where, pending what the Court of Appeal says, we see no further need for action at this stage. Having gone to the effort of identifying these cases, we are bearing it in mind that, depending on the guidance that the Court of Appeal gives, we may need to consider them again. If we are to do that, we shall make a statement to the House. That will be by way of a written statement, or an answer to a question asked by the hon. Gentleman, or an oral statement.

During these proceedings we have tried to work with our opposite numbers and to keep the House informed. I made an oral statement in January, we made written statements and parliamentary answers were given in February, May and July. We have tried to keep the House up to date with the process.

The hon. Gentleman asked about cases that are more than 10 years old. There was one such case where the defendant asked us to consider it, and of course we did. The hon. Gentleman is right in saying that any cut-off point is arbitrary. I think that in future the process will be easier. God forbid we should ever have this situation in future, but things will be easier in future because we have computerised records. Going back two years and even five years, let alone 10 years, when the personnel involved had changed and all the manual records had been filed, was an exhausting job. It was like looking for needles in a haystack through the 42 areas of the Crown Prosecution Service. I thank CPS staff for the work they did, together with their colleagues in the police and in the Home Office. It was difficult to be satisfied that we had found all the cases going back 10 years. I am satisfied that we have now done so. Even now, if anybody thinks their case is one of those, whether it is within or beyond the 10-year period, they can refer it for examination and we will look at it. There are facilities available to help. The Attorney-General has asked the central review team to look at these cases in the interests of justice. If somebody wants to know whether theirs is such a case, the Attorney-General will ask the central review team to examine it.

Of course expert evidence—the hon. Gentleman made an important point in this regard—should not stray into giving opinion. We can all understand the situation when there has been a robbery, somebody saw somebody doing it and there is a question of identification. Was it that person? Is the person who said something telling the truth? Everybody is used to that in court and everyone understands the situation. Forensic science offers the criminal justice system and the quest for justice—ensuring that guilty people are brought to account—great opportunities that did not exist previously. For example, a rape case where the victim had died could be prosecuted because of forensic DNA evidence. We should recognise the importance and value of expert evidence, but have protocols in place to ensure that it is of the proper quality and provides scientific fact, rather than opinion.

I look forward to reading the Attorney-General's review. It seems to be a meticulous piece of work. Does that review, which looks at the work of experts at the cutting edge of science, have implications for how expert evidence is treated in public law, particularly in the law relating to the protection of children? Can my right hon. and learned Friend assure me that the Government will act to support the role of expert witnesses, who have a key role in protecting children and who, within the limits of their competence and acting in good faith, can assist enormously and should not be deterred from acting in public law cases where the paramount consideration is the protection of children?

I can reinforce my hon. Friend's point about the key role of expert witnesses in family cases. As he rightly acknowledges, we looked at expert witnesses in criminal cases, but he will know that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Children, Young People and Families has been looking at the question of expert witnesses giving evidence in family proceedings where the issue is whether the child should be subject to a care order, taken away from the parents or placed for adoption. Expert witnesses have an important role in family proceedings. It is important not only that their role is recognised but that the experts are available and suitably qualified and their competence is kept under review, so that individuals can be certain that justice has been done in their case, and there can be public confidence in the expert witness system.

I, too, am grateful to the Solicitor-General for letting me have early sight of the Attorney-General's statement and of the Attorney-General's and review team's reports. The House will have noted the correct distancing of the central review team from the prosecuting process, and the decision to review convictions up to 10 years old, the scrutiny of the deceased child cases involving children up to two years old, and the fact that all cases were reviewed, not just those in which there had been two instances of death in the family.

I join the Solicitor-General in paying tribute to the central review team, particularly Howard Cohen, the project manager, Mr. Price, QC, and the Director of Public Prosecutions, whose co-operation was essential to the review.

Before I reach what I consider the heart of the matter, I have one or two initial questions on the statement. First, when will what I shall call the Dr. Alan Williams report be concluded and when will it be placed in the Library of the House? Will the Solicitor-General make a statement when the report is concluded? Secondly, I understand that Dr. Alan Williams and Professor Sir Roy Meadow are subject to proceedings before the General Medical Council and I would be grateful if she confirmed that and told the House whether she has any idea when these proceedings are to be heard. Thirdly, will she confirm that there is no bar on any case, even on one more than 10 years old, being appealed to the Court of Appeal—or, for that matter, to the CCRC?

It is difficult to conceive of anything more tragic to parents than the death of a child. Unfortunately, in some circumstances, these tragedies have been compounded by what have turned out to be dreadful miscarriages of justice in the family courts and thereafter in the criminal courts. Two strong principles have to be balanced: the right of parents to have care of their children and the rights of the children themselves. The right of any child must be paramount and I hope that everyone in the House understands and agrees with that. Nevertheless, there have been some appalling miscarriages of justice that call for further safeguards.

At the very core of the problem is the credibility, expertise and conscientiousness of medical expert witnesses. The House will know the difference between proceedings in the criminal and in the family courts. It is right that, in the family courts, the standard of proof is the balance of probabilities, which enables those courts to be a less adversarial forum and ensures that the interests of the child come first. Having said that, I believe that it should be open to parents in family proceedings to challenge the competency and the evidence of expert witnesses. That could also be done in the criminal courts, and it is a change that would ensure greater fairness in family proceedings.

Both the family and criminal courts have considerable difficulty in finding experts of a high standard to give medical evidence in proceedings. That is particularly so when the—

Order. The hon. Gentleman seems to be making a statement, but he should be asking questions. This is an important matter and I must allow the Solicitor-General to answer the points that he has made. We will leave it at that.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments about the central review team. Once again, I would like to thank Howard Cohen and the central review team for the work of looking independently into these cases. I can confirm that the review went wider than the Cannings judgment and the number of cases involved. We examined not only cases where two children had died but those where one had died, and we included cases of infants up to two years old, whereas the Cannings case and sudden infant death syndrome cases generally apply to one-year-olds. As the hon. Gentleman mentioned, we also went back 10 years.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the report on Dr. Williams. We identified some additional cases in which Dr. Williams was involved that do not necessarily involve deaths or children. Of course, Dr. Willliams's work ranged quite widely. We are looking into those cases, particularly in respect of whether disclosure was properly carried out, and we will report back as soon as we have the information. I can confirm that Dr. Williams and Professor Meadow are the subject of proceedings before the General Medical Council and I understand that the next stage will be reached early in the new year. I reaffirm that there is no prohibition on any case, regardless of whether it is within the 10-year limit or prior to it. Anyone in those circumstances can ask for the details of their case to be looked into.

I was also asked whether expert testimony should be subject to challenge in the family courts in the way that it is in the criminal courts. Of course, it is the case that, where expert testimony is central to how a child is going to be cared for, rigorous investigation and challenging of the expert evidence is important.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the important principles surrounding the problem. Our important principles are that, where a child has died and a criminal offence has been committed, a guilty person must be brought to justice, but an innocent person must be left to grieve over what must be the worst thing that can happen to anybody.

Clearly, the Law Officers are to be complimented on the speed with which they acted post-Cannings, on the generosity of the terms of reference and on the rigour with which they carried out the task. Does my right hon. and learned Friend have the slightest concern—I want to ask her this in the gentlest possible way—that where her review of a little fewer than 300 cases produced 28 worrying cases, a review of all the care cases in Great Britain—28,607 post-Cannings family law cases—produced a change to only one care plan?

The 28 cases that we referred were a cause for concern and we asked for them to be looked into again. As I emphasised, we are not certain whether it will change the outcome in those cases, but we believe that they should be examined again. The Minister for Children, Young People and Families fully set out the basis for, and findings of, her review to the House on 2 November. I am not sure that it is easy to take one lot of numbers and compare them with another lot of numbers. That Minister has worked with her officials and with social services, and we have worked with the Crown Prosecution Service. She is also considering the issue of expert evidence. We will report back to the House in the spring, when the chief medical officer makes his report to her and other Ministers about the use of experts in family cases.

My constituent Angela Cannings and her family—and indeed the family of Sally Clark, who is also my constituent—went through hell over a very long period. I compliment the Solicitor-General on her sensitive handling of the issue, but does she agree that if public confidence is to be restored, expert evidence must be reviewed much earlier—not afterwards, on appeal. Where the wheels of justice quite properly grind slowly, it seems to me that modern medicine, including medical knowledge and forensic science, is moving at an ever increasing speed. Is it not therefore a good idea to have a cross-Government inquiry or some sort of policy to deal with the problem of the quality of expert advice at the earliest possible stage—perhaps even before the Crown Prosecution Service has decided whether a case should proceed? That might have helped to cut out the years of heartache that those families had to suffer.

We are doing exactly what the hon. Gentleman suggests. What he says is right. The medical profession, people working in social services and the criminal justice agencies all work together on a multi-agency basis, which allows full disclosure and regular scrutiny of the credentials of expert witnesses. Regular protocols emerge out of Court of Appeal cases and are acted on. It is always a risk to be too categorical, but I believe that, after the awful suffering in the cases of Angela Cannings and Sally Clark, all parts of the system have been determined to learn the lessons and are continuing to learn them.

Will my right hon. and learned Friend bear it in mind that every child must be protected and that these are extraordinarily difficult cases? Will she also be sensitive in presenting the results, because one of the worst possible outcomes of the inquiry would be if the medical profession, in attempting to protect itself, distanced itself from difficult cases, thus allowing some guilty people to escape proper prosecution?

I am sure that the whole House agrees with my hon. Friend that every child must be protected and that these cases are incredibly difficult. Essentially, one does not know whether one is dealing with a tragic bereavement or a homicide. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to all the senior lawyers in the CPS around the country, who handle these cases with as much sensitivity and professionalism as could possibly be expected of them. My hon. Friend spoke of the importance of expert witnesses playing their part. They do play their part, and it is very important that they understand that we support the role that expert evidence plays and that we recognise that it has improved and enabled cases to be brought that might have gone undetected in the past. In the end, we must bear it in mind that, if a child's death is the result of a criminal act, the offender must be brought to justice. If it is not the result of a criminal act, we must make sure that the innocent parents are left to grieve.

I also welcome this report and the way that the Solicitor-General's Department has handled it. However, as the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) noted, the figures are worrying. It is a cause for concern that 10 per cent. of reviewed cases are to be referred. Almost one third of cases involve shaken baby syndrome, which is controversial and subject to developing scientific inquiry that may not be reviewed by case law until next summer. That is very worrying.

As the interview with Angela Cannings the other day showed, the long-term traumatic effects on people subsequently freed, and their children, are very alarming. I have one specific question for the Solicitor-General. When this matter first became known, we identified as a priority—and she agreed—the cases of siblings whose parents had been prosecuted in connection with child deaths. How many sibling children are involved in the 28 cases to which reference has been made, and in the 89 shaken baby cases? How many children have been taken into care already, and how many into permanent adoption? What interim measures is she taking in respect of sibling children to make sure that, if their parents' imprisonment is subsequently found not to have been justified, they can be returned to their rightful homes?

We have reported the names of the children involved in those 28 cases to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Children, Young People and Families. She is in a position to know whether there are past or current care proceedings in respect of those cases. As a precaution, we have notified the defence solicitors, the Criminal Cases Review Commission and the Court of Appeal that we have concerns about those cases. In addition, we have read across and reported our concerns to my right hon. Friend.

The hon. Gentleman asked about people involved in shaken baby syndrome cases. We hope to get further guidance from the Court of Appeal next year, but people can refer their cases to the CCRC. They can also appeal, if they have not done so already, and apply for release on bail. Non-custodial sentences were given in many of the cases that we have looked at, even when convictions were secured or guilty pleas made. Some people will have been released, but others will have been granted bail while their cases proceed through the system.

Some hon. Members will remember a Select Committee report 25 years ago on non-accidental injury. I am glad that the Solicitor-General has made it clear that such cases are very worrying, and the BBC has reminded us that such incidents continue to happen.

Will the Solicitor-General confirm that, about seven times a year, people convicted of murder or manslaughter have their convictions overturned or set aside because they were not fair, just or justified?

Will the Solicitor-General confirm also that, at present, non-urgent cases brought before the CCRC take between 18 months and two years for review? People not in jail awaiting a serious review of their cases have a long time to wait.

Will the Solicitor-General ensure that the Home Office funds the CCRC, and pension liabilities, so that the waiting list can be removed and that cases such as I have described will not end up in the same queue as that of a 74-year-old former constituent of mine, whom I shall call Jack. He may be dead before his case is reviewed.

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Justice delayed is justice denied. Even if people are not in prison they want an answer to the points that they raise. I pay tribute to Graham Zellick of the CCRC, who is keen to ensure that the answer given must be right and as prompt as possible. I will make sure that my colleagues in the Home Office are aware of what the hon. Gentleman has said.

The hon. Gentleman talked about non-accidental injury to children. That takes a terrible toll that is dealt with around the country by social services departments, doctors and prosecutors. The distinct point about those cases is that the Cannings judgment involved no other evidence. Expert medical testimony was engaged only after the children's deaths, and the experts disagreed. There will be all sorts of other evidence in most non-accidental injury cases. The problem about the cases with which we are concerned today is that the central evidence was expert medical evidence and the experts involved disagreed. The Court of Appeal has made it clear that such cases must be regarded as unsafe.

Does the Solicitor-General accept that miscarriages of justice should not be blamed solely on expert witnesses? Does she recognise that it is the job of the defence, through defence witnesses and the judge, to challenge evidence and give direction where necessary? Does she accept that it is important to recognise the valuable professional work performed by paediatricians as medical expert witnesses in cases of alleged non-accidental injury, which are difficult? As yet, no verdict of malice or professional misconduct has been reached in respect of Sir Roy Meadow, or other cases. For reasons of medical confidentiality, and as a result of legal advice, the people at the centre of such cases cannot reply to the media or political witch hunts that are set in train. That makes it more difficult to find paediatricians willing to do child protection work. If they do not come forward, there is a greater chance that there will be a miscarriage of justice, and a greater likelihood of harm being done to children.

I would not agree with any statement dealing with who is to blame and aimed at choosing a scapegoat. That is not the way forward. We must get justice for people who might have suffered injustice. In future, responsibility will be shared among the professional organisations that register experts and ensure that they are competent. That competency will be subject to review. We must make sure that the rules of the criminal courts are right and deal appropriately with expert testimony, and that the courts keep to those rules in individual cases. That is what we are all aiming to do, as a result of these tragic cases. We cannot just wring our hands and say how terrible these cases are, or point the finger of blame at the experts. We want to move to a robust system that will convict the guilty but ensure that people who are innocent and who have suffered the death of a child are allowed to grieve.

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It appears that the Ministry of Defence has circulated a letter to some hon. Members, but not to others, announcing a major policy change—the disbandment of the Defence Aviation Repair Agency only three years after it was created. Today is the last sitting day before the Christmas recess. Have you received notice that a ministerial statement will be made to the House on this very important matter, which affects up to 2,000 jobs in my constituency, and 900 in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami)?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me notice of this point of order. I have had no requests from a Minister to make a statement on this matter. I understand that Ministers have written to some hon. Members about the future of the agency. Ministers should be aware that when they are imparting information that may be of interest to the whole House that such information should be made available generally and not just to a selected few.

This is an important debate because it gives us a chance to talk about issues in our constituencies. I want to talk about something important in the constituency that I represent and, to some degree, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes).

In the early 1990s, our two constituencies saw the effect of pit closures on a massive scale, so much so that there is not a single large deep mine in the whole of the north Derbyshire coalfield. For us and for others like us, that produced problems that seemed insurmountable in terms of jobs. We were talking about ex-pit villages, many of them with 15 to 20 per cent. unemployment. At or around the time of the 1997 election, my hon. Friend, I and a few others decided to try to develop a regeneration scheme for that coalfield. The net result is that unemployment has fallen to somewhere between 5 and 6 per cent., and marginally less in some areas.

One way in which we did that, and which we want to continue, is that we managed to get some pit tips flattened. I got £24 million from the Chancellor of the Exchequer to flatten Shirebrook pit tip. In the course of next year, a firm will produce something in the order of 1,000 jobs on that site. For a place like Shirebrook, which felt the world had collapsed in the early 1990s when the pit shut, that is manna from heaven. I am pleased that we were able to get the money and set the show on the road.

Another scheme that my hon. Friend and I took part in was in making sure that we developed the old Markham Bolsover pit site. There was massive potential for turning that into a business park, which would probably be one of the biggest in the whole north. It needed a new junction, 29A, on the motorway, and hon. Members will have heard me talking about that over the past four or five years. Some people said we would never get it and that it was way off beam, the Greens would object and so on. In the course of this week, we have received news from the Highways Agency that junction 29A will go ahead. It is only a small motorway junction—about half a mile in length—but, believe me, it goes straight into the heart of territory that will provide more than 5,000 jobs in my hon. Friend's constituency, in my constituency and in Chesterfield.

There has been nothing of that dimension since the pits were sunk, and it will change the whole nature of the north Derbyshire coalfield. For that, we should be pleased. I managed about three years ago to get the then Secretary of State for Transport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tyneside, North (Mr. Byers), to announce the first £15 million tranche of the money, and the acceptance of the scheme means that literally scores of firms will want to get on to the site. It pleases me greatly to think that, having started out on a scheme like that, there has not been a recession to stop it. That is the important thing that people have to remember. I have been in here long enough to know that we put forward wonderful ideas but about half-way through someone says it is a great idea but is running into trouble and will have to be held back for a year or two. In the course of six years, there has not been a hitch, and that means that the show will be on the road to provide much-needed jobs for that area.

It will change the constituencies. In some cases, the old solidarity that existed in the mining communities will not be the same. We all know that, but I do not have a romantic view of the pits. I worked down them for 21 years and I am not one of those academics who think that when we were fighting to save the pits, the jobs were somehow the best in the world. Believe me, we were fighting for the communities and the solidarity, but it was hard, dangerous work.

The new junction will be a very important development for about four constituencies in our area. I congratulate the Secretary of State for Transport on going ahead with the scheme despite the fact that a lot of people thought that it would never gain any ground. On the Shirebrook pit development, £24 million of development will release 1,000 jobs in the course of the next year. The three pits closed in the early 1990s—Shirebrook, Bolsover and Markham—were the last three deep mine pits in the whole of the north Derbyshire coalfield, and they will now all be part of a business and work development, which is very good news for the area.

I want to mention a couple of other things, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House of Commons will write them down for his reply. I know he has all the good stuff down already, but there are always a few things that do not go right. One of them was the healthy living project in Bolsover. It is really a swimming bath, but "healthy living project" sounds better. I thought that with a title like that we could spin our way to another success, just as we did with junction 29A. It is a swimming bath, but it was connected to the national health service, which was to put money in as well. Various other stakeholders—I think that is the term these days—were involved, and we thought that the project would materialise.

We thought we would successfully get £1 million from the lottery, but we happened to need it just at the moment when lottery funds were collapsing. Sport England did not turn up to a meeting; I think they felt a bit guilty. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Sport came to the meeting and promised that we would get the show on the road. Unfortunately, Sport England did not deliver. I know there have been problems there, but the Deputy Leader of the House must make sure that those responsible will bring it into line. We want that healthy living project completed in Bolsover to coincide with the new jobs just down the road on the old Markham Bolsover pit site. We need that project. Will the Deputy Leader of the House tell the Minister for Sport that we still need to get that job completed? If we do, it will be another bonus for our area, which was hit so badly by the pit closures.

I have been campaigning, along, principally, with one or two other Labour Members, on the question of the fourth option. What I am talking about is the idea that local authorities, like Bolsover and North-East Derbyshire, should have the right not only to carry on with their housing programmes but to build more council houses. They should have the right not to fall for the nonsense continually put in front of them of having to have housing corporations, arm's-length management organisations and all the rest of it. I am not knocking those who have done it. If people want to get involved with ALMOs, that is their business, but in Bolsover in a recent poll more than 90 per cent. of tenants said that they wanted to remain with the council. That is a significant number. At Camden recently, there was a 70 per cent. turnout, but we were even higher.

Set against that background, my hon. Friend the Minister should tell the Deputy Prime Minister that there should be a level playing field. Those authorities who want to build new houses for their people and keep their own programme should not lose out to authorities that have gone for an ALMO or another option. They should be treated exactly the same and given the right to carry on building as and when they feel fit.

If we get the healthy living project, the councils running the local authority housing and the money to carry it out and then the jobs and all the rest of it, Bolsover and north-east Derbyshire will have been completely transformed. We shall be able then to say to all our constituents, "Labour has kept its promise. Don't let the Tories ruin it."

May I first, uncharacteristically, agree with the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner)? In my constituency, the overwhelming majority of council tenants would much rather be tenants of the excellent Conservative-controlled borough council. Tenants who unfortunately come under housing associations get a much worse deal. All that they want is a level playing field on finance when a decision is made, and we are doubtful that we will achieve that.

There are three reasons why I believe that the House should not adjourn immediately. One is a local issue, one is a regional issue and the third is an international issue. I should like to take up the local issue first. A month ago, a mother of a young constituent of mine, Alistair aged 10, approached me. She said that, for six years, medical opinion had said that her son should have occupational therapy, yet he had had it for only six months in that period. I thought that that was amazing and disgraceful. I did not even necessarily believe it to be true at the time.

I made representations to the chief executive of Bracknell primary care trust. I should like to quote from the letter that Ms Diane Hedges sent to me on 8 December. She said:

"Unfortunately our Specialist Speech and Language Therapist for dysfluency has left the department and we have so far been unsuccessful in replacing her. We have advertised nationally and in our professional journals for this and other vacancies and have also encouraged internal applicants to apply, offering training, development and support packages in this specialist field. You will no doubt be aware that there are significant problems with recruiting Speech and Language Therapists nationally, and this is particularly difficult in some specialist areas such as dysfluency.

As an interim measure, we have been fortunate to have been able to employ some short-term locum Speech and Language Therapists through Locum Agencies. Obviously, this has a significant cost implication and so we would be unable to maintain continuous employment even if the staff were available. This has resulted in periods where there has been no service available for this client group, and long waiting lists building up.

Alistair was referred to us in October 2002 and, following initial assessment by a generalist Speech and Language Therapist in Bracknell, was referred to the specialist service in Slough. Alistair received 10 appointments of individual Speech and Language Therapy from locum specialist therapists between March and October 2003. Unfortunately there was no service for some months due to lack of suitably qualified/experienced locums. Alistair was seen again by a locum Speech and Language Therapist in October 2004 but as she was only employed for a very limited period, she was unable to offer Alistair on-going therapy.

We are very aware that this situation is extremely unsatisfactory for the many children and families who are in need of specialist intervention and would like to assure you that we are doing everything we can to recruit a suitable, permanent Speech and Language Therapist. In the meantime, we shall continue to employ locum therapists whenever possible and will offer Alistair further specialist intervention as soon as we can."

In other words, the situation is every bit as bad as the mother said. Here is a child in real need who is not getting the attention that he deserves.

I have written to the Secretary of State for Health to draw the matter to his attention. I have yet to receive a reply, but I would appreciate it if the Minister in his summing up assured me that there would be a proper reply. It is not good enough to say, "Perhaps you Tories when you were in Government should have trained more therapists." I remind the Minister that he has been in office for seven and a half years, and the situation has steadily deteriorated. No action seems to have been taken to put matters right. I need to have undertakings that my constituents' children will have proper therapy when it is clear that that is what is required.

The second issue is the regional one. We in the south-east were naturally delighted at the result of the referendum in the north-east. The people of the north-east did the right thing. In all my experience in elected office, I have never come across members of the public or constituents who wanted more politicians, more bureaucrats and more layers of Government.

We in Berkshire got it just right a few years ago. We abolished the county council and we now have excellent unitary authorities run by three different political parties from time to time, although increasingly by the Conservative party. As they are unitary authorities, they deliver and the buck stops with them, so the idea of Berkshire, which got rid of the county council some years ago, wanting a regional assembly is wrong. It is the last thing that we want.

I hope that the Government will seriously consider abolishing the dreadful South East England regional assembly—SEERA. It serves no useful purpose; the people who are members of it are not directly elected and are answerable to no one. There is a bunch of bureaucrats, a bunch of hangers-on from various quangos, one or two semi-out-of-work business men and trade unionists, and one or two councillors with nothing better to do. They cost us a lot of money. Worse still, recently they tried to foist huge numbers of extra houses on the south-east, which was deeply unwelcome. A combination of Conservative councillors on SEERA and environmental groups managed on 29 November to reverse the decision.

We need to have planning matters decided by the local planning authority—in my case, Bracknell Forest borough council or Wokingham unitary authority. If the decision is not satisfactory, there is an opportunity to appeal to the Secretary of State. That is the right way to proceed. We do not want planning decisions made through some unelected regional body. SEERA is costing a lot of money and is unnecessary. I should like the Minister to assure me that the Government are seriously considering, in the light of the referendum result, abolishing such quangocracies.

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Quickly.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that SEERA has not even enabled the A3 redevelopment at Hindhead to go ahead, and it has been pushed off into the distant future? Is there any point in SEERA whatever?

I apologise to my right hon. Friend for saying, "Quickly." I have just noticed that I get an extra minute. Knowing that he is one of the most concise Members of the House, I should have realised that he would not take a full minute.

No one in the south-east sees any point in SEERA. It is wasting our money. If Mr. Gershon wants to find some savings, I recommend that he looks at such bodies.

The final, international point that I wish to raise concerns Africa. My hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House has been pressing the Leader of the House week after week for a debate on Africa and the middle east. The Leader of the House has appeared sympathetic to that request, but has not delivered. When his deputy sums up, I hope that he will be able to assure us that sometime in early January we will have a debate on those two separate and important areas.

I shall restrict myself to Africa and the urgent need for a debate on that subject. The Minister will be aware that, only today, Save the Children has had to pull out of Darfur, which will have dire consequences. He may have heard the organisation's director on the "Today" programme this morning rightly castigating the United Nations for not delivering the number of troops and observers necessary to police properly a vast area that is virtually the size of France. Urgent action is needed in Sudan.

I know that I do not have to underline to the Minister and to the House that the situation in Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate under the revolting Mugabe regime. I concede that Zimbabwe requires a largely African solution, but we could put more pressure on the African Union and, more importantly, on the regional superpower, South Africa, to ensure that peace, stability and democracy are returned to Zimbabwe. I emphasise again that smart sanctions should be introduced against the Mugabe regime and its financial backers. That would have a positive effect without in any way harming the ordinary people of Zimbabwe, who have suffered too much.

The final reason for an urgent debate on Africa is to clarify the British Government's position in relation to Equatorial Guinea and, in particular, the failed coup, which nearly took place earlier this year. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), the shadow Foreign Secretary, has rightly asked several questions of the Foreign Secretary and it has become clear that, at the least, mistakes have been made and, possibly, a cover-up attempted. Initially, the Foreign Secretary and the Government maintained that they knew nothing about the abortive coup in advance. It has become clear that a security analyst—an ex-member of the South African intelligence service named Johann Smith—sent a detailed email to the Foreign Office in December last year, informing it that he believed that a coup was planned for Equatorial Guinea. That was denied by the Foreign Secretary, but has now been admitted. Why was it initially denied? It looks as if the Government wanted regime change by proxy. In some ways, I would not oppose that, because Equatorial Guinea has a revolting dictatorship, but the Government had a duty under international law to report the possibility of a coup to the UN and to that country. We know that the Government took the report seriously, because they advised British citizens in Equatorial Guinea of the need to leave. There is a nasty smell from somewhere and there may have been a cover-up. It is vital that the Foreign Secretary takes part in the debate on Africa, answers questions about Equatorial Guinea and puts the record straight.

I shall begin where I finished my last speech in a recess Adjournment debate by referring to Halton hospital in my constituency. I can report to the House that significant improvements have been made recently including in the use of theatre space, which means that more people in Halton can be treated at Halton general hospital. That is a move in the right direction and I commend it.

We have also seen massive improvements in the fabric of the building, with £550,000 invested in the minor injuries unit, including a superb area for the expert treatment of children who have been injured. Some £300,000 has been spent on creating a state-of-the-art endoscopy unit, which will also bring benefits to the people of Halton. We will also have more urology surgery, more breast cancer surgery and more vascular surgery at Halton hospital—all to the benefit of the people I represent in the Runcorn area of my constituency.

Improvements in the quality of treatment are becoming apparent, including increased day surgery, improved radiology outpatient outcomes and theatre utilisation. We are looking forward to the establishment of an independent treatment centre at Halton hospital for orthopaedic patients, to tackle one of the most serious waiting lists in the borough. That will mean that people from Halton can be treated in their local hospital, quickly and expertly, and receive fantastic service free on the national health service.

We are also hoping that in the next 12 months we will have an announcement that Halton hospital will get one of the new regional renal units. The borough of Halton has a particular problem with renal failure. No one knows why, but it may be a legacy of the borough's industrial past or a local genetic problem. However, if Halton hospital gets a renal unit, it will mean a major improvement in how it serves local people.

Halton hospital still has a problem because its level 3 intensive care two-bed unit has been closed for 16 months. The clinical director at North Cheshire Hospitals NHS Trust decided to close that unit. My hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) and I have pressed the trust, the executive board, the chief executive and the chairman to find a solution to that problem, but I am sorry to say that we have yet to see any prospect that the two beds will be reopened. Halton hospital may soon face winter pressures, and it would helpful if those beds were reopened, but I know that that will not now happen before Christmas. However, I congratulate the trust on trying to resolve the problem by inviting the Cheshire and Merseyside Critical Care Network to see whether the beds can be reopened with the 24/7 intensive care that is available at Warrington hospital or if there is any other way to provide intensive care facilities at Halton hospital.

I commend to the Cheshire and Merseyside Critical Care Network the Bishop Auckland study, which shows that cottage hospitals can have intensive care units without any problems with the quality of care provided to patients. I would also draw the network's attention to the report produced by a senior consultant at Whiston hospital, when he examined the issue almost 12 years ago, which said that there was no medical reason why those intensive care beds could not be reopened.

I wish to congratulate my friend, Alan Massey, who has been appointed as the chair of the North Cheshire Hospitals NHS Trust. I am sure that he will do a fantastic job. He lives in the borough of Halton and he will provide the strong leadership that the trust needs. It would be remiss of me not to mention my other friend, Norman Banner, the outgoing chairman, who has done a fantastic job as the chair of both the Warrington Hospital NHS Trust and, after the merger, the new trust. I congratulate Norman on the work that he has done and I appreciate that he has had to leave the post because he has been made a senior partner in his legal practice and no longer has the time to devote to the duties of chairing an excellent trust.

I now wish to raise an issue that I have previously raised in Westminster Hall—the need for a new Mersey gateway. People familiar with the capital know that there are 28 crossings over the River Thames. There are only three over the River Mersey: the new Silver Jubilee bridge between Runcorn and Widnes, Bridge Foot in Warrington, a local road that crosses the Mersey, and the Thelwall viaduct, which, I am pleased to announce, reopened all its lanes to traffic this week.

indicated dissent.

My hon. Friend shakes his head; perhaps he was caught up in the crashes on the viaduct on Thursday night, which brought the whole area to a standstill.

It was on Monday.

On Monday, too.

The economic benefits for the region of a new Mersey crossing would be substantial. We need a new strategic north-south transport link. It would bring 7,000 jobs to the area and the transport economic benefits are forecast as £1.4 billion. The Silver Jubilee bridge carries 90,000 vehicles across the Mersey every day, but only 20 per cent. of those are local vehicle movements. It is clearly a vastly over-used strategic link, so we need a second crossing.

The estimated costs for the second crossing are modest: £250 million. If it was free to use—my preferred option—we should need a private finance initiative credit of £500 million over 30 years. The local authority proposed the use of tolls on the new Mersey crossing, with concessions for local people, which would take only £68 million of PFI credit over 30 years, with the Government having to provide £64 million for the purchase of land connected to the building of the crossing.

The crossing is essential. Halton borough council submitted its report—the revised scheme appraisal for the Mersey gateway: a new Mersey river crossing—on 30 November and we are waiting for the Department for Transport to tell us that the scheme will receive Government approval. I congratulate the leader of the council, Councillor Tony McDermott, who has done a fantastic job in taking the scheme forward. I also congratulate the council and the local government consortium—Liverpool city council, Sefton borough council, St. Helens borough council and Warrington borough council; they have all contributed to the strategic need for a new Mersey crossing.

To stick with transport, the Strategic Rail Authority recently announced that it was looking at local rail services that are, in its opinion, underused. It is challenging local communities to propose schemes to enhance the use of those services, thereby protecting them. One such service is from Chester to Manchester Piccadilly, via Frodsham and Warrington, which runs through the northern part of my constituency. However, as it is one of Arriva's most profitable routes, the reason for its being described as underused is completely beyond me. Constituents write to tell me that they cannot even board the trains because they are full. When Chester races are held, there is not enough rolling stock to carry the passengers who need to use the line.

Another problem on that route is that the ticket-collecting arrangements are not very good, so a head count of people who buy tickets may not actually reflect the volume of use, especially between Frodsham and Warrington. If the SRA were to count the people who use the service rather than those who buy tickets, it would see a major increase in utilisation of the service.

The Helsby to Ellesmere Port line runs through the north-west part of my constituency. That service is underused because there are only two services in the early morning and one in the afternoon. If we want to improve use of the line, services should be scheduled throughout the day, at more convenient times for people to travel.

I finish my contribution by congratulating the Government on a major project that will ensure that Northwich town centre in my constituency does not collapse into a great big cavity. Northwich town centre is built on four disused salt mines, which have been manually excavated, leaving pillars of salt underground that keep the ceilings of the mines stable so that the town centre does not disappear. The theory, or the physics, is that the mines are filled with saturated salt solution—brine—so the pillars are stable and nothing happens.

Fill them with nuclear waste.

Not nuclear waste. That is at Winsford in the constituency of the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien). I agree with the hon. Gentleman that that is the most inappropriate use of a salt mine, but I shall not spend too much time on that point as time is short.

In Northwich, the pillars of salt have started to corrode and if we do not stabilise the mines, Northwich will disappear into a great big cavern. In 1997, I approached the then Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions to ask the Government to find a solution. They brought forward a scheme whereby authorities can apply to the Government for funds to assist them in dealing with non-coal mining subsidence. Vale Royal borough council has been granted £28 million for a stabilisation scheme for Northwich town centre, which involves pumping pulverised fuel ash and cement—a grout—into the ground, while simultaneously removing the saturated salt. The ash and cement set like concrete, so the town centre can be stabilised. Pumping will start on 25 January 2005, which is a fantastic thing for Northwich town centre, and the Government rightly deserve congratulations.

My final point is about recycling. Vale Royal borough council has introduced a good recycling scheme, with kerbside collections, but it has reduced domestic collections to once fortnightly, or twice a month. Over the Christmas period, there will be a collection every week and the residents say that that should not be just for Christmas but all year round—they are singing that they wish it was Christmas every week.

Before we adjourn, I want to draw attention, yet again, to the way in which we as a nation treat service families. I suspect that every Member has a number of service families in their constituency; we certainly have plenty in the south-west.

Everyone plays lip service to the welfare of service families and, indeed, to the fact that service personnel are the most crucial asset of our armed forces. No doubt, the Prime Minister is repeating that mantra to our troops in Iraq today, but what sort of message is the Ministry of Defence sending them?

In a succession of recess Adjournment debates, I have drawn attention to a sad failure by the MOD. The Deputy Leader of the House is always meticulous in his promise to get a response from the MOD, yet that response is never as positive, encouraging and supportive of service families as I, and other Members, would like. That does not just have a damaging effect on morale, and, therefore, on recruitment and retention, but it is intrinsically immoral to exploit those who serve our country so well, in the most dangerous and demanding circumstances, and not to take full responsibility for the outcome.

Let us consider the troops who suffered, and continue to suffer, serious health effects from their service on our behalf in the first Gulf war in 1991. I have an interest—not a financial interest—as a member of the Royal British Legion Gulf war group, and I have long campaigned for a public inquiry into Gulf war illnesses. After the obdurate refusal of Conservative Ministers to investigate, we all hoped, on both sides of the House, for a more positive, optimistic attitude in 1997, with the change of Government. We hoped that there would be a fresh start.

Indeed, things looked good for a few weeks. The "Gulf Veterans' Illnesses—A New Beginning" consultation paper made hopeful noises, but all too soon the very same refusal to open up the whole issue to public examination gave veterans and their families the feeling that the MOD was more concerned with protecting its secret mistakes than recognising the extent and devastating effect of those illnesses. When, eventually, in summer 2004, a wholly independent inquiry was set up under the chairmanship of Lord Lloyd of Berwick, with Dr. Norman Jones and Sir Michael Davies, Members on both sides of the House welcomed that initiative.

One would think that the MOD would have been only too pleased that someone was going to do that work, but its lack of co-operation has made the Ministry's reputation, especially among retired service personnel and their families, even worse than it was previously. There was a Scrooge-like response from the Veterans Minister, with niggling questions about the funding of the inquiry. The correspondence at the end of the report is staggering. Instead of addressing the real issues—the concerns of a large number of our service personnel—all he could do was go on and on about the charitable trust that was funding the inquiry.

Moreover, there was an absolute refusal to be questioned. I raised with the Prime Minister whether Ministers from the MOD and their officials were prepared to appear before the public inquiry and expose themselves to interrogation. They would not do so, and as a result, I believe, the inquiry has not been as comprehensive as one would have hoped, and they have made it clear yet again that the Ministry is not really interested.

I notice that the clock is not working, so the hon. Gentleman may have a good deal of time at his disposal. I understand that he is raising important issues about health and welfare. Has he also noticed the double standards of the Ministry of Defence in that serving soldiers are currently instructed not to speak out against the Government's policy on regimental amalgamations while senior officers are encouraged to support that policy? Has the hon. Gentleman anything to say about the MOD's double standards in news management?

I would love to be diverted along that route because I believe that there is an issue there, but I am trying to keep within the limit although, as a Front-Bench speaker, the clock does not run for me, which is something that I greatly appreciate. I would also have liked to make a contribution at the end of the debate, but I shall try to be as brief as I can, because I am well aware that many hon. Members want to speak.

The inquiry report was published just a few weeks ago, in November 2004, and the very grudging response from the Ministry and the Minister—in a letter published in The Times, for goodness' sake, not a proper formal response to the inquiry—is a staggering indictment of the way in which the Ministry continues to treat this matter. I quote briefly from the letter that appeared from the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Hove (Mr. Caplin), who is the Minister for Veterans. It says:

"I have made clear that we keep an open mind on the need for a public inquiry into Gulf veterans' illnesses. However, an inquiry could not contribute to answering the basic question of why some Gulf veterans are ill. Only scientific research might do so, which is why our research programme at a cost of £8.5 million is so important.

This is also the reason why I and Ministry of Defence officials did not appear at Lord Lloyd of Berwick's unofficial investigation. I did, however, supply a huge amount of written evidence and information to Lord Lloyd and am disappointed that this does not appear to have been taken fully into account in his conclusions."

It has been taken very fully into account and the report is a damning indictment of the Ministry's failure to examine the issues itself. In fact, Lord Lloyd's inquiry is comprehensive and comes up with a number of helpful recommendations. I do not propose to go into them all, but I want to quote briefly from the report resume, which the inquiry prepared. It said:

"The most likely explanation may be a combination of more than one cause against a background of stress, since at least some of the causes are thought to have a potentiating effect on each other. But all these causes are directly related to the veterans' service in the Gulf, in what was on any view a very toxic environment. No other possible causes have been proposed. In these circumstances it is not acceptable for the MOD to say:—

'Yes, you are ill; but since we do not know which of the possible causes has caused your particular illness we are not going to admit that your illness is due to your service'."

Is that not an excellent summary of the situation? I am sure that hon. Members who have veterans in their constituencies who are still suffering from long-term illness recognise that, at long last, somebody has gone absolutely to the heart of the matter.

There are still huge problems to overcome. Yes, it would be good to be able to establish precisely what the research can tell us in terms of the causal effect. What we need to do, though, is to recognise that some very ill people—probably 600, but perhaps a great many more—are still not having those crucial issues addressed. Indeed, there are thousands of claims for war pensions. Some have been permitted, but the discrimination between one victim and another is one of the particular issues that causes most concern to those who are left out and denied that pension.

Hon. Members across the House support the call for a much more positive response to Lord Lloyd's report, and 96 Members of all parties have signed my early-day motion 81, calling for justice for victims of Gulf war illnesses. That is just the beginning. We cannot allow this situation to go on and on, because those who are already seriously ill will simply die before they obtain justice.

On a similar issue, I find it staggering, having raised some of these issues in the past, that the families of people who were killed in the early days of the second Gulf war—after the Iraq invasion, 20 months ago—still do not know precisely why their loved ones were killed. Those families are equally badly served by the way in which the Ministry of Defence looks at these matters. In previous recess Adjournment debates, I have raised the case of Sergeant Steve Roberts, who was from my constituency. His family still do not know precisely, and absolutely, whether it was as a result of friendly fire that he was killed and whether, if he had been wearing enhanced combat body armour—which of course was removed from him before he met his death—he would be alive today. It is outrageous that we do not know, after all these many months, precisely what happened. Indeed, it would seem that the Ministry of Defence is more anxious to prosecute those members of his unit who may or may not have been part of that fatal accident, than it is to get to the truth and provide it to those families.

At Christmas, we all think of our families. I hope that all Members of the House will particularly think of those families whose loved ones have suffered serious ill health as a result of their service on behalf of their country or lost their life looking after our interests. I wish you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, every happiness during the coming family celebrations of Christmas, as I do all other hon. Members, but I hope that we shall have a thought for those who are not so lucky.

I wish in this Christmas Adjournment debate to mention two parliamentary early-day motions now on the order book, of which I am the principal sponsor. The two motions are very different and in my view they are not political. The first is early-day motion 89 relating to pensioners of the Maxwell Communications pension fund. The motion has been signed by more than 100 Members from all the main parties. Some are very senior Members, including former Cabinet Ministers.

Many of us will recall the events that surrounded the death of Robert Maxwell. Many of us feel that we shall never really know how he died. What we soon learned after his death was that he had robbed his companies' pension fund of the money that people who had worked for the Maxwell companies had paid in, expecting that when they retired they would be in receipt of a pension. Very many learned that there would be no pension, or a much reduced one.

I was very quickly asked by a constituent, a Mr. John Emler, who had been a senior official of a Maxwell company, to meet him and his colleagues to discuss the position that they found themselves in, and it was a very sad story that they told me. I then sought to help them and, with the excellent help and advice of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), members of all political parties became involved because what Maxwell had done affected people in many parts of the country. Some 32,000 people were affected by Maxwell's actions with the contributions that they had made to the pension fund.

The Government of the day soon realised the scale of Maxwell's despicable actions and started to help. The early-day motion refers to what was done, which was welcome. However, what deeply concerned people who had worked for the Maxwell companies was that of the money that was raised by Lord Cuckney—some £280 million—£30 million was taken by the Treasury. Sadly, we are now seeing the effects of that action.

Since February this year, 1,400 members of the pension fund, including people who retired after June 1992, have lost 50 per cent. of their pensions. Their position was made worse by the actions of the Treasury, which took £30 million of the money that Lord Cuckney raised. Early-day motion 89 therefore states that the £30 million should be returned to the pension fund. That money was raised in 1995 for the benefit not of the Treasury, but of the men and women who worked for the Maxwell companies. Like many hon. Members, I believe that returning it would not present any serious problems to the Treasury. It was not its money in the first place and it would greatly help retired people, who often live on a limited income, to receive the entitlement that they paid for when they were in work. The number of hon. Members who signed the early-day motion clearly shows that there is support for the proposal, and I urge my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House to pass on my views and concerns about this important issue to the Chancellor.

Early-day motion 92 deals with the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Channel Islands. This year, we have rightly remembered in commemorative events the 60th anniversary of the liberation of European countries. I am a member of the executive committee of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. I am the UK representative for our region, which covers the British islands and the Mediterranean. That includes the Channel Islands, which, as we all know, is a Commonwealth country and is close the United Kingdom both geographically and in friendship.

The early-day motion refers to the celebrations that will take place in May 2005, which mean a great deal to the people of the Channel Islands. Many individuals who lived through the German occupation are still alive. The suffering that they endured—many of them were deported, forced into labour camps or tortured, and many of them died—has not been fully understood, although an excellent book on the occupation was published by William M. Bell.

Senator Jean Le Maistre, a senior parliamentarian from Jersey who is closely involved in the CPA, is participating in work on the 60th anniversary and has told me how he and the Channel Islanders want the British involvement to be marked. British military forces liberated the islands and their courage and sacrifice has never been forgotten by the Channel Islanders, who are closely linked to us. It is their wish that our military forces play a major role in the ceremonies next May because, 60 years after the event, they respect and remember the part that they played in the liberation from German occupation.

I urge the Deputy Leader of the House to ask the Secretary of State for Defence and his officials soon to begin discussions with political representatives and officials from the Channel Islands about that request and what the Ministry of Defence can do. I assure the Secretary of State that the Channel Islanders and their elected representatives are willing to work with him, given the importance of the 60th anniversary to the Channel Islands and its people.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Tooting (Tom Cox). I thought that he might refer to his Adjournment debate this evening—he is clearly in overdrive today—but I wish him well when he speaks on the important subject of adults abused in childhood. I know that he has been working with the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, which is an important organisation in this area.

I am afraid that my opening remarks do not reveal my mood about a number of subjects that need to be debated before we adjourn. I could pick a subject to which the new Home Secretary could give his attention. Having moved from the Department for Education and Skills, he may be aware that overseas students require a visa. Appallingly, we take money from them by stealth—it costs them £155 to renew their student visa, and £250 if they try to do so by post. It is disgraceful that we should covertly penalise overseas students who, given the way in which higher education funding works, pay well over £7,000 a year in tuition fees. I was a member of the Government who were castigated for increasing overseas students' fees, and I believe that that is a source of shame. I never thought that a Labour Government would treat overseas students in such a way—and I say so as a governor of the London School of Economics and the University of the Arts, London, a member of the council of the university of Surrey and a close associate of the university of Portsmouth.

I could speak about the rate support grant. A press notice that, as ever from this Government, is Orwellian in nature spoke about extra funding for local government. Fascinatingly, there is to be 6.2 per cent. extra, but in Waverley it amounts to £45,000—or 2 per cent. below the rate of inflation. That is a classic ploy by the Government who, time and again, have shown contempt for the south-east—the very area that helps to fill the Chancellor's coffers—by forcing through public squalor amid private affluence.

I could also speak about Milford hospital, which is essential to the local community. The consultation is therefore important.

However, the issue that I shall speak about is the one about which I feel most strongly. The Government have demonstrated such contempt for the south-east and disregard for Members of Parliament that I am still trembling from the information that I recently received. In a press notice, the Government announced a £1 billion boost for national strategic roads and their programme for the future. We learned that the A3 at Hindhead is to be taken out of the spending programme. The details of the notice show how the Government define whether a road is of predominantly national and international importance or of predominantly regional interest, but everyone in the Highways Agency says that that is purely a political decision.

A year ago, in response to a question that I asked about the Hindhead tunnel and the time scale for the project, the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells), who had ministerial responsibility for roads, said:

"Subject to the satisfactory completion of the Statutory Procedures and the availability of funds the A3 Hindhead scheme should be in a position to start construction in 2005 and the new road open to traffic in 2009."—[Official Report, 17 December 2003; Vol. 415, c. 920W.]

The point about that announcement is that neither the then roads Minister nor the chief executive of the Highways Agency has made any contact with me or my neighbouring Member of Parliament. I defy the Minister to find a road scheme in the country for which there is a clearer need for new investment—[Interruption.] Name one, please.

At the inquiry, which started earlier this year, the adviser who was acting on behalf of the Highways Agency said:

"there is no real necessity for evidence from the Agency that the traffic problems of Hindhead are so acute as to urgently require a solution."

We only have to go there to see that no responsible highway authority could let those conditions continue when there is a real prospect of a solution. The problem has gone on for too long and local people should wait no longer for a solution.

I am sure that the House is anxious to know all the fascinating details about the road scheme at Hindhead. It is an area of outstanding natural beauty. It is an area of national and international importance. It is of special landscape value. The Devil's Punch Bowl at Hindhead is the only area on the route between Scotland and Portsmouth that has no dual carriageway. Since this Government have been in power, there have been a great number of roads Ministers, many of them from Scotland, and it is important to point out that they may wish to travel to Portsmouth, which we are now told is only of regional, not national, significance. Portsmouth is the second most popular passenger port. It is one of the key gateways to the European continent. The area has the only traffic lights on that route between Gatwick, Heathrow and Portsmouth, but the Government say that this is only of regional interest.

My right hon. Friend has always made the case for the improvement at Hindhead with great passion and effect, but does she agree that this short-sighted decision, sneaked out in the annexe to a press release without any warning to her or me since or at the time, will affect the whole economy of the south of England, not just her constituency? My constituents in Grayshott, which is nearby, raised £50,000 to get the road scheme right, and they are now kicked in the teeth.

My right hon. Friend speaks forcefully on behalf of his constituents.

One of the additional dilemmas is that the planning blight that has been upon the local community for a long time will indeed extend. Rat-running is destroying the local, beautiful villages. It is not only a question of environmental damage, pollution and danger—I hope that the issue will be relevant in the forthcoming elections in the marginal seats in Portsmouth. The area is the economic gateway to Portsmouth and the south coast, and I was pleased with the co-operation that I received from Portsmouth Members of Parliament when one of the first steps that the Government took on their arrival in office was to take the tunnel out of the programme. With huge effort, we managed to reinstate it.

A very serious matter, which I hope that the Minister will consider, is that a constituency such as mine has not had a single visit from a Cabinet Minister in all the years since the Government came to power. There is a profound difference in the way that this Government regard holding office from the way in which my colleagues viewed the role. We felt that we were Ministers of the Crown, that we had a national responsibility and that we should be as even-handed as possible in visits to constituencies and in the way that we discharged our duties.

This Government have been systematically politically partisan in the most deplorable way. Early in their tenure, I heard a Government Whip explain that ministerial visits were used as a way to reward good Back Benchers for docile behaviour. In my judgment, ministerial visits should be used so that Ministers can be seen to be looking, learning and understanding some of the most serious problems that lie within their responsibilities. It was only when I challenged the then Minister, Lord Macdonald, and said what so affronted me about the Labour Government was their contempt for any constituency that was neither marginal nor relevant to their own interests, that he finally visited the A3 at Hindhead and we began to make very slow progress.

It is extraordinary for the Minister, in the light of the seriousness of the problem, to have been nowhere near the A3 at Hindhead. The manner and handling of the announcement are characteristic. Ministers should regard themselves as Ministers of the Crown, not simply Ministers who are seeking party political advantage within the Labour party. I hope that in reporting to his colleague, the Deputy Leader of the House will outline the seriousness with which the issue is regarded. I hope that he will urge his colleague to reply to the endless parliamentary questions.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will support me, as a Back Bencher, in insisting that all the relevant papers are made public on the advice that was given about the A3 at Hindhead. The project team that has been working on the matter over many years is in no doubt about its importance and the economic, road and environmental significance. I also hope that he will do all in his power to recognise that there is very strong feeling not only about the matter at hand but, most profoundly and seriously, about the way that this and so many other issues have been handled.

I would like to wish the Minister and others a very happy Christmas and I would like, as I drift towards the exit ramp of my retirement, to do so with benign good will, but I have been so enraged on those four matters over the past four weeks that only if the hon. Gentleman says that he will do his best to reverse the decisions or to ensure a more favourable or sympathetic handling will I wish him and others a benign and happy Christmas.

I now know from the previous speech why Cabinet Ministers do not visit my constituency, and why not a single Cabinet Minister visited it during the 10 years when I was an MP under a Conservative Government.

Since becoming an MP in 1987, I have raised in the House on a number of occasions matters of serious environmental and industrial concern to my constituency, one of which involved Avenue cokeworks at Wingerworth, which suffered considerably from pollution that affected the local community. Cancer clusters were discovered in the area and the problems had an impact on the work force. The coke ovens had seen better days and a wide range of by-products were produced on the 240-acre site, including benzene, toluene, ethanol benzene, xylene and volatile organic compounds, which created problems in the area. For instance, if the banks of the River Rother, which runs through the site, were prodded with a stick, tar, oil and gunge would come out. The impact on the local community and on those who worked there was obviously very serious.

I pressed the then Conservative Government for considerable investment to help to clean up those operations and for modernisation. I realised from other developments in my constituency that investment often helps to increase production and enables workers to enjoy better standards. Needless to say, the funding was not forthcoming. In 1992, the works were closed, with the loss of some 300 jobs.

Planning permission was granted to open-cast the site and to bury the contaminated soil and the remains of the buildings in a huge hole. That met considerable local opposition from the parishes and environmental groups and, in 1997, I took representatives of those bodies to Leicester to meet English Partnerships. A liaison committee was established and I have chaired it ever since. I think that I was considered acceptable for the role because it was thought that I could hold the two sides together—those responsible for the activity and those who had campaigned against various developments, even though I had more sympathy for the latter.

The first development was that the open-cast and landfill plan that had been drawn up was dropped. Plans were then made in a rather cavalier fashion to blow up the chimneys, which contained dangerous dioxins, but that was stopped. Instead, the chimneys and most of the rest of the site were replaced brick by brick as we waited for its later development. It was then proposed to transport the contaminated soil and slurry off the site and to deposit it elsewhere. Its removal and transportation through the community presented obvious dangers, so that plan was also dropped.

Recently, the Deputy Prime Minister made a most welcome statement, saying that new remedial technology is to be used to decontaminate and burn off the offending elements in the soil and that the land will be reclaimed. Jobs, housing, sports facilities, a nature reserve and a clean river with wetlands are to be provided under the East Midlands Development Agency and £104 million will be made available for those developments.

The problem is that the solution to one problem might highlight other problems. Among the problems that I have raised in the past is the health of the work force. There is pressure on the Department of Health to monitor the incidence of chest disease in those who worked on the coke ovens and the problems faced by those who worked with the chemicals derived from the extraction of coke from coal. The general impact on the community in the area also needs to be monitored carefully.

The neighbouring area of Grassmoor is notorious as the birthplace of Paul Burrell, but it faces serious problems that need to be tackled. They include the problems at the Grassmoor lagoons, which were established with waste being piped across from the Avenue cokeworks and Grassmoor colliery. That led to serious contamination, which became apparent in 1992 when the firm closed and the issue of the contamination of the Avenue site came to the fore. However, the problem at Grassmoor is not being tackled through the assistance being made available for the Avenue cokeworks, because ownership was split between East Midlands Development Agency and Derbyshire county council.

The Grassmoor lagoons are in the Grassmoor country park, which is available for recreational use and is visited by children. However, the lagoons cause terrible pollution, and Derbyshire county council needs funding to tackle the problem.

The principle of the polluter pays is reasonable and, in this case, responsibility lay with the National Coal Board—later to become British Coal—although it has now passed to the Department of Trade and Industry. We are close to a resolution of the problem. The DTI is funding a study to update the remediation strategy for the lagoons and, subject to the outcome of the study, is ready to honour British Coal's liability. That point was repeated to me in a letter that I received today from the DTI.

I have raised the issue in the debate because I would like to know what the decision day will be. An equivalent statement is needed to the welcome one that we had from the Deputy Prime Minister in connection with the Avenue site. The matter is of persistent concern to the local community—the local parish council, district and county councillors, the local Labour party, which continues to raise the matter, and constituents who live in the area. The unacceptable smells and odours must be dealt with. Before a general election is announced for 5 May—I will not be standing again—I hope that we will have a statement that is equivalent to the marvellous statement on the Avenue cokeworks. I hope that things will be put right at Grassmoor as well as at Wingerworth.

The House will miss the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes) in many ways. His fearless championing of a variety of constituency causes has been accentuated by his ability to get up Ministers' noses from time to time, which is no bad thing for a Back Bencher. His regular participation in these debates has been a source of interest to us all. I am sure that we all wish him well when he retires on, I believe, 5 May, but perhaps the Minister might confirm that later.

I make no apology for returning to the disturbance and fire at Yarl's Wood removal and detention centre in my constituency on Valentine's day 2002. Just over four weeks ago on 16 November and two years and nine months after the incident, the report of the prisons ombudsman, Stephen Shaw—the 450-page volume I have with me—was published by the Government. They chose to do so in a written ministerial statement, which I regard as inappropriate.

I draw the issue to the House's attention to make more public the findings of Mr. Shaw's inquiry. It is an exceptional and thorough piece of work, and I pay tribute to him for that. I also ask the House whether it shares my view that the response from the Home Office so far has been less than adequate.

When I arrived at Yarl's Wood at 5 am that day, I, like everyone else, was stunned by the extent of the destruction and chaos. Half the largest and newest asylum detention facility in Europe had been destroyed by a fire less than three months after opening and following a major disturbance involving a number of detainees. I say "a number of detainees", because the Government, so the ombudsman found, did not actually know how many people were in their care in Yarl's Wood that night.

It would have been very easy and tempting for me that morning to blame the Government, but I did not. I supported their policy, recognising that a sensible asylum and immigration policy required facilities such as those at Yarl's Wood. I had raised issues with Ministers mostly quietly and privately, trying to help the new facility to find its feet and fully appreciating that, whether or not my constituents wanted the centre built, they had now gone along with it and with Group 4 and the immigration authorities to help to make it work.

I was determined to blame those who had been physically violent, had set fire to the place and had put scores of lives in danger rather than to score a political hit. I believe that I was right to do so. I was also right to praise those who had done so much to minimise the disaster, right to praise the bravery of Group 4 personnel caught up in the situation, right to praise individual detainees who had tried to help and right to praise the emergency services—the local police, ambulance and fire personnel for their bravery—and those from the Prison Service in the area who had responded to the emergency calls for help.

Perhaps hon. Members will realise from a couple of quotes how serious and terrifying the situation was. One of the Group 4 personnel said:

"As soon as the power went off, this seemed to trigger the real trouble. The group outside . . . started ramming the door with something heavy and they were all screaming 'kill them, kill the bastards'. They punched a bigger hole in the window and through the table behind it, which they then began stuffing towels and blankets through. Then I saw one of them hold up a lit cigarette lighter and then shouting 'we're going to burn you' . . . By now I was absolutely terrified and honestly thought I was going to die."

A detainee said:

"I left the building via Delta wing via smashing a window on the side where the road and crowd of detainees were. The reason for this was that the fire doors on the wing were all locked and because of the heat if we had not done this we would have been burnt alive."

On reading Mr. Shaw's report, I became aware of just how wrong I had been about the Government's position. It describes failure from start to finish in a key area of Government policy. It details a mixture of incompetence and deliberate calculation from No. 10 Downing street through the Home Office and its agencies, which led ultimately to a smoking ruin in north Bedfordshire. That contrasts completely with the rather self-serving written ministerial statement that put no blame on the Government.

I am also raising the matter because I know something about Government failures. Although I did not invent the Child Support Agency, I was the Minister who was first charged with the responsibility of managing it. I had to apologise for its failure from the Dispatch Box and went through two Select Committee inquiries to try to find out why the problems had occurred. I put it to the House that the Home Office should go though exactly the same process for Yarl's Wood.

The story, although shocking enough in itself, provides an apt description of how the Government work, and I shall make several allegations before illustrating each one with evidence from the inquiry. The Government are incompetent at handling a significant policy issue and they panic under pressure. They waste scarce resources on an epic scale. They are incompetent at managing their agencies. Their use of information for short-term political gain is less than trustworthy. They unfairly pressurise their civil servants and are careless about the lives and liberties of those whom they detain without trial or the committal of a crime.

If that sounds a bit partial, let me read the ombudsman's conclusions. He said:

"The targets underpinning the project were unachievable, the project was conducted under unreasonable time constraints, the design of the building was poor in terms both of construction materials and layout, speed of delivery was given undue prominence in the contract letting process, the contractors never looked likely to complete the construction within the agreed timescale, policies were ill-thought through and were inadequately consulted upon, and the incident that led to the disturbance was mishandled."

Apart from that, it was a textbook case.

First, let me address the charge of incompetence and panic under pressure. Asylum applications were rising after 1997 and removals remained stubbornly low. There were about 80,000 applications in 2000, but the number of removals hovered between 7,500 and 8,500 in 1999 and 2000. The pressure on the Government to do something about the situation was considerable. Inside the Home Office in about 2000, a figure of 30,000 removals a year started to be spoken of, although that was far in advance of anything that had been achieved. However, Ministers signed up to the target.

A senior immigration and nationality directorate official who was cited by the ombudsman talked of the target being met with "shrieks of hollow laughter". When the director of detention in the IND took over in April 2001, he considered the target to be "laughable" and

"plucked out of the sky".

However, on the basis of the figure, the detention estate in which people were held prior to removal had to be quickly increased. No. 10 Downing street, its delivery unit and the Prime Minister are now mentioned in that connection. Page 130 of the ombudsman's report says:

"Pressure to deliver, however, was increased by the Prime Minister taking a close and pressing interest in the question of removals"—

I ask: how close and how pressing?

Yarl's Wood was commissioned as a response to meeting the new target, but there was a heavy price to pay because of the impossible time scale. In relation to the contract, the ombudsman found:

"The speed with which things started to go wrong suggests it was at best over-ambitious, and at worst wholly ill-conceived. This reflects well neither on the bidder nor on those who let the contract."

Consequences also arose from the design of the building. The ombudsman said:

"There is much of which I am critical in this report. The single question that causes me most amazement is how Yarl's Wood came to be built as it was."

He continued:

"The combination of design and materials resulted in a building that was not capable of withstanding the total loss of control and multiple firesetting that took place on 14 February 2002. The occupied portion of Yarl's Wood survived just three months. It is manifest that, in retrospect, it failed the test of fitness for purpose."

Incompetence led to disaster.

Let me turn to the waste of resources. The building cost about £63 million, which did not impress the Prison Service. In an internal memo dated 9 July 2001, a senior figure said:

"My own view of the IND exercise is that if and when NAO . . . takes an interest they will have a 'field day' in value for money terms. They will surely compare construction costs with our own of £40m for Rye Hill and £69m for the extremely high quality construction at Dovegate for prisons which are considerably more substantial and secure than IDCs . . . IND will argue, however, that the asylum situation, in the run up to the election, was a political imperative demanding immediate remedial action, regardless of cost."

There are further examples of wasted resources, not least the failure to transfer risk, which has left a bill for £100 million for taxpayers. I shall invite the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office to reflect on the Prison Service's comments in the report.

The Government are incompetent at managing their agencies. Once the process had started, there was work to be done to ensure that the bidding process was right, that the contract was let properly, that the design and build were fit for their purpose, that those who were running the establishments knew what they were required to do and that the agencies closely involved with the contactors running Yarl's Wood, such as the IND, were taking decisions that were compatible with the work there. That was not the case, and one of the worst decisions made by the Home Office was that detainees would no longer be held in prisons. That was not a bad decision in itself, but no one spoke to the contractors about its likely impact on the rest of the estate. People with prison experience and those responsible for the Campsfield house disturbance were deliberately placed in Yarl's Wood, a low-level security establishment, with women and children. Everyone says that that also led to the build-up of tension and pressure that caused the riot.

The Government have been less than trustworthy. I cited the target of 30,000 removals, which seemed unachievable. A senior official is reported as apologising to Ministers in April 2000 that the figure had got into the public domain. That seems strange because one apologises only for something that one has got wrong, but in the House on 23 March 2001, the then Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), announced that target some six weeks before the general election campaign. At some time between that point and the next Home Secretary taking office, the figure became unachievable because the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) was told that the target had become unachievable at a dinner. That had happened in a matter of weeks during an election; I rest my case.

The ombudsman's report concludes:

"There was of course no excuse for the actions of those detainees involved in the disturbance and the suffering and damage they caused. I have concluded, however, that what occurred at Yarl's Wood was the result of a series of decisions taken over the previous three years."

There has been no apology from the Home Office since the report became public. There have been no expressions of regret, or any determination to come to the House to give an explanation. I put it to the House that the people who were disturbed at Yarl's Wood, those who had their lives threatened and the taxpayers who face a massive bill deserve nothing less than an apology and a full explanation of how the situation occurred.

I wish to talk about the situation in Iraq. The Prime Minister is currently in Baghdad and has spoken about the situation there today. He said:

"I'm sure that there are parts of Iraq that are very much calmer but here in Baghdad you feel the sense of the challenge and the difficulty that there is."

I was in one of the calmer parts of Iraq with the Defence Committee 10 days ago. It was my second visit to Basra in the past seven months, and I shall give the House my impressions of what I saw in Basra, Umm Qasr and Shaiba, at the al-Basra oil terminal and on HMS Marlborough, which is protecting it. I do so having strongly supported military action in 2003, having campaigned for regime change in Iraq for 25 years, and having one of my best Iraqi friends, Barham Salih, as Deputy Prime Minister. I knew him when he was in exile in this country. As the representative of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, he spoke at a meeting I organised in Ilford in 1990.

I have a long commitment to political change in Iraq, but the events since the liberation have not gone as I predicted. I have to be honest and say that the situation is far more difficult than I thought it would be a year or more after we acted. Before anyone who was against the action jumps to any conclusion, I want to clarify that I would still support that action today, because the situation is infinitely better for the Iraqi people than it would have been under a continuation of Saddam's regime.

When we were in Iraq 10 days ago, the Committee met a large number of Iraqis. We also spent a great deal of time with the British forces serving there. We met members of the Prince of Wales's Regiment, the Black Watch and many others from all three services. My admiration for members of our armed forces increases every time I meet them and see what they are doing and the circumstances under which they serve. I also want to mention their allies. I was driven around by a Danish captain of the DanBat—the Danish Battalion. Its personnel are doing an excellent job alongside our people in Iraq. It is important to recognise that not only the British are serving in Iraq.

Economically, the situation in Basra is probably no better than it was in May. We could still see the legacy of 35 years of neglect, under-investment and decay. I have been to the west bank and Gaza. In 1989 to 1990, I visited parts of the former Soviet Union, including the Baltic states, where there was a sense that nothing had been painted, invested in or improved for many years. Southern Iraq is like that. It is not a direct consequence of the war against Iran or of the two wars of 1991 and 2003. It is part of a systematic, sustained policy of under-investment and suffering of the people in the south.

However, because the Committee had the opportunity, which we did not have in May, to leave the military vehicles and walk around Basra, we saw a huge amount of goods on sale in the markets and shops. There is a massive increase in imports. Nothing is manufactured in Iraq; everything is imported, from Kuwait or Jordan. Lorries move goods all the time from neighbouring states.

We were told that demand for electricity has doubled since 2003 because of the white goods that have been bought. The tragedy is that although the electricity supply has increased, the impact of terrorism means that the availability of electricity has been cut in the south. There was a period in which people had up to 17 hours of electricity a day, which was much better than they got under Saddam. Electricity in Basra province is now available for about four hours on, 20 hours off. That is not because of the impact of terrorist and insurgent actions in the south, but because of the national grid system. Electricity is diverted from the south to Baghdad and other places because important power lines, in particular those near Falluja, were blown up. It takes weeks to replace them because of the steel and the skilled workers that are needed to put them back.

Oil production has increased. It is up to about 1.8 million barrels a day. That is quite a lot, but Iraq hopes to get to 3.7 million by 2007. Some 93 per cent. of the Iraqi Government's revenue comes from oil. Iraq has the potential not to be a poor country. It could be very wealthy, but its people do not work in the way that we understand it, because the system was built on a form of state control. Food, electricity and water—everything, in fact—was controlled. The legacy of a Stalinist, fascist, Ba'athist system was total control. The private sector was almost non-existent and all the goods on sale were imported, except fruit and other things that could be grown in the country. It will take years—possibly decades—to transform the country so that it becomes a modern dynamic economy.

We are doing important work in the south. The quick impact projects of the British Army are making a big difference, but there are problems. The American Congress voted more than $18 billion to fund reconstruction in Iraq. About 10 to 20 per cent. of that is spent on security. Huge amounts are going to consultancies. About $3 billion has been diverted from water and electricity projects to security sector reform because of the impact of the internal opposition combined with the insurrectionists from outside.

Iraq's borders are porous. No armed forces or police service existed following the collapse of Ba'athism. We have to start from scratch. The Committee saw the excellent work by our people from the Police Service of Northern Ireland and from forces based in Sussex and elsewhere who were seconded there. Those serving policemen and women are doing a great job. I hope that their police authorities will not take short-sighted decisions to withdraw them, which is the case in some parts of the country, when their job is so vital over the next few months. A number of police forces are asking people not to renew their contracts and are bringing them back from Iraq at exactly the moment when their work is so vital. We also saw the training of the Iraqi national guard and the way in which its personnel are being prepared for the future.

The elections will be on 30 January—or at least it is hoped that they will be held then; there could be technical arguments about a possible delay. The overwhelming view in the south is that the elections must go ahead. People are enthusiastic about them and want greater control of their affairs. I met the governor of Basra province. Elected members and others from the Basra provincial council were also present. No one believes that the international community should leave immediately after the January elections. On the contrary, those elections are for a constitutional assembly and provincial government, but the final election that will determine the democracy of the country is scheduled for December 2005. After that, there will, we hope, be a fulfilment of total democratic control within Iraq.

The Iraqis need support for security, infrastructure and training. My assessment—this is my message to Ministers—is that, just as in Bosnia and in Kosovo, we are talking about a commitment not of one or two years but of several years. We need to be honest and say that we started this process and we have to see it through.

We and our allies in the international community have to do far more. There is not enough support from our Government going into the south of Iraq. We need to do more through the Department for International Development, which, I understand, has hardly any presence in the south, being mainly based in Kuwait and Jordan. The United Nations currently has only three people in Basra; we need far more support from the UN. As was emphasised to us throughout our visit, Basra and the south are not Baghdad. The BBC does not have any journalists in the area, so we do not get the truth: the south of Iraq is doing well and it needs further support.

I begin by apologising to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to Front-Bench Members for the fact that I will not be in my place for the winding-up speeches. Unfortunately, I have a speaking engagement this evening which was made before we knew the date of the Christmas Adjournment.

Before the House rises for Christmas, I would like to draw its attention to a situation that has emerged in light of the Iraq war but has wider implications for the functioning of this Chamber. I am talking about ministerial accountability, and in particular the accountability of the Prime Minister to the House of Commons. We frequently hear Members raising, on a point of order, their dissatisfaction with answers, both oral and written. That applies as much to answers given to this House by the Prime Minister as it does to those given by other Ministers.

Quite properly, Mr. Deputy Speaker, whenever we stray into that territory, you remind the House that responses by Front-Bench Members are not a matter for the Chair, but I want to raise this afternoon the situation that we now face in light of the statements made to the Chamber in the run-up to the Iraq war and what we now see as the impotence of Back-Bench Members in holding the Prime Minister to account and obtaining from him answers to specific questions. I know of this from my own experience, having asked him about what has become known as the dodgy dossier. He did not answer my question, so I tried to extract a specific answer by repeating it in a written question, which was referred to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It then waited several months before answering, and I had to badger it several times before I got a reply, and a very unsatisfactory one at that: it basically said that the Foreign Office thought that I had had an adequate reply the first time.

Sometimes we all shrug our shoulders and ask, "Is the Prime Minister Teflon-coated? How come he manages not to answer questions and to get away with things?" That is very frustrating for Back Benchers. However, the matters that led up to this country's going to war in Iraq are serious ones, and they set many precedents. It is unsatisfactory that Members of this Chamber have not had a chance to question the Prime Minister fully on the outcomes of the inquiries that have taken place since we went to war and on the information that has come to light since he made his many statements to this House.

I can give the hon. Lady one example of the Prime Minister's refusing to answer a question. The hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) repeatedly asked, in both oral and written questions, for the precise date on which the Prime Minister was told about the withdrawal of intelligence that the House learned about through the Butler review. He refuses to give the precise date and is prepared to say only that he learned about the withdrawal as a result of the review. Why, we ask ourselves, will he not give us the precise date?

The hon. Gentleman properly identifies an important matter, but it is only one—there are many, many more questions to which hon. Members would like specific answers from the Prime Minister.

Having given way to the hon. Gentleman, I pay tribute to him for the work that he has done—and the way that he has gone about it—to bring together the documentation, including legal opinion, that is encapsulated on page 309 of today's Order Paper. Motion 37, "Conduct of the Prime Minister in relation to the war against Iraq", has been signed by several Members of Parliament, some of whom are present this afternoon. I hope that the procedures of the House mean that, in due course, we will have an opportunity to discuss in some detail the contents of that motion. It seems quite improper that those events have passed yet the procedures of the House do not allow us to question the Prime Minister personally and get answers from him.

I wonder whether the hon. Lady recalls that on the occasion of the debate on the Loyal Address, my colleagues and I, supported by some of her colleagues, tabled an amendment that would have secured an inquiry into the Prime Minister's relationship to Parliament and his accountability on the very issues to which she very properly refers. I do not recall whether she voted for that amendment.

No, I did not, because I was already in negotiation with other colleagues who felt that the procedure set out on the Order Paper was the best. That does not mean to say that I do not appreciate the frustration felt by the hon. Gentleman and others. It is evident that there is widespread concern because none of us has yet had this debate and none of us has been able to call the Prime Minister to account.

I voted for the amendment tabled by the Liberal Democrats, but it is surprising that their Front-Bench spokesman should question the fact that the hon. Lady did not vote for it when Liberal Democrat Front Benchers have not signed the motion to which the hon. Lady refers.

I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that I live in the west country, where we are used to the funny ways of the Liberal Democrats. I do not hold it against the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler); I just share his frustration because, whether we take his amendment or the motion on the Order Paper, we have made no progress, and the purpose of my raising the matter today is to say that it is imperative that we make progress.

It is clear from the Butler inquiry that what needs to be investigated is not the Cabinet or the Government but the actions and words of the Prime Minister. During the lead-up to the Iraq war, matters in Cabinet were not dealt with by collective responsibility, which all of us in the House understand, but there was government by cabal. It would therefore be improper to have, for example, a motion of no confidence in the Government, because the responsibility lies with the Prime Minister personally. That is why I support colleagues throughout the House who seek, through the motion, to have the Prime Minister's conduct investigated with a view to seeing whether a Committee of the House believes that it is appropriate to impeach him.

That is the only option left to us because, under the rules of the House, it is not possible for any of us to challenge the propriety of what the Prime Minister said on the record in the House. The rules of the House work on the assumption that we are all honourable Members, but I am afraid that that leaves those of us on the Back Benches at a distinct disadvantage. We are dishonourable if we challenge somebody for not being honourable themselves, but there is no way in which we can call them to account if there is evidence that their conduct needs to be investigated.

There is a catch-22—one that works against the ability of Back Benchers to call the Executive, the Government and the Prime Minister—to account. Let me quote from one effort made to sort out the situation, although it clearly has not been sorted out. On page 120 of "The Challenge for Parliament: Making Government Accountable" the Hansard Society Commission refers to a statement that was produced by the Public Service Committee in March 1997 and put into the ministerial code in May 1997. It emphasises that

"Ministers have a duty to Parliament to account, and be held to account, for the policies, decisions and actions of their departments and . . . it is of paramount importance that Ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity. Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the Prime Minister".

Well, I expect that to include the Prime Minister himself. Although he has the duty of ensuring that the ministerial code is adhered to, he too is bound by it and should be seen to be bound by it. There has to be some mechanism whereby the House can hold the Prime Minister to account.

To allow those events simply to pass into history would be to set a dangerous precedent for this country. The circumstances in which we went to war need to be fully investigated, because if we find ourselves in that situation again, it is imperative that the Government, and in particular the Prime Minister of the day, recognise that what happened before was not acceptable to the House of Commons and to many of its Back Benchers. We Back Benchers have to have a mechanism whereby we can call the Prime Minister to the Chamber to ask him or her straight questions and to receive straight answers in return, especially on matters of such importance. There seems to be no such mechanism at present.

I shall not discuss the detail of impeachment because I realise that it has not been used for a long time, but that does not mean that it should not be available to Members of Parliament. In our lifetimes, we have seen impeachment proceedings used against two American presidents, and those proceedings are based on English law. It is extraordinary that that should happen across the Atlantic but we in this Chamber are unable to exercise that right. I realise that people take a partisan attitude, but the issue is not only about the Iraq war and the present Prime Minister; it is about this Chamber, this Parliament and this democracy.

I, too, shall use this occasion to speak about Iraq. It is clear that the Government have not given us debates on the subject: we get statements and the opportunity to question, but not the opportunity to debate. When, at a meeting of the parliamentary Labour party, I suggested that we have at least a two-day debate before the invasion of Falluja, I was, according to one colleague who ran to the press, "roundly booed". I shall therefore use the time available to me now. Although I would love to talk about Halifax, the subject of Iraq is more pressing. Incidentally, before anyone intervenes to ask, let me say that I shall not sign the impeachment motion on the Order Paper.

The war has united many people from different parts of the spectrum. One of the good friends that I have made is Mark Littman QC, who has written an excellent pamphlet on Iraq in which he sums up my feelings on the matter. He writes:

"The war was unlawful. It was launched upon an incorrect premise. It was and remains a high cost operation in both human and material terms. It has undermined the authority of the United Nations. It has increased the threat from terrorism."

I congratulate Mark Littman on that statement. Another group that I congratulate comprises the journalists of The Independent, including Kim Sengupta, Patrick Cockburn and Robert Fisk, who have given us honest and decent reports on Iraq. If anyone thinks that we should be complacent, I draw their attention to the headline in The Independent yesterday: "Six weeks from elections, 65 are killed on day of terror in Iraq"—including three election agents involved in planning the elections.

Let me state for the record my view that there is no hiding from the issue. The Prime Minister is in Iraq today, but we in this place are having to debate the subject on a motion for the Adjournment. There is bloody chaos in Iraq. It seems to me that we pay no attention to the number of civilians killed, although we do count the shocking number of soldiers killed or injured. The Americans have lost 1,297 dead and, according to the Pentagon, nearly 10,000 badly wounded. Seventy-five Britons—military personnel, not contractors—have been killed and a couple of thousand wounded. For the number of civilian dead and injured, we rely on organisations such as Iraq Body Count, to whose staff I pay tribute for doing their best to get the figures to us. The Iraq Body Count estimate is that about 16,000 people have been killed and many thousands injured. In The Lancet, the British Medical Association estimates that about 100,000 have died. The Government insist on quoting only the Iraq health service—

Will my hon. Friend give way?

No, I shall not take interventions.

What is left of the health service in Iraq estimates that only about 5,000 have been killed. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle of all those estimates.

To go to Basra and the green zone, as the Prime Minister has done today, in relative safety is not to visit Iraq. I would like to have seen the Prime Minister talk to some of the refugees. Where are the estimates for the number of dead in Falluja? The battle in Falluja is the battle that we have not been allowed to see—the hidden battle. It is the battle that was going to bring democracy to Iraq, so I have a few questions. What is happening there? Where are the 200,000 or 300,000 refugees who have left the city? Why are there no pictures of the people still living in Falluja, some in extremely bad conditions? What kind of weapons were used in Falluja? The Americans admitted using a substance similar to napalm when the invasion began and we have heard stories from certain people and bodies, including Reuters, who have been in the city that such dreadful weapons have been deployed there. I have tried to get answers here, but to no avail. Al-Jazeera was banned before the second battle for Falluja, so one reliable source from which we got information before has gone—[Interruption.] It is a reliable source—at least we saw pictures. Where are the sources now? What reports are we seeing about the injured? All we see now is extremely sketchy reports from Reuters.

A report published on 16 December by an American journalist, Michael Schwartz, talks about Falluja. He writes:

"The chilling reality of what Falluja has become is only now seeping out, as the American military continues to block almost all access to the city, whether to reporters, its former residents, or aid groups like the Red Crescent Society."

He goes on to give sinister details—I tabled an early-day motion on the subject and I urge hon. Members to read it. He says that if residents are allowed back,

"Entry and exit from the city will be restricted. According to General Sattler, only five roads into the city will remain open. The rest will be blocked"

by mounds of earth.

"Checkpoints will be established at . . . the five entry points, manned by US troops, and everyone entering will be 'photographed, fingerprinted and have iris scans taken before being issued ID cards.' Though Sattler reassured American reporters that the process would only take 10 minutes, the implication is that entry and exit from the city will depend solely on valid ID cards".

It will be compulsory for citizens to wear a badge. This is equivalent to creating a ghetto. It has sinister overtones for someone of my generation who read and learned a great deal about the ghettos that the Nazis established. This is not bringing democracy to the people of Falluja. It is an insult to anybody who thinks about Falluja. Captain Paul Batty of the 3rd Battalion of the Marines has said that people might be returning on Christmas eve. Only male citizens will be allowed in, in limited numbers.

The US is offering $500 for every house that has been destroyed. There are suggestions coming from the general responsible that there should be compulsory work details and that people will have to clear the rubble that now is Falluja, if we are to believe eye-witness reports.

Who will take over when the Americans pull out? They say that they want to do so by 15 February. Will the under-equipped and demoralised security forces, who are mainly Shi'a in Sunni areas, take over? What has happened to the refugees? I dug out a little information from Reuters. It appears that 13,000 refugees have set up camp on the bank of the Euphrates, at a place that was a resort. Apparently they are sheltering there. They are trying to keep warm but they are left without warm clothes because they had to leave quickly, and there is very little heating. Reuters managed to get out that information.

The Red Cross reported that bodies were piled up and decomposing and that there was widespread structural damage—no power, no water and raw sewage. It reports that no hospitals are functioning and that houses have been flattened. It would have been good if the Select Committee and the Prime Minister had visited some of those areas.

I asked about Falluja before the battle. I asked whether what has been described was equivalent to a strategy to democratise Iraq. Is it the strategy to bomb the Iraqis of Falluja into submission and leave behind a flattened city? If it is, it did not work. The uprising moved to Mosul. All the police stations were shut down while the so-called allies were bombing Iraq.

We need some answers about what has been done in our name in Iraq. We need to know what is happening with the elections because clearly the citizens of Falluja will not be able to participate meaningfully in an election. I believe that the answer is to call a special emergency United Nations conference with every member country being present. Appeals should be made to the Muslim countries to participate in Iraq. We should set a timetable for the coalition to come out of Iraq because we now represent the problem rather than the solution.

After seeing the deliberate execution of an unarmed combatant—a wounded Iraqi—on my television screen, I believe that some sort of war crimes tribunal should be set up. Let us swap what the Americans did in Falluja with what it was claimed the Serbs were doing in Kosovo, where the media were present and we could see things. In that instance a war crimes tribunal was set up. I hear nobody screaming for justice for innocent Iraqi civilians who have been killed in large numbers.

I make no apology for going against my Government on Iraq. I think that I was right. I think also that there will have to be some answers at some stage and that some people will have to accept guilt.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon), who has given us a well-informed analysis of what is going on in Iraq. I am sure that we appreciate what she has had to say.

I want to take up not a fairy story but an every-day story of life under a Labour Government. Last Saturday morning, at 3 am, one of my constituents, Suzanne Miller—a feisty young lady living on her own in a rural part of the Christchurch constituency—was disturbed by her dog barking. She went to the top of the stairs and saw an intruder—a total stranger—inside her house. She dialled 999. The intruder made to climb the stairs. She made it clear that she had a knife, which she would not hesitate to use. The intruder eventually left the house.

The police arrived and caught the intruder at the end of the driveway. He was questioned. The police who attended spoke by phone to the desk sergeant. He apparently decided, on the basis of what they told him, that the individual should not be arrested or questioned. He said that the person concerned should be given a free lift home to his house. Apparently that is what happened.

It is community policing.

The hon. Gentleman says that but this is not a laughing matter. My constituent is beside herself with anger. She has regaled the story to her local councillor, who happens to serve on the police authority. The councillor tried to raise the matter over the weekend with the police. She was told, when she got through to somebody working for Dorset police—she told her the story—"What I would be concerned about is that this is a lady who sleeps in her bedroom with a knife." It was almost as if that person was working to a script. It seems that the Government have created a police force that is more concerned about people having a knife in their bedroom than about arresting people who intrude into somebody's house in the middle of the night.

We are outraged about this situation. How is it that Miss Miller's intruder is not facing any penalty? When I discussed the matter with Miss Miller on the phone, she said, slightly facetiously, that if the intruder was drunk, which is now being alleged, although he was perfectly capable of making a mobile phone call to his wife at home, apparently, why was he not given a fixed penalty notice, which we have been hearing about. Perhaps the Minister will explain what one has to do to qualify for such a notice, if someone does not get one when he goes, drunk, into a complete stranger's house at 3 am on a Saturday.

I hope that the case will be reviewed by the police. I have raised it in the Chamber with the authority of my constituent, Miss Miller, who is determined that something effective should be done as a deterrent to others and as a punishment for the person who came into her house and disturbed her peace, and in so doing caused her an enormous amount of upset.

The intruder got into the house through the back door. He certainly did not get in through the front door. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated occurrence. One of my constituents is a 63-year-old hotel night manager, who lives in Christchurch. The front page of the Daily Echo on 5 May 2004 reported under the headline "Man left in pool of blood" that this gentleman had been assaulted. He had suffered severe injuries. He had a broken nose and he had to have eight stitches put in his head. He was off work for two or three weeks. He was the victim of an assault in the early hours of the morning in a Bournemouth hotel, where he was the night porter.

Some of the other people in the hotel gave the name and address of the perpetrator to the police. Apparently the local police told the Metropolitan police to take some action against the assailant. Nothing happened. After many months my constituent came to share his concern with me. As a result of that, I put pressure on the chief constable to tell us what was happening. She admitted—it was a female chief constable at the time—that the details were not put on the police national computer. It has emerged that although the assailant was living at a fixed address in the home counties, where he could have been arrested for this serious office, he is now believed to be living in Germany.

That is an example of another one who got away. Yesterday evening, I spoke to my constituent's wife, who said, "This is the first time in 40 years of marriage that we have had anything to do with the police. We are absolutely amazed. The police always expect us to help, and indeed we are very willing to help them, but as soon as we want some help from them, it doesn't seem as though there's any reciprocity." That is the impact of the incident.

There is another incident that I should like to share with the House. A garage proprietor in Christchurch was the victim of identity fraud. He lost about £1,500, which was one of the criminal offences that finally put him out of business. The perpetrator absconded, but this autumn was arrested for drink-driving. The complaint that the garage proprietor had made was linked with that criminal. As a result, the police contacted my constituent and said that they would like to re-interview him about the offence. But they never did that. He complained and has been told that the Crown Prosecution Service regards the matter as not worth bothering with—a fraud that resulted in my constituent eventually going out of business.

I know it is trite and commonplace to say that the Government say one thing and do another, but even by their standards it is hard to equate what happened to that constituent with what the Solicitor-General told the House on 2 December, when she said that the House would welcome

"the new guidance on policing priorities for fraud cases that the Home Office sent out, which says that, even if the sum involved is small, if the effect on the small business victim is large, it should be a priority for police investigation and prosecution."—[Official Report, 2 December 2004; Vol. 428, c. 779]

That case was not a priority at all. Sadly, the man has lost his business.

The same man was subjected to another crime earlier this year—he has had a bit of bad luck under this Government—when he was the victim of road rage on the road alongside Bournemouth international airport. He contacted the police by telephone while the road rage incident was taking place. When he arrived at the traffic lights at West Parley, he was still in conversation with the police, who said that he should stay firm in his car as the potential assailant got out of their car and approached him. My constituent decided that it was better to be safe than sorry and drove off, but having given the full details of the assailant to the police, he was pretty certain in his own mind that there would be a quick arrest and prosecution to follow.

No way has that happened. The police made some inquiries. The person who was driving the car at the time denied that there was a passenger present, so it was my constituent's word against theirs. That was the end of the matter until my constituent was at those self-same traffic lights a few weeks back and recognised the driver of the car in that incident. The driver gave him a V-sign, indicating that she and her friend had got away with a serious criminal offence.

The Government have a policy of driving people into crime. My constituent, Mr. Ali, is an asylum seeker who came to this country from Iran in June 2000. He has lost three appeals against refusal to grant asylum. He has been working as a welder, paying his own way and taxes. At the end of November he was summoned to the immigration and nationality directorate, given an ID card with his date of birth and reference number stamped on it and "Employment Prohibited" marked against it. He is not to be deported, apparently, but he is being forced into the black economy because he is not allowed to work. He is effectively being forced into a life of crime. What a ludicrous policy the Government are presiding over.

There is a gaping credibility gap between so much of what the Government say and what is happening on the ground. I could regale the House with many other examples but I do not have time to do so. The cases that I have highlighted show what a pig's ear the Government have made of policy on law and order, asylum and immigration since 1997. [Interruption.] The Deputy Leader of the House seems to be arguing from the Front Bench, but I cannot hear what he is saying. Perhaps I can give him a final example. Somebody who ordered a passport was assured by the Passport Office that it would be delivered by secure delivery. When the passport did not arrive, he complained and was told that secure delivery means that the passport is handed to a firm of couriers who will deposit it through the letterbox without identifying the recipient. So he is now likely to be the victim of identity fraud.

The Government speak about joined-up law and order, but they are presiding over a pig's ear of a mess. I would like to present the Minister with a pig's ear as a modest little Christmas present from the people of Christchurch. I will not throw it, as the Chief Whip threw a book from the Government Benches, but I will make it available to the Minister to chew over, so to speak, over the vacation.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the Christmas Adjournment debate. There are three or four local issues that I wish to raise.The first concerns my early-day motion 170, which I laid before the House after the suicide of my constituent Sarah Cherry, following her involvement over the internet with Amazon book company, through which she obtained a copy of the book "Final Exit", which gives details of how to commit suicide. It was a tragic case. She had also been involved in some of the suicide chat rooms. The local community in my part of Lancashire is extremely concerned about the circumstances. My local evening paper, the Lancashire Evening Post, has been running a campaign to raise with parents and teachers the concerns that many of us have about access to internet chat rooms and to the book.

My concern is that vulnerable young people are the group most at risk of suicide. If they can easily get access to websites or books that make it easier for them to commit suicide and seem to suggest that that is a good thing to do, rather than linking them with organisations such as the Samaritans, we will see more tragic cases such as that of my constituent. Since my local paper ran the campaign, several other instances in the locality have come to light of young people who committed suicide as a result of access to suicide chat rooms.

We have been able to persuade Lancashire county council to remove the book from its bookshelves. We have also persuaded some internet providers to close some of the chat rooms or introduce links from chat rooms to the Samaritans. It is an issue that Ministers need to consider seriously. Although I accept that it may not be appropriate to ban the book altogether, we should do all we can to ensure that it is not easily accessible to our vulnerable young people. Too many have committed suicide because no one was there to put them in touch with the right support mechanisms.

My second point is another constituency issue and concerns the reorganisation of regiments announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence last week. I and many other Lancashire MPs have long been involved with our local regiments—in my case, the Queen's Lancashire Regiment. In the west Pennines there is also the King's Own Royal Border Regiment and the King's Regiment. As I understand it, those regiments reached agreement that, if there were to be a merger, the name of the new regiment would be the Royal Lancashire Regiment. Indeed, an early-day motion on that matter has been signed by many MPs in the area, who also wrote to the Secretary of State to reinforce the point.

It now emerges that when the Army Board considered what recommendation to make to the Secretary of State, it did not agree that the new regiment should be named the Royal Lancashire Regiment. Rather, it came up with the name of the King's Lancashire and Border Regiment. About 90 per cent. of recruits for the new regiment come from the historic county of Lancashire, and many of us are keen, if we are to give the new regiment the best possible start on recruitment and reinforce local identity, to keep the name a simple one that reflects the history of our area. The Royal Lancashire Regiment was agreed by the three regiments, as I said, and I am very concerned to see that that name has not been adopted. I would be most grateful if my right hon. Friend would listen to further representations from Lancashire Members on this particular point.

I have a plaudit for my right hon. Friend. I was able to visit Warton with a number of colleagues on Friday, when my right hon. Friend announced the formal signing of the second tranche of the Eurofighter, under which 89 planes will be built. The order is worth £4.3 billion and will secure 16,000 jobs. That is crucial in my part of Lancashire, where thousands of people are employed in the aerospace industry.

While thanking my right hon. Friend for making that order, I also want to make the point that the aerospace industry depends in many ways on the existence of the Department of Trade and Industry. The Export Credits Guarantee Department system is crucial to the industry's success in being able to secure export orders. Without the DTI and that system, many of the export orders would not go ahead, which would mean the loss of thousands of jobs. During my seven and a half years in the House, I have lobbied on several occasions, on behalf of the aerospace industry, for launch aid from the DTI for various rounds of the Airbus expansion. Again, without that launch aid from the DTI, the expansion and success of the Airbus would not have taken place.

It needs to be said in the House—I shall certainly ensure that it is mentioned to my constituents in Lancashire—that it would be a mistake to adopt the Liberal Democrat policy of abolishing the Department of Trade and Industry and spending the money elsewhere. At a time when the economy is doing well it may seem unimportant, but it would undermine the long-term security of employment in areas such as mine. I am sure that my constituents will think very seriously before risking their livelihoods by voting Lib Dem in the general election.

Finally, I want to talk about one of the key horticultural areas of the United Kingdom. The area around the villages of Banks, Hesketh Bank and Tarleton in my constituency has for many generations been the heart of the Lancashire horticultural industry. Hundreds of acres are under glass and there are also acres and acres of top-class field vegetables grown there. Traditionally, they have been good working agricultural villages based on smallholdings run by families. The products are delivered to Preston wholesale market and then distributed more widely.

Over the past 30 years, the character of those villages has completely changed. New properties have been built by people who do not work in the area for people who do not work in the area, but commute out of it. Also, supermarkets have changed the way in which they procure produce and now prefer a limited number of producers. That has brought about consolidation in the industry, with the result that the number of people employed in it has changed. Instead of a handful of family members, there are now some cases of firms with more than 300 people working in them.

The seasonal nature of the business has traditionally allowed school pupils to support it during the summer, accompanied by some overseas seasonal workers when things get particularly difficult. The season in Lancashire runs from February to November on the basis of full employment and virtually all the demand for seasonal labour comes from overseas. The supermarkets now demand that production goes on for 12 months of the year, and that what is grown is put in nice little plastic bags. As a result, all the farms have to have packaging houses, and they import produce from overseas to ensure continuity of production.

Hundreds of people in my area now work on farms all year round. It is an area of full employment, where fairly expensive detached properties are increasingly common. People who want to work in the industries to which I have referred can no longer afford to live in the area and that means that the vast majority of workers come from overseas. Traditionally, such workers have been housed in caravans in the green belt, even though that is against planning policy. Recently, one grower wanted to convert a large building in Gravel lane in Banks to house about 40 young Polish workers. Those workers had no record of antisocial or inappropriate behaviour, but the community is a small one, with only 40 or 50 properties. To put 40 workers with no connection with the area in a single building does not seem ideal.

I hope that the Government will ensure that planning policy achieves a proper balance in respect of residential property needed to meet the needs of local businesses and their local or overseas workers. At present, there is almost no affordable or rented property in any of the villages that I have mentioned. Employers have to go to places such as Skelmersdale, Preston and Leyland to recruit UK workers and then bus them to my area. Otherwise, they have to rely on workers from Poland, South Africa, Namibia and other parts of the world.

I want to place on the record my concern about how planning policy is developing in the villages. The planning authority recently produced new guidelines for housing migrant workers. That is an improvement, as the aim is to concentrate housing developments in permanent buildings on the farms. At present, workers are housed in caravans scattered around the fields, or in properties purchased or built a long way away from the farms. That is a problem.

We must get right the balance between development for residential purposes and what needs to be put in place for businesses. These are agricultural businesses, and in my part of Lancashire the idea that farms involve only a handful of people who work across a large area is no longer tenable. There are probably 1,000 people who work on farms in the villages to which I have referred, yet the total population is only about 10,000. Most of those workers are wage earners rather than owner-managers. That may be unusual, but it raises specific planning problems that I should like the Government to address.

The abuse of the planning process by local councils is an issue to which the Government need to give urgent attention. Public confidence in local councils when it come to determining planning applications is seriously undermined when the local council is the applicant or the beneficiary—that is, where it has a vested interest in pushing something through in the face of overwhelming public opposition. I therefore hope that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister will hold a full public planning inquiry into proposals for the St. Botolph's quarter in Colchester, an area to the south and east of Britain's oldest recorded town. It lies on either side of the Roman wall, which has been a dominant feature for more than 2,000 years.

Few would deny that urban regeneration of the area is needed. However, it is the manner in which the borough council, in particular, has proceeded—with the backing of Essex county council—that has caused so much outcry. It is no exaggeration to say that the borough council is making things up as it goes along—or, to be more accurate, that it is dancing to whatever tune is being played by a property developer based in Yorkshire. Town hall secrecy is such that even the majority of councillors are not being told what is going on, let alone the general public.

In June 2003, the council issued what it described as the "St Botolph's Quarter Masterplan Document". Even though that document was claimed to be

"the result of 12 months' research, analysis and design work and stakeholder consultation",

such was its usefulness that within months it was, in effect, torn up. More than £100,000 of public money had been invested in that document.

Next, in July this year, came the "Revised Draft Masterplan—Proposed Supplementary Planning Document", which bore little resemblance to what had been put forward originally. The council has yet to determine what its next move will be, but in effect the second document has also found its way into the shredder. A third set of proposals—it is likely that there will not be three but any number into double figures—is being drawn up in secret. That is being done not by the council, but by the property development company with which the council is in league, but whose identity has deliberately not been revealed to local people. Among those kept in the dark are most councillors and, it would appear, the local strategic partnership, Colchester 2020.

The council did go through the pretence of public consultation, as a box-ticking exercise. Public opinion, however, has been ignored—indeed, the whole thing was a charade. Residents have been deceived. We know that all along it was not the people of Colchester with whom the council was in conversation, but a company with share capital of £1,000, which was formed only last year. Conservative Councillor Robert Davidson, deputy leader of the council and portfolio holder for regeneration, was quoted in the Essex County Standard on 10 December as saying:

"We talked to the developers privately for two years to make sure the resulting planning application would include the right benefits and community facilities for the town."

Quite simply, while the council was going through the pretence of showing plans and the so-called public consultation, it was going behind the backs of the people of Colchester and holding secret talks with property developers of whom the public had no knowledge. The pieces of the jigsaw shown to the public were not the same as those in the jigsaw box that the council handed over to the property developers who are driving the agenda. Indeed, the developers are designing their own jigsaw.

From what little has found its way into local newspapers, we know that the developers are working on alternative scheme plan 18b of what to do with the buses following closure of the Queen street bus station. That is a further reason why a public planning inquiry is needed. The future of the town's bus services cannot be left to the mercy of a here today, gone tomorrow property developer and a council cabinet only one of whose eight members lives in the town, and not one of whom I have ever seen on a service bus.

The only thing that has remained unchanged from the council's original proposals is the closure of the Queen street bus station. Two years ago, it was claimed that the site was needed for a £16.5 million visual arts facility, most of the money for which would come from external public funding sources. It is now proposed that the arts gallery needs only a corner of the site. The latest plans show the gallery being erected on the site of a scheduled ancient monument, and the designers claim that it can be built without foundations. It will be interesting to see how they get around national building regulations and how English Heritage will react to those around the country who will no doubt use the Colchester example to build on other sites of scheduled ancient monuments.

Local people are divided about the visual arts facility, although a clear majority are opposed to the current proposals, particularly when council tax payers will be required to pay around £300,000 every year to cover the projected operating losses, assuming that the promoters attract the number of visitors for which they are budgeting. Various surveys of public opinion have all shown majority support for keeping the bus station broadly on its present site in Queen street. They range from support of 64 per cent. in a recent poll by one newspaper to 94 per cent. in one by another. Last year, I carried out a random sample survey of the electorate that showed that 82 per cent. wanted the bus station to stay where it is. It is nice to know that I am in step with public opinion and that the Conservatives in Colchester are not. The all-Tory Cabinet, including my likely opponent at the general election, wants to shut the bus station and sell the site for development. As an aside, let me say that Labour in Colchester supports me on this issue.

The Queen street site is big enough for both the bus station and a visual arts facility of sensible size, designed to fit the character of an historic town. It would not need such a huge annual subsidy from council tax payers. The existing bus station does need improving, but that could easily be funded by section 106 agreements from the proposed commercial development in the Vineyard and Osborne street area of the St. Botolph's quarter. It just needs good leadership from the council to achieve that.

A sustainable visual arts gallery could occupy the frontage of Queen street, where there are two ugly 1960s buildings, which, by some happy coincidence, the borough council now owns. I want to inform the House of the manner in which that happened. About two years ago the council tried to buy one, if not both, buildings, which are joined. Although I gather that they were not on the open market, it would appear that the council was gazumped by a company called CFK Developments, or CFK Investments, of 20 Park place, Leeds. It is my understanding that the council offered just under £1 million for one of the buildings. A few months later, according to the council's annual accounts for 2003–04, it paid CFK Investments £3,443,955 for the two buildings. It seems that CFK made something of a killing.

The last financial year, according to the council's accounts, reveals that the council was involved in a somewhat interesting transaction whereby it used public funds to purchase land in Vineyard street for £256,630 via Martin Elliot and Co., presumably a firm of solicitors, and then sold the same piece of land for the same price to a firm of solicitors called Kelly & Co., the address of which, by a happy coincidence, is the same as the registered address of CFK Developments in Leeds. In all my years in public life, I have never come across a council getting involved in property transactions in this way and using public funds to facilitate the aspirations of a private company.

Also in the last financial year the accounts show that the council sold to CFK Investments, for £650,000, the Kwik-Fit premises in Osborne street, which the council had bought in the past because it forms a crucial part of the landholding for the entire redevelopment of the Vineyard Gate area. I have not been able to find any evidence that the council put this property on to the market or sought competitive quotes, a process which in all my 34 years of holding elected office has always been carried out in accordance with local government best practice and legislation.

A search of Companies House shows that last year a company was formed to take forward development proposals for that part of St. Botolph's quarter now known as Vineyard Gate. This company takes the name Vineyard Gate Developments Ltd. Its registered offices are at Calder Grange, Knottingley, West Yorkshire. This company is a joint venture between Caddick Developments Ltd, of the same address, and CFK Developments Ltd of 20 Park Place, Leeds.

At the time CFK acquired the Kwik-Fit premises, it is my understanding that neither CFK nor Vineyard Gate Developments owned any sites or property in the Vineyard Gate area, and if they did, it still left the borough council by far the largest landowner in this important redevelopment area, which will form a continuation of the central shopping area. The council had all the key playing cards to determine how the area should be developed.

To the best of my knowledge, the council did not offer for consideration to other potential property developers the fact that it was interested in working in partnership for a major development of this part of the town centre. I contrast this with the way the council, openly and without any secrecy, dealt with other town centre redevelopment projects at Lion walk in the early 1970s and Culver square in the mid-1980s. The council claims that all that it is doing in the St. Botolph's quarter is adopting supplementary planning guidance. However, what we are witnessing is a total rewrite, on a blank piece of paper, by the Yorkshire developer.

It was only in March this year that the Colchester borough local plan was officially adopted by the council. Yet even before it was signed, let alone before the ink was dry, the council was embarking—in secret debate with a single developer—on what can only be described as a totally different set of proposals for the Vineyard Gate area; and, in the area of the Queen street bus station, with promoters of the visual arts facility, on a location and design that bear no relation to the original masterplan proposals.

In respect of supplementary planning guidance, the advice that I have been given by the House of Commons Library, quoting from the Government planning policy guidance on development plans—PPG12—is that it states quite clearly:

"Supplementary Planning Guidance (SPG) does not form a part of the Plan. It can take the form of design guides or areadevelopment briefs, or supplement other specific policies in a plan. . . . SPG should be prepared in consultation with the general public, businesses and other interested parties, and their views should be taken into account before it is finalised."

I hope that I have said sufficient to convince the Deputy Prime Minister that every aspect of the St. Botolph's redevelopment proposals in Colchester, ranging from the visual arts gallery being built on the site of a scheduled ancient monument to whatever plan emerges for the Vineyard Gate development, should be put before a public planning inquiry so that people and organisations with an interest have the opportunity to express their opinions. That the council has behaved in a secretive way is obvious. There has not been transparency. The public have been misled. Only a public planning inquiry will retrieve the situation.

I have two issues to raise in this Christmas Adjournment debate. They are disparate, but linked by the need for democratic accountability. I have requested Adjournment debates throughout the autumn period, but I have been unsuccessful in the weekly ballots.

I start by thanking and congratulating the Department of Transport on the lead role it took at the recent International Civil Aviation Organisation general assembly in ensuring the right of European states, including the UK, to set appropriate tax, emissions charging and trading regimes to control and reduce worrying greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft. I draw the House's attention to early-day motion 412 on aviation and climate change, which addresses that issue.

For my constituents in Putney, the Christmas break and the subsequent reduction in the number of planes landing and taking off at Heathrow airport over south-west London offers at least some partial relief from the everyday intrusion of annoying aircraft noise. Like many of my constituents, I have read—and re-read—the Government's air transport White Paper, searching for signs that aircraft noise at Heathrow will be controlled and reduced and that local air quality will improve permanently in the future.

Unfortunately, as hon. Members will already know and acknowledge, despite there being a limit of 480,000 flights annually at BAA plc's largest airport, the White Paper makes it clear that the Government are investigating doing away with runway alternation, which at the moment offers some relief for those who live around Heathrow. My constituents understand and rely on the small but welcome noise reduction that that operational procedure allows and are totally against its removal.

The Department for Transport has also, I am informed, set up a team called project Heathrow, which is examining ways of facilitating and ensuring the construction of the proposed third runway to the north of the existing airport. That runway would in fact be a whole new airport, requiring substantial terminal facilities. Although tough legal, EU-based local air quality limits appear to make that proposal difficult to conceive, my constituents find it hard to understand just why the Department for Transport is acting as air quality consultants, airport logistical planners, ground transport planners and overall strategic consultants for the expansion of Heathrow beyond limits agreed through the planning process for terminal 5. Will BAA plc be sent the substantial bill for all that departmental effort? And can we be told exactly how much "project expand Heathrow" is costing?

Perhaps even more importantly, the close symbiotic relationship between the Department for Transport and the aircraft and airline industry that it promotes robs my constituents of any independent, unbiased oversight of the Department's work programme, often described by those civil servants involved as "delivering the White Paper". I suggest to my hon. Friend the Minister that there might be a case for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs taking over the policing of the air industry from the Department for Transport, to ensure the independence that my constituents would like to see in consideration of the expansion of Heathrow.

The White Paper is due for review during 2006. Will the Government promise to look thoroughly, perhaps through an independently led inquiry, at the need to strengthen the oversight and audit procedures, about which I am extremely concerned? As matters stand, the development of Heathrow appears to be unchecked and unchallenged.

My final concern on this first point is the thorny question of night flights. For many of those living in Putney, night noise from aircraft is a painful intrusion akin to nightly torture. There was a mass meeting in Putney Methodist church in November, attended by many hundreds of my constituents desperate to ensure that night flights are abolished. I congratulate Wandsworth council on organising that meeting. A similar meeting was also held in Battersea. I see my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Martin Linton) in his place and I know he was at that meeting, which was equally well attended and at which opposition to night flights into Heathrow was equally strong.

At the moment the Department for Transport seems unable to respond adequately to the need to begin to reduce night flights for entirely valid public health reasons. The ultimate authority on sleep disturbance and community noise exposure is the World Health Organisation, as the Department finally acknowledged in its most recent night flight consultation exercise. But the Department somehow managed to miss a seminal WHO quotation from the 1999 consultation document, "Guidelines for Community Noise", which states:

"Night time aircraft movements should be discouraged where they impact residential communities".

My constituents are not interested in the Department's latest highly technical wheeze to cram even more flights into Heathrow between the hours of 11 pm and 7 am. We want the Department of Health to intervene to ensure that WHO guidelines and policies on night flights are implemented—not, as the Department for Transport indicates, some time over the next 30 years, but in the immediate medium term. A phased five-year withdrawal of night flights, starting with none between 11.30 pm and 6.30 am, would be a welcome move.

British Airways is running advertisements extolling the virtues of its new beds, in which passengers can sleep soundly. My constituents simply demand the same level of cosseting and look forward to a time when they, too, can enjoy a calm and restorative good night's sleep, courtesy of the air transport industry.

My second point is about Mr. Kassab Al-Rashid, who, with his wife, Amina Kadri—a British citizen—attended an advice surgery that I held in November 2000. They have four lovely children, with a fifth on the way. Mr. Al-Rashid is a Saudi Arabian, who first applied for asylum in 1994, so his approach to me was made on the sixth anniversary of his asylum application. The decision should, of course, have been made by a Conservative Home Secretary before I was elected in May 1997, although I regret to say that my own Government seem to have been as dilatory as the previous Conservative Administration. Incredibly, 10 years on, Mr. Al-Rashid, who campaigns for democratic, Islamic reform in Saudi Arabia, is still awaiting a decision on his asylum application.

I hasten to add that earlier this year, 10 years after his initial application, he was granted indefinite leave to remain, outside the rules, but he is restricted and unable to travel throughout most of Europe, where most of the Saudi diaspora live, because the travel document for which he qualifies as a non-refugee, the Home Office certificate of identity, is not recognised by the majority of our European partners in the Schengen group.

Successive immigration Ministers have assured me that a decision on my constituent's asylum application will be made "soon". In frustration, I endorsed a complaint to the parliamentary ombudsman, who found the Home Office guilty of "serious maladministration". It became clear, too, as a result of the ombudsman's report, that there had been meetings and much correspondence between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Home Office, and that it was, in effect, the FCO that was vetoing Mr. Al-Rashid's asylum. That is in itself a breach of the refugee conventions.

In a blatant example of Executive non-accountability, the Home Office brushed aside the ombudsman's adjudication. As some kind of recompense to Mr. Al-Rashid, the ombudsman suggested that the Home Office give accelerated consideration to a naturalisation application from him, and, in June, I met my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne), the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration, to press that compromise on him. Incidentally, I was honoured to be one of the two referees for Mr. Al-Rashid's nationality application. Mr. Al-Rashid's Home Office file resembles in bulk the collected works of Shakespeare. He has been investigated to within an inch of his life, including by the security services post–11 September, and is as clean as a whistle. The "good character" requirements for naturalisation are comprehensively met.

As of now, my constituent has neither asylum, 10 years on, nor nationality, six months on, in the wake of one of the most damning ombudsman's reports I have read in my seven and half years as a Member of Parliament. My hon. Friend the Minister is unable to give me a timetable for the grant of nationality or asylum, and has only recently raised as a difficulty the supposed fact that Mr. Al-Rashid was illegally resident in the UK until the recent grant of leave outside the rules. I have taken legal advice on that point and I am told that it simply would not stand up in court, that Mr. Al-Rashid should at some much earlier point have been given temporary leave to enter, since it was then impossible for any asylum seeker to enter the country legally, and that the Home Office in all other respects has consistently treated Mr. Al-Rashid as though he were legally resident. I am also advised that the Home Office is now clearly in breach of the undertaking given by the permanent secretary to the ombudsman with respect to the nationality application. Mr. Al-Rashid, with pro bono representation, may seek judicial review of the Home Office's conduct of his case.

I would much rather have the matter settled out of court in a timely manner—albeit 10 years on—so I urge my hon. Friend the Minister, even at this late stage, to move forward decisively. I hope that my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House will pass on that message. We must ensure that all applications for asylum and naturalisation are dealt with fairly and speedily, because 10 years is not acceptable, particularly as other more recent cases are being dealt with speedily and fairly.

We are in Iraq, now at the invitation of the UN and the Iraqi Interim Government, to ensure free and fair elections for a new democratic Iraqi Government. I hope that my constituent Mr. Al-Rashid is not suffering because of his same wish for free and fair elections in Saudi Arabia.

I wish to focus on the state of the British constitution. It might seem curious for a Welsh nationalist to come to the defence of the British constitution, but desperate times need desperate measures, and this is a matter that goes beyond party politics and must surely concern us all. I refer to the ever-increasing concentration of power by the Executive in fewer and fewer persons' hands at the expense of the independence and authority of other institutions. It is what Lord Justice Woolf meant when he said earlier this year that some of the former Home Secretary's proposals were

"inconsistent with the spirit of mutual respect between the different arms of Government."

As we have seen from the events of recent days, when the judiciary deliver the most damning indictment of this Government's erosion of the most basic liberties, they are told by the Foreign Secretary that they are simply wrong—which is as close as one can get to the abolition of judicial review by ministerial fiat. As we have also seen, our civil service has become progressively politicised, so that its impartiality and independence are in danger of being sacrificed to Ministers' agendas.

With the erosion of those other institutions, the need for the House to act as a watchdog has never been greater, and neither has its inability to perform that role effectively, as we heard from the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning), who has joined our campaign. As Lord Butler said recently,

"We suffer very badly from Parliament not having sufficient control over the executive and that is a very grave flaw".

The delicate system of checks and balances that was meant to prevent the abuse of power has been quietly eroded. It is ironic that that very principle—the separation of powers—is the cornerstone of the new constitution being suggested for Iraq. I quote Paul Bremer:

"Since your Transitional . . . Law has deliberately placed those different . . . powers in multiple hands, the extensive rights guaranteed to each citizen are not dependent on the whims of one person or one small group."

The principle is being embedded in the new constitution in Iraq at the same time as it is being eroded here at home.

The two conventions on which I particularly want to focus are the foundation of a parliamentary democracy: collective Cabinet responsibility and individual ministerial accountability. Let us, first, consider the former—Cabinet Government. We now know that the Cabinet did not even see the Attorney-General's full advice. Notwithstanding that we still have not seen it, the Cabinet was not provided with it. On 17 March—[Interruption.] If the Minister would like to contradict me, I shall give him the opportunity to do so, because the fact of the matter is that on 17 March the Cabinet was given only the summary. It is in the Butler report, and it was contrary to the ministerial code, which states, in paragraph 23—[Interruption.] I will quote it to the Minister; perhaps he should read it more often:

"When advice from the law officer is included in . . . papers for the cabinet . . . the conclusions may if necessary be summarised but, if this is done,"—

this is the crucial thing—

"the complete text of the advice should be attached."

That did not happen in the Cabinet meeting, so the Cabinet was also misled about the content, inasmuch as the caveats in the Attorney-General's final view were not there for it to see. [Interruption.]

The second principle, which is absolutely—

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman. I am sure that the whole House is delighted that the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) is back with us, but it would be appreciated if he were less vocal from a sedentary position.

I am grateful, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for your defence of my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond), who I am sure was trying to be helpful.

According to the most important convention in the House, a Minister who is shown to have misled Parliament must resign, and the Prime Minister has responsibility for insisting on that resignation. However, a constitutional question clearly arises when the Prime Minister has misled Parliament. Who then should act to protect us? We have identified a curious gap in constitutional conventions because, as events have developed, a Prime Minister with a large enough majority can do pretty much what he or she likes. The Butler report highlighted substantial omissions of evidence on Iraq, but did not argue that the Prime Minister had given positively false information to the press or Parliament. On 18 September this year, however, The Daily Telegraph published extracts from a series of newly leaked documents from the Cabinet Office, which, with one exception, were not included in the Butler report. For example, two Downing street memos from mid-March 2002 describe meetings between David Manning, then foreign policy adviser to the Prime Minister, Christopher Meyer, then UK ambassador to Washington, and senior members of the US Administration. They show that the Prime Minister was committed to regime change as a policy objective a full 12 months before the war in Iraq and eight months before UN Security Council resolution 1441. In a letter to the Prime Minister, David Manning said that he told Condoleezza Rice that the Prime Minister

"would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion that was very different than anything in the States."

In his letter, Christopher Meyer said:

"On Iraq I opened by sticking very closely to the script that you used with Condi Rice last week. We backed regime change, but the plan had to be clever and failure was not an option."

We were told by the Prime Minister all along that the Government's objective was disarmament, and explicitly not regime change by force. As late as February 2003, a decision had not been made to invade Iraq.

The documents also show that UN Security Council resolution 1441 and the inspection regime were designed to provide a trigger for war as part of an explicitly set-out sequence of actions by the coalition, thus creating the political and legal basis for the invasion. In his memo on his lunch with Paul Wolfowitz, Christopher Meyer reported to Downing street:

"I . . . went through the need to wrongfoot Saddam on the inspectors and the UN Security Council resolutions".

Other material in the documents points to an intention to use and arguably abuse the UN route to provide a legal pretext for a predetermined policy of regime change, not peaceful disarmament. In an interview on 14 November 2002, however, the Prime Minister insisted:

"The purpose of our challenge from the United Nations is disarmament of weapons of mass destruction, it is not regime change."

The documents provide further evidence about the advice on Iraq's weapons at the Prime Minister's disposal. For example, in a letter to the Prime Minister on 22 September 2002, the Foreign Secretary referred to a note by Peter Ricketts, the political director at the Foreign Office, which he attached to another letter to the Prime Minister. The note said of the threat:

"The truth is that what has changed is not the pace of Saddam Hussein's . . . programmes, but our tolerance of them post-11 September . . . even the best survey of Iraq's WMD programmes will not show much advance in recent years on the nuclear, missile or CW/BW fronts"—

that is a reference to chemical and biological weapons—

"the programmes are extremely worrying but have not, as far as we know, been stepped up."

For much of my hon. Friend's speech, the Deputy Leader of the House has been giving a running commentary of disagreement. Would my hon. Friend be interested—I would—to learn which fact the Deputy Leader of the House wants to dispute?

Indeed, and the Deputy Leader of the House could help all right hon. and hon. Members by putting copies of the documents in the Library, so that we can all read them in full.

On 16 July 2002, the Prime Minister told the Liaison Committee that

"as more negotiations go on and he"—

Saddam Hussein—

"fails to comply, and you know that he is developing those weapons of mass destruction, then . . . you are entitled to draw the conclusion that this threat is growing not diminishing."

On 24 September 2002, he told the House that Saddam Hussein's WMD programme was "active, detailed and growing". Yet the note from Peter Ricketts said that the programme was not growing. There had been no change in the pace of the programme and it had not been stepped up.

The Cabinet Office documents were leaked for a reason: so that Members and the public know the truth about why and how we were taken to war. Members of the senior civil service know that the penalty for inconvenient truth telling can be very severe. There is now a high-level investigation into the source of the disclosure of those documents, and it has all the hallmarks of a Clive Ponting-like witch hunt. It is a tragic fact that the only people in public life who have lost their jobs as a result of the Iraq war are people such as Andrew Gilligan, who "got it mostly right", to quote the former chair of the D notice committee, whereas those such as the Prime Minister got it mostly wrong and are still in post. That brings me back to the constitutional question.

If the collective Cabinet system is no longer functioning and if Parliament is impotent, we are nearer to the elective dictatorship that Lord Hailsham referred to more than a quarter of a century ago. We are trampling on the constitutional conventions. Parliament is being increasingly sidelined, ignored and treated with contempt. We believe that it is time that Parliament restored public confidence in our ability and responsibility to hold the Prime Minister to account. As "Erskine May" said, impeachment

"is a safeguard of public liberty well worthy of a free country".

In the new year, it is time to revive the tradition of upholding the most basic principle that Ministers must tell the truth to MPs, elected by the people.

I want to make a contribution on the development of wind farms in and around the north of Lincolnshire. None has been approved, but there are plans, or at least expressions of interest, to build wind farms that would lead to up to 176 turbines to be grouped mainly around a small area—a place known locally as North Axholme—although there is another controversial application for a site near the village of Elsham in my constituency. Hon. Members may wonder why one small part of the country gets so many applications in one go.

There is a lot of wind.

I wish that that there were the case in some respects. When tests were run, it was found that the area was rather low on wind. Hon. Members may call me a simple chap, but people might think that that would be key to building wind farms in an area. Apparently, the answer is to build higher turbines, with bigger blades, and the problem is overcome. Of course, that just increases local people's concerns. A so-called gold-digger syndrome might be more important. A company comes into an area, does all the research and tests, and the plan becomes a viable option, so other companies start to think that the work has been done. More and more hon. Members may see similar trends in their own constituencies.

In the relatively short time that we have, I do not want to debate the principles of and reasons for promoting renewable energy—those are not in doubt—but I want to talk about the process involved in locating wind farms. There seems to be general agreement across all the main parties that wind has a role to play, and I want to consider some of the comments that have been made in that respect.

The Government's view is straightforward. There is a 10 per cent. target for renewable energies to be in place by 2010, and that is a move from 0.7 per cent. in renewable energy output when they came to power in 1997. Of course, renewable energy is not just wind. In the debate in the House on 25 October, my hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment and Agri-environment pointed out that the Government have invested £500 million in non-wind renewable energies, £117 million in offshore wind farm technology, £60 million for energy crops and biomass energy, £31 million for photovoltaic energy cells, £12.5 million for micro-power schemes and £50 million for marine renewables. All of that is welcome, but many of the technologies are relatively new and are still developing. In the same debate, my hon. Friend the Minister for Energy and E-Commerce pointed out that, with the progress that is being made in renewable energy sources that are not related to wind, the best that we can hope for by 2010 is a third of our target being met by those technologies and another third being provided by onshore or offshore wind.

I thought of those points at the weekend following the climate change conference in Argentina at which the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo), who leads for the Conservatives on these matters, said that he thought the Government had to do more on renewable targets. Given the limitations of non-wind development that my hon. Friend the Minister for Energy and E-Commerce had already referred to, that has clear implications for the number of wind farms that will be required to meet the target.

In my area, North Lincolnshire council has the job of dealing with many of these applications or certainly has a say in them. On its website, the Conservative deputy leader of the council, Councillor Liz Redfern, whom I seem to have known for more years than either of us would care to remember, says:

"North Lincolnshire Council is supportive of the need to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels to reduce the impacts of climate change and global warming."

She adds that the council is committed to wind developments that

"are well planned and take account of their impact on communities and the environment."

That led to something happening in December last year that is a bit like Christmas in that it happens only once a year. The council had a unanimous resolution in which all the political groups accepted the need for renewable energy and the fact that wind farms should be part of it but should not dominate too much in one particular area.

In the debate in the House on 25 October, the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), who was leading for the Liberal Democrats, was taunted by Conservative Members who said that the Liberal Democrats' policy on wind farms was to support them except when they were in their areas, when they always opposed them. That led to the hon. Gentleman saying that he understood that that was the Conservative party's policy. In this pantomime season, perhaps it is a bit of "Oh yes, you are; oh no, you aren't." However, he said that the Liberal Democrats regularly support wind farm applications all over the country and went further to say that the party's policy was that there should be a presumption in favour of wind farms when applications are made. In support of that view, he said that public opinion was 80 per cent. in favour of wind farms.

I have just finished consultation of my own and my annual report in which I wrote to 30,000 households to ask my constituents what they thought should happen with wind farm technologies. In some respects, the 80:20 split came out about right, but it is interesting that the 80 per cent. who supported wind farms were split almost equally between those who wholeheartedly supported them and did not mind how many there were or where they were, and those who believed that the principle of wind farms was a good one but that there should be a limit on their number in any one area. That is the point that I want to develop today.

We seem to have got ourselves into the position in which the decisions as to where larger farms will go will be made by the Department of Trade and Industry while smaller ones will be the subject of planning applications to the local authority. The Government have, of course, come up with policy planning statement 22, which is an attempt to try to ensure that the process is clear and understood and that people have the right to have their say in it, but the issue becomes difficult when several local authorities cover a geographic area and the size of wind farms is different.

My hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, North (Mr. Hughes) and I share a part of the country in which there are a number of applications on the go. When we visited the then Minister for Energy, E-Commerce and Postal Services, my hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Mr. Timms), we said that the position was such that his Department would determine some applications, and North Lincolnshire council, Doncaster metropolitan borough council, East Riding of Yorkshire council, West Lindsey district council and North Yorkshire county council would determine the others. However, that would often happen with no regard to what other councils or the Department were saying. There was a salami, or a slice-by-slice, process, so we said that the area would be overridden with wind farm applications because no one was trying to find out what would happen if they were all accepted. I fear that the system that has been put in place does nothing to address that problem.

Following our meeting, the Minister helpfully sent an official from his Department to meet local constituents, the campaign groups that had been formed and other people with a great interest in the proposals for the area. The official asked whether they would think that it would be a good idea if the Government were to approve what he called a cumulative environment impact assessment, whereby the applications could be considered together so that sensible decisions could be based on all proposals. Everyone thought that that would be a good idea, and he returned to Whitehall. It was a shock when he wrote a few weeks later to say that unfortunately that could not be done. That was greatly frustrating, because although I accept that he did not definitely say that such an assessment would happen, people thought that they had been offered something but it was taken away at the last minute.

We have had a change of Minister since then—the post of Minister for Energy and E-Commerce is now held by my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien)—and I have met him and his officials to discuss the matter again. It is clear that it is relevant to not only the Department of Trade and Industry but the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, because it involves planning applications and planning law. I understand that officials in those Departments are working together to determine whether a cumulative system could be put together for future applications. I hope that they can do that because I am sure that the situation in North Lincolnshire will develop in other constituencies, so we need a transparent and up-front system for the fair consideration of all such applications.

During Trade and Industry questions last week, the Minister for Energy and E-Commerce helpfully said that the Department was considering the matter and that he hoped that something would come forward soon. I hope that that will happen sooner rather than later, because local authorities are under pressure to determine applications that are under their control. They have targets and deadlines to meet and developers can take action against local authorities that do not reach decisions in a specific period. They want guidance so that they can do the right thing for their communities. We need the guidance now, and I hope that my plea will be taken up by the Department so that a system can be developed to assess the overall impact on an area, thus protecting towns and villages throughout our country from inappropriate and over-the-top wind farm development.

I wish to make several points about justice before the House adjourns for the Christmas recess. Justice is a concept with which I find it increasingly difficult to grapple. The Prime Minister must have found it difficult to choose whether to be in Iraq or this country on the day when a report was issued on the conduct of his colleague, the former Home Secretary. Much of today's talk of justice has much to do with the former Home Secretary. I am sure that hon. Members will note that there have been several ministerial resignations since 1997. When Ministers resign, they usually say that they have done nothing wrong, so Ministers who resign obviously experience a great sense of injustice—I feel for them.

When the war in Iraq was first mooted, the then leader of my party held meetings with the Prime Minister at which he was given access to intelligence. I have never pretended to be a defence expert, so when the then leader told us that we should vote for the war, I accepted completely what he said. Some of my colleagues might say that I was naive, but I accepted that the weapons of mass destruction were directed towards us and other countries, and the point about the 45 minutes in the dossier. What has happened since fills me with horror. We now know that what the Prime Minister told us simply was not the case. In the 20-odd years that I have been an MP, when a Minister—not least, the Prime Minister—gives information to the House that is not accurate or as it should be, he or she resigns. That just has not happened, and the House and the country accept it. Absolutely extraordinary.

I therefore joined others on Tuesday 23 November in tabling a motion of impeachment against the Prime Minister—the first impeachment since the battle of Trafalgar. The following day, we were joined by the novelist Frederick Forsyth, author Iain Banks and representatives from Military Families Against the War to promote the need for impeachment. I still firmly believe that there is no alternative. The Prime Minister has destroyed the fundamental principle of parliamentary democracy by not resigning. I and many other colleagues are determined to preserve constitutional government in the United Kingdom. We intend to stand firm, because the rules of constitutional conduct have been brushed aside. The Cabinet table has been replaced with the sofa, Cabinet minutes with e-mail, and the facts with belief. I will not be a party to what is happening now, whereby the general public feel, time after time, that Members of Parliament are letting them down.

I also seek justice for my constituent Maajid Nawaz. This time last year I visited Maajid in prison in Cairo. He has been sentenced to five years, accused of belonging to the Islamic Liberation movement, which is not a proscribed organisation. I recently spoke with his mother, Abi Nawaz, who is desperate to have Maajid, Ian Nisbet and Reza Pankhurst transferred from prison in Egypt to prison in the UK. I recently wrote to Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean, requesting her to raise the matter with the Egyptian authorities. I am delighted that she is doing so. I very much want the families of the three men to meet her. It would be an excellent opportunity for the Government to keep them up to date on what the authorities are doing on their behalf. I ask the Minister to thank the noble Baroness for what she is doing.

I ask for justice for the family of Jo Martinson, a 19-year-old woman killed in a car crash on 14 November 2001. The gentleman driving the car responsible for the accident had one eye, no licence, no MOT certificate, no insurance and defective brakes. After three years of campaigning, I still have not received justice for her family.

The Solicitor-General has been sympathetic. Indeed, we have debated the matter. In a letter to me, she said:

"There is no indication of a continued investigation into the status of the seized excise licence or any request for advice by the Crown Prosecution Service in respect of a charge of fraudulent use of an excise or indeed any associated offence. I understand that no specific advice was sought from the Crown Prosecution Service by Essex Police regarding this allegation. As you are aware, it is the responsibility of the police to investigate allegations of criminal offences. In the normal course of events, the police investigate such offences without reference to the Crown Prosecution Service."

The sad fact is that, understandably, as the Solicitor-General said,

"the police in this case were concerned about whether there was any evidence to implicate"—

we shall call him Mr. X—

"in the fatal road incident. The senior crown prosecutor who advised the police concentrated on those aspects of the case, but did indicate in his advice that other Road Traffic Act offences were made out."

The family are devastated by that. The Solicitor-General continued:

"Unfortunately, I am not able to say why the police did not commence proceedings in respect of a possible fraudulent use of a vehicle excise licence. I can only speculate that it may have been overlooked as investigators and prosecutors concentrated on the more serious allegations."

She went on to make personal remarks. A mistake was made, and there was a week's delay in dealing with the matter. That is very difficult for the family to cope with.

I seek justice for pedestrians and people who ride on buses. Many of us have observed bendy buses in London. I tried to table a question about them, and I was told that the matter is the responsibility not of a Minister but of the Greater London authority. I have witnessed two bad accidents involving bendy buses. They are 18 m long and I cannot believe that anyone in their senses could authorise their use. Invariably there are very few people on them and they will have disastrous effects for pedestrians. Our roads simply are not made for these 18 m buses.

I seek justice for those people seeking money from the national lottery. Southend, West is in the bottom three of the 659 constituencies in benefiting from funding, but we are not the third wealthiest constituency in the country.

I seek justice, finally, for the unborn child. I feel increasingly that life is very cheap these days. I am pleased that the Government intend to make allowances for new clause 1, which has all-party support, to the Mental Capacity Bill. However, I could hardly believe Baroness Warnock's statements. She thinks that assisted suicide should be legal; that the very frail should, like elephants, slink away to die quietly; that doctors, when asked to assist in such cases, should refer to their conscience; and that parents who want to keep premature babies with unviable lives on life support machines should pay for that.

My wife and I thank constituents, friends and colleagues for their support at a difficult time for our family. I wish everyone a very happy Christmas, and good health, peace and prosperity in the new year.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to return to an issue that I raised in last year's Christmas Adjournment debate—the scandalous way in which certain solicitors and claim farmers are raiding miners' compensation in my constituency and other mining constituencies throughout the country.

In last year's debate I raised the case of Mark Gilbert Morse, a Newcastle-based law firm that was not only charging costs to clients but reclaiming the cost of cases from the Department of Trade and Industry. I am pleased to report that, since the intervention of the Law Society, that company has paid back to my constituents the money that it owes them. The Law Society continues to investigate the way in which the firm is operating. Since that debate, the issue has been raised by many right hon. and hon. Members who have coalfield or former coalfield constituencies and pressure is being brought to bear on lawyers to pay back the money that should not have been deducted.

Another element that has emerged is the activities of claim farmers—middlemen who are not legally qualified and who have plundered huge amounts of compensation for, in many cases, doing nothing but registering a claim and passing it on to a firm of solicitors. In a Westminster Hall debate on 26 October this year, I raised the case of my constituent, Mr. Jobes, who signed an agreement with a company called Industrial Disease Compensation Ltd of Ashington, which, following a successful claim, deducted almost £3,000 from Mr. Jobes's compensation in return for simply passing the claim on to a Liverpool-based law firm, Silverbeck Rymer. During that debate, I challenged IDC to pay back the money, but to date the company has been silent. IDC cannot justify deducting the money—there was no risk to the claim farmer or any reason to deduct £3,000 from Mr. Jobes's compensation. The Law Society is still investigating the case—it was the solicitors who actually deducted the money—but, alas, IDC continues.

The company has moved on from the coalfields to other areas of industrial compensation in the north-east and elsewhere. It is now involved in pursuing asbestos compensation claims. It is difficult to find out what IDC does for the money apart from register people's claims, then pass them on to solicitors, but, with the permission of my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr. Hepburn), who knows of my interest, I shall highlight the case of Mr. Vincent Mullen of Jarrow. He responded to an advertisement placed in a local newspaper by the company—now called FreeClaim IDC—inviting people to attend a free screening session to see whether they were suffering from asbestos-related disease. On attending the session at the Quality hotel in Boldon in August, Mr. Mullen was asked to sign a document to progress the claim. No alternatives were put to him—for example, that he could approach his trade union, which would do it for nothing—nor was it made clear to him what he would get in return for signing the agreement. On reading it more closely, Mr. Mullen discovered that if his case was successful, he would have to pay £399 to IDC—again, it was not clear for what the payment would be made—so he withdrew from the agreement and pursued his case through his union, Amicus, which dealt with the claim for nothing. Subsequently, however, Mr. Mullen was landed with a bill for £587.50 with a threat of court action by IDC to cover its costs.

Such cases are a scandal. It is about time that the Government legislated against or regulated claims handlers. Such companies are not covered by any legislation and they fall outside the Law Society's remit, although I accept that the Law Society has a role to play because, as the cases that I have detailed show, IDC is passing on cases to firms of solicitors, although whether IDC is charging or receiving a fee for doing so is unclear. At least one well-known Newcastle law firm, which I believe does work for the Transport and General Workers Union, is also doing work for IDC.

Many people—I know this from experience of the cases that I have dealt with in my constituency—go along to such screening sessions. They think that the people offering advice are legally qualified or have some legal background. In fact, they have none. They are acting as middlemen to pass on claims.

The Law Society is calling for regulation. I agree with its chief executive, Janet Paraskeva, who said in a recent article that the Law Society

"always advises anyone who believes they have a genuine claim to contact a solicitor. If solicitors step out of line they are answerable to the Law Society. Claims farmers are answerable to no one, and the public has no comeback against shoddy performance."

As I have said, I concur with that view. I would strongly suggest to anyone in the north-east who thinks that they have an industrial injury or an industrial disease that they should first go through their trade union, if they are a member of a trade union, or go to a reputable firm of solicitors, of which there are many in the north-east, and cut out the middlemen.

The Government need to legislate. I understand that they have given the "industry" a year to tidy up its act, but that is not good enough. People are being misled. They are being ripped off by characters who are doing nothing apart from registering a claim and passing it on to a firm of solicitors. I agree that there is an onus on the Law Society to start regulating its members. It needs to examine the relationship between its members and claim farmers.

Urgent action is needed if we are not to see more people being misled, certainly in former industrial areas such as the north-east and in former coalfields. Unless that action is taken, we shall see more and more people being ripped off and losing the compensation that they deserve because of the industrial injuries that they suffered through no fault of their own in their working lives.

I wish all Members a happy Christmas. That includes your good self, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

I will not take up the remarks of the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones). Instead, I will revert to an issue that has been touched upon this afternoon by the hon. Member for East Carmarthen and Dinefwr (Adam Price) and by my hon. Friends the Members for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) and for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning).

On 23 November, the first day of the Session, I and a number of other right hon. and hon. Members tabled a motion calling for a Select Committee to examine the work and conduct of the Prime Minister that led to the decision to invade Iraq in March 2003, with a view to considering his impeachment. We intend to keep the motion on the Order Paper—motion 37 on today's Order Paper—until the matter is resolved by debate on the Floor of the House. It is a process that survives the general election and one that focuses more accurately on particular conduct of the Prime Minister for which he personally must answer.

For a cross-party group of Members to contemplate the impeachment of the Prime Minister is to invite derision from Government loyalists, pitying but concerned smiles from self-proclaimed political realists and yawns from those who believe that there are many more interesting things for grown-up Members to be getting on with.

The first reaction is understandable. The paramount rule in the political jungle is survival, and any available weapon is a good one. Ridicule is the most effective tool, even when borrowed by those way down the political feeding chain. It brings with it a sense of moral and intellectual superiority. In 21st-century Britain, the very word "impeachment" suggests the troubles of the favourite of Charles I, the Duke of Buckingham, or men in 18th-century wigs spending almost a decade arguing over Warren Hastings's life of luxury in far-off India. It is a process lost in the mists of history with no purpose in our advanced parliamentary democracy, which is sustained by universal suffrage and the discipline of general elections.

The Prime Minister's sexual morality is unimpeachable, so the Clinton example has no relevance to us. "Go ahead, make my day," says the Blairite, with the confidence that comes through sticking his thumbs into his belt loops. For the realist, one has only to ask, "Can we impeach the Prime Minister?", to know the answer. Of course not. Labour has a vast majority, this is a political question and the tribal loyalty of party in the Commons will outweigh the merits of the case, whatever its qualities. It simply will not work. We will sort out the Prime Minister at the general election. That is when he will be held to account.

As for the yawners, the third category, they have never applied their minds to much and they are not going to start now. One cannot argue with them, so they are best ignored. The survival of the praetorian guard depends upon the survival of the emperor and they will die in the ditch. It is the realists whom we must persuade to see where reality and our constitutional duty lie.

In doing so, we must not allow ourselves to fall into the trap set by No. 10, which wants us to forget the reasons for invading Iraq used by the Prime Minister in his Commons speech in March 2003, to forget what we now know he knew or ought to have known then, and to concentrate only on the benefits for Iraq that have flowed from the war. It wants us lazily to accept that any criticism of the Prime Minister for his conduct in taking us into the war is to tolerate, if not positively to support, the tyrannical regime of Saddam Hussein, and to be an opponent of the war and a disloyal critic of our brave troops. It wants us to believe that because the Prime Minister has been exonerated of bad faith or dishonesty by the narrowly focused Hutton and Butler inquiries, his integrity in all things and at all times is not open to doubt.

For me, the argument in support of our motion to inquire into the grounds for impeachment is not based on the wrongness of going to war. If it were, I would not support it. It is based upon the need for Parliament to check the Executive, and to remind even the most powerful in our country that they are not supreme and ourselves that a functioning parliamentary democracy depends on trust and truth.

President Bush told the American people why he was leading his country to war. Whether one agrees with him or not, no one can accuse him of saying one thing in 2002, something different in early 2003 and yet something else in 2004. Examine our Prime Minister's record over the same period and ask yourself, Mr. Deputy Speaker, whether he can claim to have been as consistent or as candid with Parliament, the parliamentary Labour party and the public as the President was in the United States of America. Did the Prime Minister know, do and say things in the lead-up to the war that were inconsistent with what he told us?

There are, of course, good and obvious reasons for any British Prime Minister to want to remain on good terms with the United States. It is in our national interest to protect our shared values and achieve our joint goals. Our long-standing alliance with America is neither a mistake nor a serendipitous chance of geography or history but based on a cool assessment of how our country's present and future can best be secured. But what the Prime Minister did was to say one thing here and another to the Americans. While not insulting Mr. Bush like the French, we have a right to expect that the Prime Minister's first loyalty should have been to the truth and the British public through the House of Commons.

The Prime Minister made a number of claims about Iraq from early 2002 onwards that drew upon the authority of the intelligence services for their validation. He told us he had knowledge of the facts that he could not, for understandable reasons of national security, share with us. He stated:

"I am aware, of course, that people will have to take elements of this on the good faith of our intelligence services, but this is what they are telling me, the British Prime Minister, and my senior colleagues. The intelligence picture that they paint is one accumulated over the last four years. It is extensive, detailed and authoritative."—[Official Report, 24 September 2002; Vol. 390, c.3]

The Prime Minister led us to believe that Saddam possessed strategic weapons of mass destruction that were a threat to the region, the wider world and our own national interests, and that he would use them unless we defeated him. The secret intelligence proved as much, said the Prime Minister. He asserted in early 2002 that Iraq had

"stockpiles of major amounts of chemical and biological weapons".

The assessment of the Joint Intelligence Committee at the time was that Iraq

"may have small quantities of agents and weapons."

The Prime Minister stated that the United Nations inspectorate was reporting that WMD did exist, whereas in fact it was saying no such thing.

The Prime Minister stated that Iraq's illicit weapons programme was on the increase, when the intelligence suggested it was not. The Prime Minister misreported the United Nations inspectors' findings so as to portray further inspections as futile. The invasion, he said, was sanctioned by international law because Saddam Hussein was in breach of numerous Security Council resolutions, and in particular 1441. He claimed that material found after April 2003 was part of a secret Iraqi weapons programme, although there was a lack of intelligence to support this assertion.

Today we are told that the reason for the war was to get rid of Saddam's regime. We are reminded how much better things are for the previously down-trodden people of Iraq, and anyway, everything the Prime Minister did and said was based on good faith. As for the first reason, barely a month before the invasion the Prime Minister said in the House that Saddam could stay in power if only he complied with United Nations Security Council resolutions, so presumably regime change was not a decisive factor behind the invasion. We now know, of course, that that was very much in the Prime Minister's mind in 2002. The second point may well be true, but rather depends on whether one lives in Kurdish Iraq or Basra, or Falluja or Mosul. As to the third, present retrospection is less persuasive than earlier introspection.

I voted with the Government in March 2003 because I believed that the Prime Minister was advancing a case for war based on the unvarnished truth and because I could not believe that any Prime Minister, particularly one who had put so much store on his personal trustworthiness, could do otherwise. If the Prime Minister had already committed our country to war in a private deal with the President of the United States in 2002, he should have told at least his Cabinet at the time, and Parliament when he made the case for war in March 2003.

It is the constitutional duty of all Members of Parliament—Government and Opposition Members—to hold the Government to account. I accept that that task is made difficult in Westminster, where the Executive largely sit in and on the Commons. The Government have an enormous majority over all other parties and, save for a few notable exceptions, it has been a supine majority that has forgotten, if it ever knew, that it should do more than lamely follow its leader. I believe, and I sincerely hope, that the realists are beginning to get real.

We lack accountability in the House not only in respect of the Executive but, briefly to refer to another matter, in respect of other bodies that should be accountable to us. I am thinking, in particular, of the Civil Aviation Authority and I refer to the speech of the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Colman), whose constituents complain about night flights coming in and out of Heathrow. What he may not know, but I and my constituents do know, is that the East Midlands airport—laughingly called the Nottingham East Midlands airport, despite the fact that it is situated wholly within the county of Leicestershire—now has more night flights going in and out of it than Stansted, Gatwick or Heathrow. Yet only those three airports are designated under the Civil Aviation Act 1982.

I cannot persuade the Government—either because they will not listen, do not want to listen or do not care about the people of Leicestershire—to designate the Nottingham East Midlands airport, as it cares to call itself. Only if the Secretary of State for Transport takes control over matters concerning the ingress and egress of flights into and out of NEMA will my constituents gain any degree of comfort. The voluntary agreements between NEMA and the North-West Leicestershire district council—a worthy but powerless body in the face of the commercial might of this vast airport company owned by 10 local authorities in Greater Manchester—are inadequate. The company has no interest whatever in Leicestershire other than the fact that it owns a piece of real estate there, in and out of which it can fly aeroplanes in order to increase its profits and, no doubt, mitigate the council tax bills of the people of Manchester. That might be of interest to the Minister, whom I see in his place on the Front Bench.

It is essential that the Civil Aviation Authority does its duty to the people of Leicestershire by making itself accountable through the Secretary of State and by making the organisation behind NEMA accountable to the people of Leicestershire. That can happen only if the Government adopt a vigorous approach. Until they realise how serious an issue it is for my constituents, whose quiet enjoyment of their lives is being destroyed, I will continue to press the key issue—the hon. Member for East Carmarthen and Dinefwr and many other hon. Members have also stressed it—of holding the Government and the Executive to account in this Chamber day in and day out.