I am grateful to Mr. Speaker for this invaluable opportunity. During my 13 years in the House I cannot remember having an Adjournment debate that has attracted more interest in the outside world. That is a measure of the concern that is now felt throughout the land about the Licensing Act 2003.

"In my view, we are in danger of having a wholly disproportionate attitude to the risks we should expect to run as a normal part of life. This is putting pressure on policymaking, not just in government but in regulatory bodies, on local government, public services, in Europe and across parts of the private sector—to act to eliminate risk in a way that is out of all proportion to the potential damage. The result is a plethora of rules, guidelines and responses to 'scandals' of one nature or another that ends up having utterly perverse consequences."

Those are not my words; they are those of the Prime Minister during one of his first major speeches since the general election, at the Institute for Public Policy Research on 26 May. What a relief it was to discover that he is indeed thinking what I have been thinking for a long time. Understandable concern about antisocial behaviour that is fuelled by alcohol in our towns and cities is having "perverse consequences" for local communities. The Prime Minister gave the example of a village in the Cotswolds that had to remove a seesaw with an unblemished safety record because it fell foul of an EU directive on playground equipment for outside use.

The Licensing Act means that villages in every corner of the country, not just in the Cotswolds, will say goodbye to the traditional touring circus, see more village shops go to the wall, watch local sports clubs forgoing much-needed income and lose their village halls, despite no accidents, no antisocial behaviour and nothing worrying having occurred in, outside or even remotely close to them.

I remind the Chamber that the Prime Minister's example was wrong because there is no EU directive to prevent playgrounds from having what they want.

More pertinently, during my eight years as Member of Parliament for Worthing there has been no complaint to me about drinking in the golf club, in church halls and so on, and I suspect that the same applies elsewhere. The problem arises with young people in licensed premises on high streets, where the regulation does not have a major impact. I am worried about small businesses on which it does have an impact.

Order. Interventions should be brief.

That intervention may have been slightly longer than you wanted, Mr. Taylor, but it nicely summed up the theme of my speech. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend.

I do not argue against the idea of simplifying and rationalising the licensing laws by bringing together the provisions on entertainment and alcohol. I expect that the new provision will make the lives of many larger commercial organisations simpler and make it easier for enforcement authorities to deal with antisocial behaviour, which is often caused by alcohol, especially in major urban areas. However, there has never been a riot at a circus, and circuses do not offer alcohol to their audiences. Village shops do not offer their customers entertainment other than local gossip and have never been the cause of a drunken rampage. Local sports clubs, which often rely on their bars to provide income to support their activities, have never provoked major disorder. The village halls I know that provide venues for both alcohol and entertainment for local people have never caused scenes of carnage or outrage.

To control some imaginary terror, the Act will impose rigid and unworkable bureaucracy on circuses, increased costs on village shops and sports clubs, and unbearable responsibility on the volunteers who care for village halls. On top of that, local authorities are struggling to keep up with the burdens placed on them by the Act and by the way in which the Department has handled its implementation.

On village halls, does my hon. Friend agree with the correspondents who have written to me from the management committees of Dickleburgh and Morley St. Botolph village halls in my constituency that the Act is confusing and likely to put some halls out of action? Does not it suggest a lack of understanding by the Government of the problems facing rural areas?

There is consensus among those of us who are worried about the Act, and my hon. Friend summarised some of the points that I want to make towards the end of my speech about the impact of the Act, particularly on village halls. I entirely agree with what he said.

It would have been good to have had a reply to my letter of 10 March to the Minister who was then responsible for the Act. I raised serious concerns on behalf of Wychavon district council about the publication of application forms, regulations and fees and about communication between the Department and local authorities. In the light of the deadline of Saturday 6 August there should be serious concern about the low rate of response for applications to convert existing licences. It seems that there will be a late rush and woe betide anyone who submits their application too late for it to be checked.

Errors mean rejection and the burden and cost of a brand new application, copied with all supporting documentation to seven other regulatory bodies and advertised expensively in local papers. Local authorities that have received a significant number of applications are having to reject many of them because of inaccuracies. That is fine now because there is time to put the matter right, but it will be a problem if an application is made too close to the deadline of 6 August. The Department has not done enough to publicise that important date and, as a result, even commercial organisations, never mind the volunteers who run village halls, are cutting it fine.

My first main point concerns circuses. I had a full debate on the subject in this Chamber on 27 April last year. I shall not rehearse all that I said then, but for the benefit of the new Minister I repeat that circuses, which already bear a heavy burden of legislative inspection to protect public safety, are perfectly happy to adapt to a new licensing regime. However, the cost and bureaucratic rigidity of the proposal may make touring with a circus virtually impossible. Local communities, often small villages, for which the only live performing art that ever comes near them is the circus, will lose out and a great British invention will be put in jeopardy.

The root of the problem is that the Government told circuses that they would be exempted from the legislation but broke their word and took no account of the needs of circuses. Fairgrounds were exempted; I have struggled for months to understand the logic in that but cannot begin to do so.

I have had two meetings with representatives of the circus industry and the previous Minister. I was encouraged by what I thought was the growing understanding in the Department, but nothing has happened to address the concerns expressed and, as implementation of the Act draws closer, the situation is getting much worse.

The Minister advocated that local authorities should license land on which circuses could then perform without an additional licence. Leaving aside the fact that many circuses rely on private, not public, land for their sites, that idea seemed worth exploring, but local authorities have taken a different view of the Act. Following a decision by West Berkshire council, all applications by circuses to other councils have been refused. A precedent has been set which other licensing officers, who are lost in a vacuum until new procedures are set, have been only too ready to follow. On Thursday 28 April, the licensing sub-committee of West Berkshire council dealt a potentially fatal blow to the Government's cunning attempt to find a way out of the mess that they had created.

In the words of the circus concerned:

"Two objections to licences for a circus—from the parish council and the fire brigade—were satisfactorily dealt with but the licences were still refused because a plan of the premises was not submitted as required by section 17(3) of the Act and the application did not comply with regulation 23 of the Act (which deals with the nature of plan required)."

The circus told me:

"Our intention is to hold Premises Licences for circus venues without specifying a detailed plan of the circus . . . in the application. In this way, the licence can exist unchanged for the future. Safety authorities have been satisfied with our voluntary condition to supply a detailed plan 28 days in advance of each circus visit.

The West Berkshire sub-committee considers the Act is prescriptive in requiring a detailed plan with the application. As well as the circus tent, the plan must include locations of exits, details of fire safety equipment, furniture, items in fixed locations like seating and the circus ring, which is likely to include major props or rigging e.g. safety net, tight-wire etc. The same will apply to many other events where equipment is installed, which might include staging, safety barriers etc.

A licence granted would therefore only be valid as long as nothing in the plan was changed. The layout of any circus is likely to change annually for example when equipment is updated, when a new act installs a major prop, and when new legislation requires it.

The new applications we have so far made have cost an average of £500 each. For a circus visiting 40 venues each season, this is a considerable outlay. While it will be possible to retain the licence and apply for a licence variation to accommodate the changes, the procedure for obtaining a variation is almost as involved as a new application."

That problem is common with village halls. The circus continued:

"If a detailed plan is required, it will not be possible for a local authority to hold a licence. This does not only apply to circuses: every separate event in a local park or any other area will need its own licence for each individual event. Thus the DCMS objective for Local Authorities to license their own land cannot be achieved in the light of this judgement."

I believe that a legal challenge is planned, but I could not obtain up-to-date information and it may even have happened. What a mess the Government have got us into; it is even worse than we predicted. I wrote to the Minister last week asking for a meeting to discuss the specific issue and I hope that he will agree to meet a small delegation from the circus world before we rise for the summer recess. After all, the problem now goes beyond circuses to all activities that take place on local authority land.

In that context it is worth mentioning just how worried are the organisers of local festivals such as the Bromyard gala. The complexity of the rules and how to avoid punitive licence fees of many thousands of pounds for these events are matters that tax the ingenuity of very professional organisers. I think that I am right in saying that if a band plays at the gala from the bandstand but there are no chairs in front of it, that is fine, but if chairs are put there and people listen, it becomes a licensable event. The location of the bandstand in relation to the beer tent is a matter of great importance in determining what licence is required and how much it costs. What a farce.

As well as the impact of the Licensing Act, is my hon. Friend aware of the impact of the Private Security Industry Act 2001? These Acts create a double whammy for the Coleford music festival in my constituency—a volunteer-run festival—putting a huge burden of cost on it. The future of the event is in jeopardy.

We see the common theme that is beginning to emerge in the debate: the cost on volunteers' shoulders above all else—I accept that circuses are professional organisations. There is already a very heavy burden on volunteers in the organisation of such events; this additional responsibility for many of them is either financially or organisationally intolerable.

Small village shops are finding life pretty difficult as it is with death by a thousand regulations and Government policy changes, plus unfair competition from the big supermarkets. Benefit changes have hit post offices and many have had to comply with demanding disability legislation. The general burden of regulation and stealth taxes—minimum wages, new rules on part-time employment, even the climate change levy—has steadily increased. The next threat is the brilliant scheme of the Office of Fair Trading to allow supermarkets to buy newspapers and magazines direct from the publishers, which could destroy the viability of the local newspaper delivery network in rural England.

It is against that background that the impact of the Licensing Act must be judged; it puts another nail in the village shop's coffin by making it much more expensive to obtain licences to sell alcohol. For example, in order to sell alcohol, the modest Bishampton village store in my constituency now faces an initial bill of £120 and an annual bill of £40 based on its rateable value of £4,200, where it previously had a £30 bill for 3 years: £10 a year. The alcohol sales there generate little, if any, profit; it is more of a service to help villagers and maintain that precious commodity, footfall, for the other things that the shop offers. Now it risks becoming an unaffordable loss leader.

Meanwhile, down the road in Evesham, Tesco, which has a rateable value of £1.2 million, faces an initial bill of only £725 and an annual fee of £225. It has a rateable value some 250 times that of Bishampton's small village shop, but a fee a little more than five times that of the shop. Where is the justice in that? Whatever happened to the Government doctrine of rural-proofing policy?

It is not just village shops that are worried. Westminster city council has told me of its concern for hundreds of smaller, independent traders, and in particular ethnic businesses, shops and restaurants that are still struggling with the process in London.

There was no rural proofing for village halls either, which brings me to the major theme of my speech. They are perhaps most at risk from this Act. The same village hall that has often benefited from large lottery grants in recognition of the benefits that it brings to the community it serves has had its death knell sounded by the Department that oversees the lottery: the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. We must remember how important the village hall is in rural life. Many hon. Members have raised the matter with me in advance of the debate, and I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) for what he said about village halls in his constituency. There is a strong consensus among Members who have village halls in their constituencies about the problems that the Act will cause.

One village hall in my constituency has held about 80 events in the last year of which the new laws would require a licence. Those included dances, dinners, plays by the local drama group and groups sponsored by the county council, garden produce shows, church fêtes, social barbecues, private parties, wedding receptions and charity events raising money for the air ambulance and hospices. Our village hall hosts events for the Mid-Worcestershire Conservative Association, too.

My constituent Roger Ockenden told me:

"Our Parish Plan shows villagers rate in order of importance 1) the village shop; 2) the Village Hall; 3) the village pub."

I hope that No. 4 is the church, but he did not say that. He concludes:

"This new statute will ensure the total breakdown of village life."

Another of my constituents, Rupert Segar, summed up the situation in a letter:

"The volunteers who help run village halls are unlikely to want to shoulder the burden of responsibility for supervising the premises for the sale of alcohol. The costs in licence fees and training will be extortionate. The limit of 15 days for temporary event notices will squeeze the life out of many rural communities."

He wrote that after attending a meeting 10 days ago in Bishampton hall attended by representatives of a total of 12 village halls from around my constituency. They heard an authoritative explanation of the new law from officers of Wychavon district council, but—and this is no fault of those excellent officers—the audience were more concerned and confused afterwards than they had been before.

I would like to take the opportunity to explain to the Minister that my constituency has 32 villages, many of which have village halls, and all those halls are having these difficulties. That is in one constituency in Surrey alone; multiply that figure and we can see the size of the problem.

It is fair to say that of the representatives of the 12 village halls in the room for that meeting, one left after five or 10 minutes because their hall was so small that it was not affected by the Act, but theirs was a particularly small hall. The other 11 were all terrified by what faced them, and I entirely agree with my hon. Friend.

The old system worked well. It was easy to apply for a community premises licence costing only £27, and for a series of occasional licences costing only £10 and valid for up to 12 events. It ain't broke, so why are we fixing it? The more we delved into the process, the more problems we discovered. To start with, apparently, and bizarrely—the Minister may put me right on this—the safety requirements of the new licences are less onerous than those of the old ones because electrical and fire safety certificates no longer have to be produced.

When it comes to licences for alcohol, it is only the sale of alcohol that is controlled. A wedding reception where the booze is free does not need a licence, but one with a cash bar does. In theory, I know which of those is more likely to lead to public disorder: the one where price is not rationing consumption.

The essence of the problem is threefold. First, the cost of the new licensing regime is much higher. An application fee for a typical hall is around £190—it could be much higher for a bigger hall—plus about £60 to add alcohol to the licence, which is waived if the application is received and approved before 6 August. Moreover, for a typical hall—again, it could be much larger—there is an annual fee of around £180. If one wants a variation at a later date, there is the huge cost of advertising and sending all the relevant documentation to seven different public bodies. That advertising has to be expensive advertising in local papers covering a wide area, not affordable, or perhaps even free, advertising in the local parish newsletter or magazine that covers the area the hall actually serves.

Secondly, there is the bureaucratic nightmare. The forms are complicated and the conditions difficult to understand. For the volunteers who run village halls that alone is bad enough. In fact, one person at the meeting admitted that she had just thrown the forms away because she could not understand them. She took another set as the meeting ended.

Thirdly, and perhaps most worryingly of all, there is the huge burden of responsibility that must be borne by one person, the designated premises supervisor, if the hall decides to put alcohol on its licence. That one, named person, who must be trained at a cost of at least £100, probably more, and then pay his or her own licence fee too, will bear responsibility for ensuring that the terms of the licence are complied with and will face criminal sanctions if they are not.

With many halls having 30 or 40 licensable events a year, and the busier halls having up to 80, that is an intolerable burden. It is difficult enough to find volunteers to run village halls as it is without that burden; this is now a job that no one in their right mind would volunteer for. What a way to celebrate the year of the volunteer.

Another possibility is to hand over the running of the bar to the local publican, who will supply trained staff and take a good cut of any profits—hardly an attractive option, given the tight budgets with which village hall committees, and all the other people and voluntary groups who use the halls, have to work. Another alternative is to restrict the number of events to 12 over a maximum of 15 days by using temporary event notices. However, that will sharply reduce the rental income of many halls below the level of viability. As Crowle village hall told me:

"The limitation of twelve TENs per calendar year is the key problem in our particular case. We hold some 26 events per annum involving the sale of alcohol. The letting income from these events is a significant part of our total income. We cannot afford to discard this source of income so we must accept the additional cost of the Act and raise our letting rates to cover the increase."

Temporary event notices are needed to modify any term of a new licence, not just to sell alcohol. If, for some reason, one wants a later night for the village pantomime than the standard licence allows, that is one of the 12 TENs gone. If the application goes beyond midnight, that takes two TEN days out of the total allowance of 15, not one, because anything after midnight is counted as a new day.

If someone were to decide not to put alcohol on the new premises licence because they expected to rely on 12 TENs for the events that they organised, what would happen if someone who hired the hall took the TEN for his event? The premises will have lost one of those nights, which will put the holder of the licence in real trouble.

Another constituent, Peter Charlesworth, wrote to me:

"The law is now so expensive, time consuming and complex that really it is not worth the effort for many small organisations to bother to try and fund raise. There will be no profit at the end of the day. The income for both organisation and Hall will suffer . . . If the local publican becomes the licensed premises controller, many of the village functions will be too small to warrant carrying alcohol and employing staff. He will refuse to support the event. The function will then be either illegal or will not happen . . . Many small functions which attract only a few people, to get a TEN, will have administrative costs of nearly £2.00 per head—a lot out of a £4.00 ticket."

That is the problem for small communities and events. The Government just have not understood it.

It is not just village halls, by the way; I am told that even farmers markets are at risk for similar reasons. It seems that if wine is sold—I am sure that we all want to encourage English wines—those markets will need a full licence, and all the burden of cost, bureaucracy and responsibility that applies to village halls will apply to them too. That reminds me: it is not even clear how the new Act affects the traditional bottle stall at a village fête, another great English tradition that is apparently under threat from unthinking regulation.

There are similar problems for sports clubs. They have faced a raft of expensive legislation, much of which is justified, such as that dealing with child welfare, health and safety, and new electrical requirements—the list goes on. Now they are faced with the Licensing Act. Richard Wood, the chairman of Ombersley cricket club in my constituency, tells me that the club has 120 juniors who play cricket and 80 who play football, with a further 100 senior members for cricket and bowls, and 300-plus social members and parents. The bar is a major source of income for the club and largely funds all the junior activities. In fact, it represents more than half of the total income of the club.

Is my hon. Friend aware of the effect on other sporting bodies? Newbury and Crookham golf club in my constituency has estimated that it will cost up to £1,000 to process the licence. That will have a devastating effect on its income.

I am hugely encouraged, and I am glad that I gave way to my hon. Friend because the figure that he gave is exactly the figure that Ombersley cricket club quoted to me. It says that the licence is so central to its functions that it will have to use professional advice to shape its application. It cannot afford to get it wrong. It reckons that, taking the professional advice and fees together, the cost will be £1,000. To be fair, Richard Wood tells me:

"The bottom line is that the club can afford to pay this money, but it's money that won't then be available for equipment and machinery to support the junior boys and girls playing football and cricket."

For many village halls, the Act could be the kiss of death. For many sports clubs, it is a brutal kick in the teeth.

What is to be done? Of course, few local communities will suffer each of these hammer blows, but every child who loses the opportunity to see traditional live entertainment at a circus will have missed out on something valuable. Every village shop that is forced to put up the shutters for the last time takes something precious from the community that it served. Every sports club that restricts its activities with young people will cause deep sadness among those who understand the value of encouraging sporting activity, and every village hall that curtails its activities, or even closes, strikes a real blow to the sense of community that makes England's villages what they still are.

"There is usually a seductive logic to any new regulation. There is almost always a case that can be made for each specific instrument. The problem is cumulative. All these good intentions can add up to a large expense, with suffocating effects. Sometimes, we need to pause for a moment and think whether we will not do more damage with a hasty response than was done by the problem itself."

Again, those are the words of the Prime Minister in the excellent speech that I began by mentioning. There are solutions, such as new exemptions for circuses, small shops, community-based activities and the charitable trusts that often run village halls. That may take primary legislation, but there is now a hole in the Government's programme because we do not have to ratify the European constitution, so there is time for an emergency Bill. I urge the Minister to pause for a moment and think, to quote the Prime Minister,

"whether we will not do more damage"

to local communities

"with a hasty response than was done by the problem itself."

He must delay the so-called second appointed date, when the legislation goes live—currently expected to be in November—and conduct an urgent review of an Act that deserves to be put out of its misery.

There are five Members who wish to speak. Members should bear it in mind that I intend to call Members to make winding-up speeches at half-past 10, and restrict their comments appropriately.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff) on securing the debate and on the typical passion and vigour with which he introduced his case. In the few minutes for which I seek the Chamber's attention, I intend to complement what he said by concentrating on pubs and the licensed trade.

I will begin by praising the role of council licensing officers, whom the hon. Gentleman referred to. When I worked in local government some years ago, licensing was relegated to a fairly minor function. I remember that, at Leeds city council, where I worked, it was adjacent to the cemetery section. However, in recent months and years, that has changed. In Selby and York, which are the two councils that I represent, there are two outstanding licensing officers: John Lacy in York and a gentleman by the name of Tim Grogan in Selby, which has caused slight confusion. I know which individual the pubs are most concerned with at the moment and it is not their local MP; it is their licensing officer. Both licensing officers are doing a splendid job. They go around Selby and York, without employing any great bureaucracy, and encourage licence applications to be made.

It is interesting to look at some of the figures in Selby and York. In Selby, of the 400 licensed premises that will need licences, 10 per cent. have passed through the entire system and 75 per cent. of those—30 of them—have applied for variations on their licences. On the whole, that has been for the odd extra hour, often at weekends. Ten premises have just converted their licences. There has been no need for any hearings in Selby at this stage. Everything has been done through delegated powers. There is a confidence there that the licence applications will be made and that the deadlines will be met.

In York, rather more than one in seven—107—of the 725 premises have gone through the system. Forty applied for variations and 67 for direct conversions. There have been three hearings so far in York. There are one or two cause célèbres, one of which is in my constituency. It will no doubt go to a hearing of the licensing board soon. According to evidence from the parish council, the Charles XII pub, which is in the student area of Heslington, has not been particularly good in its relations with the residents down the years. It has not necessarily adhered to its public entertainment licences and has had people still revelling in the garden after midnight, which is against council regulations.

Given such cases, hon. Members and Ministers can expect that, as with a controversial planning application, there will be local controversy and various factors will need to be weighed at a licensing board. However, from the evidence that I have seen in my local area, it is a misleading characterisation to say that no applications are being made or that licensing boards will not be able to cope with the number of hearings that they will have to hold. Across the swathe of middle England that I represent, people are quietly getting on with implementing the Act. In many cases, there are no objections whatever to variations in hours. As both licensing officers remind me, the councils in Selby and York, like all councils, have strong powers to bear down on pubs that abuse the extra hours that they are granted, and no doubt they will use them. I am encouraged by that.

I am the chair of the all-party beer group. It is a tough job, but someone has to do it and I hope to be re-elected. Incidentally, I hope that we can maintain our status as the largest all-party group. The annual dinner is coming up in July and prior to that we intend to do a survey of local authorities, on an all-party basis, to look at how many applications they are getting and what problems they are encountering.

In terms of both councils and pub companies, there will be little sympathy—certainly in the case of the pub companies—if applications do not go in on time. The pub companies have big resources and they need to get themselves organised, as most of them are, to get their applications in on time. Equally, there will be little sympathy with councils that are over-bureaucratic in their approach to licensing. If they are turning down applications because of minor errors on forms, rather than just making a quick phone call and getting the necessary amendment, people will not sympathise when well known and well run pubs are closed down for a period. There is an onus on both councils and pub companies to make this work, and on the whole they are doing so.

I welcome the Minister to his post. It is good that the licensing function has stayed within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. As a Back Bencher, I can say that the implementation of the Act has not been without problems. There have been creative tensions between the Home Office and the DCMS and that has led to some of the delays. However, I, for one, am pleased that the function is staying at the DCMS. The Home Office sometimes views the licensed trade purely in terms of antisocial behaviour; the function is in the right place.

There is an onus on both the Department and councils to publicise what is going on. The pub companies and big chains will be all right, but there are also smaller, independent pubs, sports clubs, which have been mentioned, and late-night refreshment houses outside London, which will have to apply for licences for the first time. There needs to be an awful lot of publicity and effort over the next few months to generate those licence applications.

There is a related agenda of antisocial behaviour and the various measures that the Home Office is introducing in conjunction with the Act. Some of the measures are welcome, such as fixed penalty notices for trying to buy alcohol under age or for selling alcohol to people under age, and powers for the police to close down pubs that persistently serve people who are under age. However, I urge Ministers to be careful with the concept of alcohol disorder zones, which was in our little red book—the manifesto. The implementation of that concept requires great care.

An alcohol disorder zone represents a breakdown in the partnership between the police, the licensed trade and councils in an area. With a levy on licensed premises in an area where there are alcohol disorder problems, the zone could be characterised as a business improvement district in reverse. Is it fair that all licensed premises in a particular area, even those with no record of trouble, have to make a payment? Who decides when an alcohol disorder zone is lifted or imposed? Should the decision be made by the bodies that benefit from the extra revenue? One or two of my colleagues have told me that their town wants to be the first to have an alcohol disorder zone. I again urge caution. The zone would not be a badge of pride, as it could attract the wrong sort of people and destroy a town's reputation for its hospitality industry. The measure should be one of last resort; we should not pepper the country with such zones and impose burdens on well run businesses.

There is a quiet revolution taking place throughout middle England. People are applying for extra hours, and on the whole they are getting them and no one is objecting. That is good, because of all the nations of Europe, surely it cannot be just the English and the Welsh who cannot be trusted to have a quiet drink after 11 o'clock at night. The day when people can drink after 11 o'clock will come—hopefully—in November. The date should not be put back. The pub trade is certainly not asking for either the date in August or the date in November to be put back. Indeed, if it were, it would be a very quiet Christmas and new year in terms of pub opening hours, because the previous provisions would no longer apply. It is essential that those provisions of the Act are introduced on time, and there is every reason to have confidence in their being implemented with good consequences. There will be the odd difficulty and the odd local hearing that causes controversy, but that is as it should be. It puts power in the hands of local people, which is where it should be.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan), but I must say to him that it will be a quiet Christmas and new year in many village halls throughout rural England and Wales if we are not careful. I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff) on securing the debate and on his comments. He covered the ground extremely well. I shall reiterate two areas that he discussed, and I shall mention one other.

I am no great fan of the Act. When it was introduced I spent quite a lot of time campaigning against it, to the extent that a sort of west country fatwa was declared by the Wurzels, no less, on the then Minister in the Department, the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells), when he made disparaging comments about folk singers in Somerset. At that time we were concentrating largely on the risks to live music.

I want to discuss the effect of the Act on communities. The Act is having a direct effect on village shops, which stock, as a small part of their business, a few alcoholic beverages. They are sold as a service, more than anything else, to the shop's customers, for which the shop has an off-licence. It is not remotely feasible economically for shops to continue to sell alcoholic beverages under the new licensing regime. It is having a negative effect on villages and on individuals who have to drive to another village or the nearest town to buy drinks, with all the possible dangers that that entails. There is also a danger to the viability of the shop. Those effects are all of little benefit to the licensing regime, and they run entirely against the principle that we have heard espoused many times in the House of keeping village shops as a viable and visible presence in our villages.

The threat to village halls that the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire mentioned is serious. I have two examples in my constituency. First, the representatives of a substantial village hall, Beckington memorial hall, have written to me. They are extremely concerned because last year they had 27 events with a licensed bar but this year, because of the way in which the temporary events licensing system works, they are restricted to 12 events. That is having a serious effect on the financing of the hall as a centre for village life, and that is replicated in village halls throughout my constituency.

Secondly, at the other extreme, a small village hall, the reading room in Charlton Mackrell, does not serve alcoholic beverages. It is a small reading room that was set up by a beneficent incumbent to provide a place for quiet reading and recreation for the village. It holds Women's Institute meetings, parish council meetings, art classes for some elderly residents and a Christmas panto. Its officers have had to go through all the nonsense of paying a surveyor to provide detailed plans of the building to continue their entertainment. They have had to pay for the cost of licensing, and they will have to pay for the recurrent costs of maintaining the licence.

We are talking about volunteers who run small premises because they think that it is a vital part of village life. Confronted by two copies of a 21-page form and a further 64 pages of explanatory notes, there comes a point when they say, "Forget it. I'm sorry, but I'm not prepared to spend my life reading explanatory notes rather than doing what I want for the purposes of my village."

My final point is about something that is perhaps unique to Somerset, and something with which many hon. Members may not be familiar. It concerns the Somerset carnival tradition, which has been going for 400 years. The carnival circuit in Somerset is massive, attracting on average 500,000 people a year. The biggest carnival is the Bridgwater carnival, which on its own attracts more than 100,000 people. It is one of the best kept cultural secrets in the country, because people are simply not aware of its scale. When I first came to London and saw the lord mayor's show, I thought, "What on earth is this pathetic excuse for a carnival?", compared with Bridgwater carnival and the Somerset circuit.

The carnival circuit is under serious threat from the Act, not because it does not exempt moving vehicles but because carnival comprises not only moving vehicles but walking exhibitors, marching bands and many others for whom it would appear that a licence may be required. The district councils in Somerset have got together this year to try to interpret the law, but they cannot do so. They have taken legal advice, which says that carnival may be all right this year. "May be" is not good enough for the thousands of people throughout Somerset who work all year to prepare the floats. Carnival raises an enormous amount of money, and the licence fee, if required, is £64,000, which will kill carnival stone dead. The councils have asked for guidance from the Department, but it is unable to provide any, other than to say that some carnivals may be exempt but others may not.

It is not worth the risk of being taken to court because of one person's complaint about the carnival for whatever reason. The organisers risk hefty fines of £20,000, prosecution and a prison sentence of up to six months. Of course people are not prepared to take that risk. We could lose an important and vital tradition in my county, and I am not prepared to stand by and let that happen. I hope that the Minister is today able to provide a definitive view on carnivals. If he cannot, it suggests that there is a gap in the law that must be corrected at the earliest opportunity.

rose—

Order. Four Members are seeking to catch my eye. If contributions are confined to five minutes, all four will be called.

In Bridgend, everything is in place: our licensing committee has been expanded, we have additional sub-committees, members have been trained, and training has been provided to the trade to ensure that applications can come in. There does, however, seem to be a problem with getting applications in. I accept that that is an issue. The local authority has done its best—back in February, there was a four-page article in our local newspaper. There is no problem with people knowing what they have to do, but there does seem to be a problem with them actually doing it.

I have been here before because, before I entered the House, I was a member of the Care Standards Inspectorate. Many volunteer organisations had to submit applications to that inspectorate to be registered as domiciliary care agencies. Exactly the same situation arose. We were told that they would not apply. What happened was that, despite the fact that we were available to give advice and guidance for months, as the licensing people in my local authority are, on the last day of registration those organisations were queuing up at the front door. It caused chaos. Applications did come in, but people must understand that their movement through the application process can be eased if they apply early.

That is the message that we must get out there. We must get the message out that there is support from the local authorities, that licensing officers are willing to sit down with people to make sure that they do not get their application wrong, and that if applicants can get their application right and get it in they can move through the process. Changes will almost certainly be needed to the application form and the Minister might be able to consider them. Experience always brings improvement.

What worries me in my constituency are the small shops that local people are frightened to approach because gangs of youths hang around outside them, urging adults to go in to buy them alcohol. My local residents want the Act in place and want the police to have the power to prosecute those youngsters. At the moment, the police suddenly descend on local shops and put a cordon up at the two ends of alleyways because they know that, at the back, youngsters who have intimidated the staff in the shops and people going into the shop, asking them to buy alcohol for them, and are drinking illegally. The Act will help to reduce that problem.

Supermarkets must also lead the way and set an example. The trade has been given advice and must help local and small organisations to move forward so that the Act, which can tidy up many anomalies, can be put in place effectively and in time.

I shall not attempt to give any more than the briefest history of this wretched legislation, partly because of the time, but also, Mr. Taylor, because I do not wish to try your patience.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff) on introducing the debate. As he rightly said, we have all been here before. Along with my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss), I served on the Standing Committee that considered the Bill. We had a good time talking about the alcohol issues, many of which concern Westminster city council. Many people did not realise the great implications that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire rightly pointed out for the range of village hall-related events. The issue has the makings of an absolutely horrendous mess. In Committee, we gave repeated and persistent warnings that there were great inconsistencies between the proposed liberalisation of alcohol licensing and the Home Office agenda on binge drinking and antisocial behaviour. What the hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) referred to as "creative tensions" are, I fear, somewhat more than that.

The legislation as a whole is unrealistic. It has been driven by the large-scale alcohol and entertainment industry. Even in my constituency, in places such as Soho and Covent Garden, one of the interesting things is that many of the smaller, family-run businesses—the bars and restaurants that have been around for 50 or 60 years—are as appalled by the Act as many of the residential population.

It is impossible for us to Europeanise the drinking habits of people in this country simply by changing the hours of operation. We need only to consider the experience of places such as Scotland and Ireland to realise the impossibility of that goal. I can assume only that the measure was led by the large-scale alcohol and entertainment industry, which rammed it through and probably paid large sums to Government funds. As with the Gambling Act 2005, there was a commitment to try to make radical changes without thinking them through.

We have also seen the undermining of a well-balanced undertakings regime. I have worked closely with the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson), because we share responsibility for part of Covent Garden. In the past, undertakings have been given by a number of pubs, bars and restaurants. That has worked extremely well, but that regime is being swept away and there threatens to be something of a free-for-all that will affect the balance in our neighbourhoods. The issue is not simply one for central London and the hot spots of coastal England; it has an impact throughout the country, along the lines pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire.

The new Minister has an opportunity to wield a new broom. I do not think that he realised when he took on the post how the Act was likely to blow up in his face. He may know that, in the last few weeks, I have tabled questions about the flexibility of the new regime and about how much consultation has taken place. It is clear that, when the transition period began in February 2005, there was an opportunity for consultation with local authorities, licensing authorities and people who required licences. At this stage, I am not aware that many changes or recommendations have been made by the Government in consequence.

My view is that, potentially, we have an absolute mess in the making. I would like there to be a delay of at least eight months to allow licensees adequate time to complete the complex and overly prescriptive application procedure that has been dictated by the new Act. The problem is not simply going to occur on Saturday 6 August; there will be a problem in November. I fear that even local authorities, such as mine in the city of Westminster, that are well organised and used to large-scale and important licensing arrangements will face a massive logjam in the second half of the year. I hope that, even at this late stage, the Government will give serious consideration to delaying implementation to allow for the full implications to be thought through.

The hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon) rightly suggested that, inevitably in any such process, there will be a queue on the final day. My fear is that it will be a hell of a long queue and will have an impact, particularly in this important area, in the run-up to Christmas which could be little short of disastrous. The Government's approach to the start date is hopelessly optimistic. One must consider those local authorities that are less well attuned to such matters, which will find themselves in great difficulties.

The Minister probably now appreciates that, with this Act, he has inherited something of a mess. It has been poorly drafted and has an unrealistic timetable. However, I believe that there is still time for him to take action to prevent something that is not only a public relations disaster in the making but has negative implications.

I would like to say much more, but I realise that two other hon. Members wish to make contributions. I thank you for your indulgence, Mr. Taylor, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire for introducing this vital debate at an important time.

I begin by congratulating the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell), on his appointment. We served as councillors on the same council for several years, although sadly not at the same time. I am glad to see him in his new post. In his new role, I invite him to come up to sample the many joys of Wakefield, which include our cultural attractions of the Yorkshire sculpture park and the national coal mining museum for England.

I would like to talk briefly about the two local authorities that I represent, Wakefield and Kirklees. In common with what other Members have said about their constituencies, about 10 per cent. of licensed premises in Wakefield have applied for and received the licences, and that has been a smooth process. Wakefield is known as "the merrie city" because it has a large number of historic pubs. We are also known as a place to have a great night out in the region. There is something called the Westgate run, in which people start at the bottom of the Westgate area and walk up to the top, pausing to drink in the many pubs on the way. I have never managed to complete it.

We also have a thriving micro-brewery industry, with companies such as Clark's and Fernando's breweries, as well as many small businesses. I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) about the alcohol disorder zones; in those areas, a voluntary approach is always better than a coercive one. I also welcome the action taken by my local police, who support the Licensing Act 2003, and the local paper, the Wakefield Express, in its Streetsafe campaign.

Members have raised issues to do with the cultural change—the attempted Europeanisation of England and Wales. I welcome attempts to introduce a more adult and European approach to alcohol. I also welcome the Act for what it does about under-age drinking. Members of all parties will have come across articles in their local newspapers about minors buying alcohol; it happens every summer. If we are talking about gateway drugs, then we should acknowledge that alcohol is the first and the major gateway drug: it leads to all sorts of antisocial behaviour, and also to drug use and drug abuse. I welcome the fact that the Act allows us to take tough action. We know which are the problem premises in our constituencies, and we can now shut down such off-licences, as well as those premises where violence is perpetrated.

There is also a role for regeneration and for introducing greater flexibility. That will lead to people wanting to come into city centres at night because they are less threatening places, and, perhaps, more family oriented. We have an annual beer festival in Wakefield; people from throughout the country come and sample our many different beers. The merging of the entertainment licence with the alcohol licence is also to be welcomed.

I seek clarification from the Minister on the issue of festivals. We have the Emley show in the Kirklees area of my constituency, and there was some shroud-waving about it from my Conservative opponent during the election campaign. As Members of Parliament, we need to adopt a community leadership role in this regard. Instead of saying, "It won't work," we should say, "We can do it; we can get this in on time." As for stressing that people have, for example, eight or 10 weeks left, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon) said, we must acknowledge that leaving things until the last minute is human nature—it is what people do. We always wait until the last minute before paying our credit card bills and sorting things out. I know that that is the case: I failed to pay the congestion charge a few days ago, because I left it until the last minute. I will be in negotiations on that; I might approach the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) about it. That aside, my point is that we need to adopt community leadership.

I would also like the Minister to say what the large supermarkets are doing, because there is little excuse for them not to prepare for this. I know that we in Wakefield are set up: we have three new licensing sub-committees; we have meetings booked for July; and we will have a smooth and successful transition. That is certainly what I want to happen, and I welcome the new legislation.

I thank the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) for her courtesy in allowing me a few minutes in which to speak. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff) on the way he introduced the debate, and on providing so many examples. Those of us who have concerns with regard to village halls would wish to align ourselves with his arguments.

Listening to the debate, two things have become clear. First, there is a degree of urban-rural divide. Members have brought out into the open the fact that different issues affect different parts of the country. Secondly, very few Acts are unutterably bad and do not have something within them that could be changed and made better. I join other Members in welcoming the Minister, who is a friend, to his new position, and I say to him that he now has an admirable opportunity to pick out of this legislation those things that have the potential to go very wrong, and to make a difference by saying, "In view of what has been said in the lead up to implementation, perhaps we could and should do things differently." On behalf of rural communities, I appeal to him to make a difference on the specific issue of village halls.

I speak on this subject with two hats. As the Member for North-East Bedfordshire, I commend the work done by Sue Norman of the Bedfordshire Rural Communities Charity with regard to village halls in our area. She has brought to their attention the problems created by the Act, and she has listened to them and reflected to me and to others the problems for village halls. Those problems have been ably outlined in the debate by Opposition Members.

I also thank Rodney Tate, the chairman of the Swineshead village hall management committee, for putting things so graphically. He wrote to me some time ago, and he also wrote to the Department. Swineshead has no shop and no pub now; the village hall is where people meet, and the bar profits are used to do things for the village. Mr. Tate wrote:

"Swineshead Village Hall is managed as a registered charity, and at the discretion of Bedford Borough Council, is exempt from charges for its public entertainment licence, and we pay only £30 for renewal of the liquor licence every 3 years, i.e. an average of just £10 pa. Under the new Act with the proposed fees, we will face costs in 2005 of £191 just to transfer to the new regime the existing licence rights with 3 joint licensees. Then we shall be faced with renewal costs of £40 . . . for the premises and £111 for the personal licences, although it is not clear how frequently the latter would be payable. All this has to come out of our annual bar profits of only £300–400 pa, on average, money that we need to maintain and improve the village hall and the church. We had been thinking of adding more joint licensees so as the share the burden of responsibilities"—

which refers to the point that has been made about volunteering—

"but that now seems too expensive to contemplate."

Such stories could be written about the 19,000 village halls and community centres throughout the land.

My second reason for speaking is that I am the shadow Minister for communities and regeneration. Wearing that hat, I ask the Minister to draw the attention of the new Minister for Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Miliband), to this debate, and to ask him to consider the damage that is being threatened to local communities throughout the land because of the Licensing Act and the matters raised in this debate by Member of all parties.

Sue Norman forwarded to me a note that she received from one of the charity trustees for a village hall. It is entitled, "Who wants to be a designated premises supervisor?" The lady who wrote it comments:

"Here's the job description.

In your own time, go on a training course to get an 'accredited personal licence qualification'. (Nobody knows how long the course will last, where you'll have to go to do it, or what it will cost—but as it will cover 67 topics in 14 different categories, it's quite a big commitment).

Apply for a Personal Licence".

Her account of the job description continues:

"Agree to be the Designated Premises Supervisor for the Village Hall. This apparently means that every time there is an event where the consumption of alcohol is required—and the Hall has an average of 26 of these every year—you'll have to either sell the alcohol yourself . . . or authorise the sale of alcohol by someone else . . . You may not know these people from Adam".

She adds that the supervisor must

"be present at each event for a substantial period, be immediately contactable for the time when you're not present, and turn out if there are any problems. For most events that means being available on a Friday and/or Saturday evening between 18.00 and midnight (assuming the event finishes on time)".

She concludes:

"What on earth is the Government thinking? I care a lot about our Village Hall, and the benefits which it brings to our community. But I don't want that job, thank you",

and I suspect that there are plenty of others like her.

Two things are clear. The first of them is that the Government are determined to control, bureaucratise and centralise, almost regardless of what the issue is or the appropriateness of the measures they seek to bring in. A bit of discrimination could make a lot of difference. Secondly, there is an inability to comprehend any opposition or truly to understand what is being said. The Government are often in the position of the archetypal Englishman abroad, who when faced with lack of comprehension simply shouts louder to get his point across. Sometimes, the Government should realise that they have simply not been understood, and that what they are requiring is not wanted. In this particular case, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire has said, as far as village halls and local communities are concerned, there is no evidence of things being broken.

Rodney Tate concludes in a letter to a national newspaper:

"Village halls offer a vital public service, especially in small rural communities, which often have no pub, shops, post office or other social facilities. They do not suffer from the issues of crime and disorder, public safety, public nuisance and the protection of children, which the new Act is intended to address. Yet we are being inflicted with the same extra bureaucracy and high costs as for commercial premises. Does the Government really want to strike a further blow against rural communities by closing down the small village halls throughout the country?"

The Minister could strike a great blow for those communities by making some changes to the Act.

Like others, I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff) on calling for this debate, and on making a powerful contribution. I offer congratulations, too, to all other Members who have spoken. The hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) is perhaps more supportive of the legislation than I am; nevertheless, he rightly reminded us that if we are to go ahead with the second named date, which is in November, there is an urgent need to advertise to a wide range of people the importance of getting applications in quickly.

The hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire referred to issues of concern to circuses, village halls, small shops and many other places, and he was right to do so in every single regard. My hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) added to that list his concerns about the important issue of carnivals—a point also picked up by the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh). The hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon) was perhaps more supportive of the Act than I am. Nevertheless, she too reminded us of the urgent need to promote the measures and to get licence applications in as quickly as possible.

Then we heard the contribution of the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt); I will return to the issue of his village hall later. His view is that there is, to some extent, a rural-urban divide. I must say that I do not entirely agree. The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) made the point that a number of the problems referred to by the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire also applied in his distinctly urban constituency, as they do in parts of mine.

The hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire rightly said that of course there is merit in some aspects of the legislation. However, we really need far greater flexibility, so that we do not have to take tough measures to crack a nut that does not even exist in some of our rural communities. Sadly, however, the problems of binge drinking and their impact on local communities are growing in many parts of the country. Accident and emergency admissions related to alcohol misuse are increasing, and the number of violent episodes and violent crimes related to alcohol misuse is rising.

It is interesting that although the Government are keen on introducing lots of new legislation, existing legislation is hardly being used: on average only 11 landlords a year are prosecuted for allowing drunken behaviour on their premises. Under the new measures brought in by the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, there has been only one, failed, prosecution. The real question is whether we need the new Act, and whether it will really help solve many of the problems.

Before the Government rush ahead with all their plans, there are so many measures that we need put in place. Frankly, we need more support for the police and local authorities. We need more flexibility in the legislation for local authorities. I take as an example the last-minute agreement of the Government to allow reference to special saturation policies. When they did that, the details were not in the 2003 Act, but it is interesting that the guidance that accompanies the Act says, in relation to special policies on cumulative impact:

"Nothing in the Guidance should be taken as indicating that any requirement of licensing law or any other law may be overridden."

So we can have a special saturation policy, but it will not necessarily do very much. Given that, it is not very surprising that Andrew McNeill, the director of the Institute of Alcohol Studies, has stated:

"I think it's going to be a legal minefield".

Because of that legal minefield, a number of local authorities that are keen to pursue the potential of the measure—such as my local authority, Bath and North East Somerset council—have decided not to go ahead; they fear those legal complexities.

Indeed, the Act is full of legal complexities that are causing a nightmare. For example, can the new Minister—who I welcome to his post—tell me whether, under the new legislation, it is legal for a family to go out for the night and leave their 15-year-old child in their hotel room, which has a minibar, between 12 am and 5 am? I ask the Minister a straight question: is that legal or not? Those are the sorts of complexities that I fear he will find as he considers the legislation. [Hon. Members: "He doesn't know."] Well, I will ask the Minister another one; hon. Members might be able to help him. Will it be possible for a family to send their 17-year-old son to a 24-hour supermarket to buy a loaf of bread between midnight and 5 am? I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us, because those sorts of things—whether people can get their loaf of bread at that time of night—affect local communities.

Also on complexity, the Minister is keen to press ahead with the Act, but although we have been told at the last minute that we are to have back-up measures such as alcohol disorder zones, we do not even know how they are to operate. They will be covered in the Violent Crime Reduction Bill, which has not yet been considered. How are we meant to know how all these things will relate to each other?

We need to do more about alcohol labelling. We need to build on the welcome measures of the British Beer and Pub Association, which is banning drinks promotions, although other pubs and clubs need to be advised to do it. We need more support for those who work to try to tackle the problem of alcohol misuse. We need time to sort out a lot of the nonsense. I have given some examples of it, but others have talked about the problems for supermarkets; nearly everyone who has spoken mentioned them.

The hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire rightly raised the concerns mentioned by Rodney Tate, chairman of the Swineshead village hall management committee, which is in the hon. Gentleman's constituency. That honourable gentleman—Rodney Tate—has managed to express himself even more succinctly than he did in the letter that the hon. Gentleman read out. In another very good letter to The Daily Telegraph on this very subject, published just yesterday, he says that he had already written a letter to the newspaper about the huge increase in the fees that the village hall was to be charged, and says:

"Now we have been deluged with the paperwork for this conversion, including a main application form of 21 pages, with over 30 other pages of documents and notes to read."

He points out that he had to go to two seminars to try to understand how to fill in the form. Many other such examples could be given.

The Minister will need time to sort out the issue of temporary event notices. That will be fascinating. We understand that TENs will be issued, but we do not know how that will be done because we have not yet had the regulations. Can the Minister tell us when we will see them? Will he guarantee that there will be a consultation period before he sets out the regulations? Can he tell the House whether the official Cabinet Office guidelines for the length of consultation will apply, which would make the consultation 12 weeks? If it is 12 weeks, will there be time to introduce the statutory instrument, to consider whether to pray against it, and then to have a debate? If all that is to happen, and if we are to go ahead with the appointed date of 7 November, how will the Minister get it all in place in the time provided? As I understand it, we simply cannot do that.

Is it really the case that the only people who can object to a temporary event notice are the police, and that they have only 48 hours to do that? If so, someone who wanted to organise a rave on the outskirts of my constituency could simply shove a letter through the letterbox of the village police station, if there is one—and there are one or two around—late on a Friday night, and then have the rave on the Sunday night, with no time for the police, or anyone, to do anything about it. Have I got that right?

Can the Minister tell me whether local councils will be given more powers? Is it not daft that local councillors in whose ward an application has been made cannot be involved in deciding it? Will he do more to tell those who need to apply what to do? Frankly, a huge number of problems need to be resolved. I welcome the new Minister to his post, but from everything that he has heard today, he will see that he has a huge fight on his hands to convince many people in communities up and down the country that the Act will help them. Frankly, I do not think that it will.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff) on securing this debate. As we have heard from the contributions, the problem under discussion is extremely vexatious and affects not only constituencies with a rural bent, but the industry across the board.

I congratulate the Minister on his new post. By now, he will have realised that he has been sold a hospital pass. He has the most poisoned of all the poisoned chalices not only in his Department, but across the whole of the Government. He is the third Minister with whom I have had to deal across the Floor of the House, and I say to him—the point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt)—that he has the opportunity to right a great wrong.

The Act is very problematical. In the past, Ministers did not have the necessary tight control. The bureaucrats have been allowed to run riot, and there is now an incredibly difficult situation and a time scale that does not give the Minister much room for manoeuvre. However, he has a massive opportunity to make his mark by grasping the issue by the throat, shaking it hard and coming up with something sensible that will not lead to the kind of problems that have been listed today.

We are on the verge not only of a disaster, but of a total debacle that will affect thousands of businesses and blight local community facilities, including village halls and sports clubs, to mention just a few. I am ashamed to be part of a legislature that is involved in this kind of nonsense. The situation now verges on the farcical. It is not only unfair, but, as my hon. Friends have mentioned, over-zealous and disproportionate. It is certainly over-bureaucratic, and is turning out to be very expensive indeed.

I am also embarrassed not to have been able, with my hon. Friends, to make any fundamental changes to the Bill in Committee and on Report. I regret that. We certainly won the arguments, many of which have been repeated today. However, the Government are still not listening. I am angry that we are visiting such considerable cost and inconvenience on so many businesses and individuals. We need to ask the question, "To what end?" What is the purpose of it all?

It is difficult to come up with a sensible conclusion. The old system was not doing a bad job; in fact, it worked perfectly well. There may well have been a hidden subsidy involved throughout the court system—I am prepared to admit that. However, that could have been addressed separately. Instead, we now have a bureaucratic nightmare that involves many different facets of our society.

We have done some research. In some Labour constituencies it is claimed that 10 per cent. of potential applicants have now made applications, to which I say, "Whoopee!" However, our research shows that, across the board, around 5 per cent. have done so. Only 5 per cent. of all the businesses that need to apply for a licence—all the clubs, village halls and so on—have so far come forward.

As we all know, the cut-off date is 6 August, and I do not see how the issue will be dealt with in that tight time scale. Why have applications been slow in coming through? The hon. Members for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon) and for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) made the point that such slowness was an aspect of human nature. That is nonsense—it is not human nature to leave one's business hanging over the edge of a cliff, waiting for some bureaucrat on the council to stamp it as okay.

The reason is down not to human nature, but to the Government. The regulations were laid on 13 January to come into force on 7 February, the first appointed day, on which the application process was to begin. Even at that stage, the forms released on the DCMS website were incorrect and had to go back because they did not conform to the regulations. Corrections were made and the forms were reissued on 7 February. It goes without saying that without the forms, the regulations relating to the plans required, the advertising requirements and other similar details, it proved difficult for businesses or councils to plan ahead.

Businesses that tried to do work in advance, particularly those that prepared plans of premises, had to revise it to ensure that the 11 different requirements that suddenly came out of the blue were met. Despite repeated requests by the Local Authorities Co-ordinators of Regulatory Services and the industry, and despite a promise from the DCMS, the industry is still awaiting clarification on the extent to which outside areas must be shown on the plans. Some councils still believe that all outside areas must be shown on a scale of 1:100. What is the point of sheets of paper that show the golf course, the hotel gardens or the race track? The confusion over plans is probably the single biggest issue holding up applications.

As applications were extremely slow in coming in, on 30 March a number of interested parties wrote to the then Minister, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Central (Mr. Caborn). They included the Local Government Association, LACORS, the British Beer and Pub Association, the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers, the British Institute of Innkeeping, Business in Sport and Leisure, the Bar Entertainment and Dance Association and—the police were involved—the Association of Chief Police Officers. They wrote expressing their concern about the lack of applications and made points that could be taken on board to ease the process.

The letter suggested, for example, that a reason for the delay was a lack of awareness of the new law among licence holders, particularly among small independent businesses, largely due to a severe lack of information and publicity from the DCMS. They also mentioned the late laying of the regulations and the due date for annual fees, which have to be paid on the anniversary of the granting of the licence, and provide no incentive for early application. We have said time and again that if the renewal date were simply a year after the second appointed day, there would be no problem. However, no one will put in an application early if next year they have to pay their new fees earlier than their neighbour. That is an obvious point, made to the then Minister not only in the letter, but over and over by Opposition Members. Again, the Government just did not listen.

The letter also highlighted the need for multiple copies of applications to the various authorities responsible under the Act and the absence of a slip rule in the regulations that would have allowed the correction of minor errors rather than the rejection of applications. We have heard stories of local authorities sending back application forms because they had not been completed in black ink; the whole process had to be gone through yet again. A slip rule would have prevented some of that nonsense.

The letter also raised the implications of alterations made to licences after the first appointed day—there could, for example, be a change of licensee—and mentioned the lack of clarity about aspects of the existing law which are carried forward under the new Act. For example, there is still an argument about embedded rights; people have gone to court. The LGA believes that it can interpret them in one way and the DCMS says, "We're not sure; let the courts decide." What nonsensical legislation—it is absolutely appalling. Ministers should have resigned over this nonsense, but they have not.

In replying to the letter that I mentioned, the then Minister more or less indicated that it was all the fault of the pubs—of everyone but the DCMS, which was whiter than white. Unless this Minister gets a grip of the issue, he will have on his hands the biggest debacle for years. If the pubs do not get their licences through by 6 November, they will not be able to trade, and people will not be able to buy a drink in their local pub.

The three-month time scale from the 6 August cut-off until the second appointed day does not, in my opinion, give the time needed for the local authorities to process all the late applications. There was one example of a club that applied early and had done all its homework, but its application still took eight weeks to process because there were objections and the issue had to go to a hearing. Let us remind ourselves that no other applications were being processed by the council during those eight weeks.

If objections are raised—and they will be, without fail—there will not be time to hold all the hearings during that three-month time scale, which will mean that those who do not get their licences in time will go to court. Magistrates courts will be clogged up with people saying, "You have not processed my licence in time, and I am taking the matter to court to have it resolved." Either today or very soon, the Minister must introduce, or announce the introduction, of legislation. I do not mean legislation to move the second appointed day, because that has not been decided—November is only a possible date. However, that has to be shifted. Eight months has been suggested by Westminster—

Order. I call the Minister to reply to the debate.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff) on securing this debate, which I am delighted to have because it helps to publicise issues about the Licensing Act 2003. In particular, I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on raising issues not just about pubs, but about other affected organisations. One of the key tasks that we face is ensuring that people who are involved with village halls, restaurants or kebab shops are aware that the Act applies to them.

This has been a constructive and well-informed debate and I will reply to as many points as I can in 10 minutes. I will endeavour to write to hon. Members about the individual points that they have made if I do not answer their questions.

It is worth mentioning briefly the reasons for this reform: it is intended to make the system more flexible for the vast majority of responsible drinkers and licensees, while giving more powers to local communities and the police to deal with those few licensees that cause problems, whether they are off-licences, pubs or other organisations. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan), I believe that the Act gives people that power and that, if we return to it in a year or two, we will find that it has had a significant positive effect.

The Act gets rid of the double madness of people having to gulp down two or three pints of beer before the 11 o'clock closing time and of their all being chucked out at the same time. It allows people in a village shop to sell a bottle of wine to someone coming home from work at 11 o'clock on a Sunday, whereas at the moment they face the problem that although they know that that person is reliable and trustworthy, they cannot sell him a bottle of wine for an arcane reason.

In implementing the Act we need to give people certainty about the framework and flexibility in how the rules are interpreted. The Bill tries to give local authorities as much flexibility as possible and we will, as we have done in the past few weeks, continue to make it clear what flexibility local authorities have in implementing the legislation. For example, we have been working with the Local Authorities Co-ordinators of Regulatory Services and others to make it clear that the type of plan that is submitted to local authorities depends on the organisation submitting it. If the plan involves a large nightclub in the constituency of the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field), it may need to be of a different level than that from someone in a village shop selling a few bottles of alcohol every now and then.

Let me turn to the individual issues raised by hon. Members. We recognise that there are issues faced by circuses in making applications, and my predecessor appreciated the constructive way in which the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire raised them. We know that there have been concerns about the requirements for plans. I would be delighted to meet the hon. Gentleman as soon as it is convenient for him, and for him to bring a delegation to discuss those matters. However, in addition to that, although we cannot comment on individual cases, we will write to him shortly to see whether there is anything that we can suggest to circuses that might help them draw up plans that are sufficiently flexible while meeting the requirements of the legislation.

We have flexibility in respect of the second appointed date. In previous debates the hon. Gentleman raised the possibility of delaying that date because most touring circuses finish their touring season in mid-November and face the challenge of having to get a licence for the last couple of weeks. We will be able to delay the second appointed date to later in November. We have listened to the arguments for further delay, but have heard strong counter-arguments from the industry, police and others, and from local government. The key thing is to give people certainty, so they know that they need to apply, and to ensure that instead of continued speculation about whether we will delay the date, we focus people on submitting their applications. To give people that certainty, the second appointed date will be 24 November and we will shortly introduce plans to make that clear.

On the point raised by the hon. Gentleman, local authorities such as Brighton and Richmond are considering whether they can license sites. That would allow a number of circuses and other forms of entertainment to use that public land over the period of a year. We strongly support that and will continue to work with local authorities to make that possible, because that may be an appropriate solution to many of the concerns that the hon. Gentleman raised about circuses. It would, for example, remove the need for them to have a licence every time they went to a particular piece of land.

Turning to village shops, the new licensing regime gives grocery stores and mini-markets more flexibility and represents a business opportunity for them. It is also worth saying that the Government are trying to give support to village shops. We have introduced reform that allows the extension of the mandatory 50 per cent. rate relief from sole village shops to all village food shops in a area of settlement of 3,000 people or fewer, where the rateable value is £9,000 or less. That is a significant financial boon for those organisations and would certainly outweigh any increases under this regime.

There are some fee increases under the new regime, because under the previous regime the cost of the alcohol licensing system was cross-subsidised from the rest of the court system and, in effect, the taxpayer was subsidising the sale of alcohol to the tune of £25 million. That should not continue. Some people said that the fee system should reflect the cost of the alcohol trade overall and the cost of wider social behaviour, but we rejected that because it would be draconian. However, the cost of running and enforcing the licensing system should be reflected in the fees, which is why these increases are included in the new system.

In view of what the Minister has just said, can he explain why the escalator designed to cover those very points applies only to pubs, not night clubs?

The issue of night clubs is a general social one. There is a difference between night clubs and shops, for which the legislation allows an escalator. The hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) made the point that under the Act a supermarket will be charged more, which was not possible under existing legislation and was asked for in this debate.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon) on her point about the potential danger of a few off-licences and local shops selling alcohol to under-age drinkers; we need to deal with that. The Act provides for greater fines for people who do so, and we have also brought in fixed penalty notices. The Violent Crime Reduction Bill will continue to deal with that. That is an important point that we should continue to look at.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) that there is a community leadership role for us to play in respect of festivals. It would be inappropriate for the Government to say which festivals are to be licensed. The legislation gives local authorities the flexibility to do that and local authorities are able to subsidise fees exactly as they do at the moment. It would be inappropriate for any Minister to say what Somerset or Wakefield county councils should do. I should be delighted to visit my hon. Friend's constituency to see the beer festival, and I look forward to crossing the Pennines to do so.

At the moment sports clubs need licences. Greater flexibility is built into the legislation: once people have a licence, they will not have to apply all over again. The licence will last in perpetuity, as long as they do not vary it.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I am afraid that I have only one minute left, so I do not have time.

In conclusion, we are doing as much as we can to publicise this regime. I have give 30 interviews on this matter already. We are launching a communications plan.

What about village halls?

That is an important issue. We do not intend to undermine the contribution that village halls make. There is an exemption for people who, if they are not providing alcohol, will not have to pay any fee. The fees under the existing regime could be up to £600. The long-term fees faced by people will not be excessive. There is no requirement for the personal licence holder to be there at all times.

I am delighted to have secured this debate. Today, 1 million of our fellow citizens up and down the country will go to see their general practitioner. A fact that is perhaps not stated often enough is that nine out of every 10 consultations in the national health service are with a GP: about 1 million per day. I should like to start the debate by praising GPs for the fantastic work that they do on behalf of all our constituents. I should also like to praise all their support staff. I picked up a booklet in my excellent local surgery, the Kirby road surgery in Dunstable, and noted the two doctors who have been there the longest: Dr. O'Toole joined in 1980, so he has 25 years of continuous experience, and Dr. Curt joined in 1984. I was further interested to note that there are some 23 members of staff in that excellent surgery of four GPs. It is important that we do not forget to recognise the contributions made by practice nurses, receptionists and other support staff in our surgeries.

I want first to find out whether the Government are committed to supporting general practice and, in particular, to ensuring that there is a level playing field in relation to the new APMS—alternative provider medical services—private sector arrangements for primary care. APMS need not necessarily be a problem, provided that there is a level playing field. The example from secondary care, where independent sector centres have provided treatment at a cost that is 9 per cent. higher than hitherto in the health service, is illustrative. I should be grateful if the Minister reassured me that there will be an absolutely level playing field and that the Government are fully committed to supporting and taking forward general practice, because, by and large, it does an outstandingly excellent job.

Continuity of patient care is tremendously important to so many of our constituents. However, some of what the Government have done—clearly with the best of intentions—such as the 24 to 48-hour access targets, have undermined that continuity of patient care. Patients wanting to see their own GP, who has seen their particular condition many times before, are not as likely given those targets to be able to do so unless they are prepared to wait for a considerable length of time. Could the Minister enlighten us on whether the Government are reviewing their thinking? A commitment to general practice as a whole from the Minister would be welcome.

Secondly, I should like to consider the premises out of which GPs operate. I have spent a lot of time during the past few days talking to GPs and those involved in primary care in my constituency. I understand that the ring-fencing of funding for premises has, paradoxically, made the situation worse. Many practices in Leighton Buzzard, which is the largest town in my constituency, are quite desperate to know how they are going to be able to expand their premises. I learned yesterday that one major practice is extremely upset to find out that it has lost out on the second wave of premises development funding. It had hoped to get funding, and is looking to expand its premises, but Bedfordshire Heartlands primary care trust has told it that there will be no extra notional rent to pay the interest on the mortgage that the practice would need to take out to expand the premises.

Leighton Buzzard remains one of the largest towns in the country to have no hospital—not even a community hospital or a minor injuries unit. Within the three counties to which I am closest—Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire—many much smaller towns, and even villages, have their own community hospitals. Leighton Buzzard is a large town that takes a long time to cross, after which people have a journey of at least 8 miles to get to Stoke Mandeville, the Luton and Dunstable hospital or Milton Keynes general hospital. My constituents are seriously worried about that. That worry is exacerbated because Bedfordshire Heartlands primary care trust has a £14.3 million deficit. That is the unaudited figure; I understand that it could possibly rise slightly.

I spoke to the trust's chief executive this morning, and part of the reason for that deficit is that it has made a significant commitment to the QOF funding for GPs—the quality and outcomes framework—and has put nearly £3 million towards local GP practices. I very much welcome that, of course, but the huge deficit is a worry. I understand that there is a £50 million deficit Bedfordshire-wide. We are twinned with Hertfordshire under the strategic health authority, and it is a running sore of contention among all the Bedfordshire MPs—three Labour, three Conservative—that historically, Bedfordshire has kept within its budgets, whereas Hertfordshire has often overrun. It seems to us in Bedfordshire that those overruns have become entrenched and that Bedfordshire has lost out. The hon. Member for Bedford (Patrick Hall) has raised the issue many times from the Government Benches, and the three Labour MPs joined the three Conservative MPs from Bedfordshire to see the former Secretary of State of Health to discuss the matter. That issue remains as pressing as always.

Thirdly, I should like to mention the training of GPs. The Government set a target for some 2,000 more GPs between 1999 and 2004. They did pretty well, although they did not meet the target in full-time equivalent GPs: an extra 1,750 only were recruited. I am delighted that we have those extra GPs, but it is instructive that the British Medical Association estimates that we need around another 10,000 GPs nationwide if we are to serve our constituents properly.

I am extremely concerned to learn that in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire—indeed, as I understand it, across the whole of the eastern region—there has been a 75 per cent. cut in the number of final-year, self-construct GP registrars. That is extremely serious. There were 16 in training in 2004–05, but there is now a budget across Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire to train only four. That is a significant cut in the budget. I first learned about that when I was making detailed inquiries for this debate yesterday. Could the Minister respond to that point? If she does not have the facts and figures at her fingertips today, would she agree to write to me about the matter, because if the figures are true, we will be in a difficult situation?

The training of GPs is highly important, and there have been cuts, as my hon. Friend is right to point out. Does he recognise that there has also been a reduction in the number of applications for GP registrar places? He might invite the Minister to comment on why she thinks that that is so. It could be owing to the reduction in the attractiveness of general practice and the commodification of primary care, over which her Government appear to be presiding.

My hon. Friend makes valuable points from the Front Bench, and I look forward to the Minister's response to them.

Fourthly, I should like reassurance from the Minister that her Government are fully committed to allowing GPs to practise in a variety of settings. Will she allow small GP practices with just one, two or three GPs who are providing a good service with which patients are happy to continue to practise, as well as the larger groupings of GPs? There are worries about that. I understand that it was reported at the end of March that the Department of Health's head of primary care development told a conference that a typical GP practice would in future have 10 or more GPs. Does that mean that the Kirby road surgery, which has only four GPs, will not be allowed to practise? Does that mean that Dr. Haq and Dr. Donald, who both have single-GP practices in Dunstable, will not be able to carry on practising? Those two practices score consistently highly on patient satisfaction. I would be very worried if there was any threat to our single-GP or small practices that are clearly meeting patients' needs.

I shall read some comments from a petition that I will shortly be presenting on the Floor of the House from 700 patients of a single-GP practice in Dunstable—I think that they are patients of Dr. Donald. One couple wrote:

"We feel—from our long experience—that a smaller practice is preferable, and we are not just 'names on a register'!!"

Other comments included:

"To be able to see the doctor on the day you're ill is brilliant",

"I feel more at home",

"Having the same doctor each visit—fantastic",

"Keep surgeries small. It is much better for us".

I could go on and on, but that gives a flavour of the comments and of how well regarded our small GP practices are. I know that there was great concern when Dr. Evershed closed his single-GP practice in Leighton Buzzard and when a single-GP practice in Markyate, which was just outside my constituency but served a number of my constituents, also closed.

May we have a pledge from the Government that there will be no "one size fits all" definition of a GP practice? Let GPs work in the framework that suits them best. Some GPs would hate to be on their own in a small cluster and would much prefer to be with a larger grouping of 10, 12 or more GPs. Others are more individualistic and prefer the freedom and autonomy of working on their own or in a small group. We must have the flexibility to allow GPs, their practice nurses and their staff to work in the environment that is best for them.

My last point, which concerns information technology, is in many ways the most important given the financial implications. Computers are essential to every area of our life these days. The Government's national programme for information technology—I understand that it has been renamed NHS Connecting for Health—is budgeted by them to cost £6.2 billion. It is of great concern that there have been suggestions that that is a significant underestimate and that the true cost could be between £18.6 billion and £31 billion. Where will the extra £12 billion—or, possibly, £25 billion—budget overrun come from? My understanding is that it will be clawed back from the primary care trusts and from hospital trusts generally.

I speak as a former member of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions, which is relevant because the Child Support Agency has been trying for five or six years to get a new computer system up and running. There have been horrendous cost overruns and much suffering to our constituents as a result. Will the choose and book system still be operational by December 2005, as the Government have promised? Why is it necessary? Why is it so prescriptive? Why, for instance, will a GP have to prescribe two private sector options? Why not let the GP decide where the best places are locally to send local patients? Has there been a proper gateway review process on the massive amount of spending on IT?

In the week that one of the local service providers for the national programme for information technology, which I believe is now called NHS Connecting for Health, has been sacked, does my hon. Friend agree that one of the problems is the Government's failure to understand that GPs are ahead of hospital IT and not behind it? The reaction of GPs is not because of their being Neanderthal, but because they are afraid of having imposed on them systems that replace those that work but which, in some cases, have not yet even been written.

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which I will not repeat.

Will the Minister give a reassurance that in the typical 10-minute GP consultation the national programme for information technology and choose and book will not be so onerous that more time is spent looking at a computer screen than dealing with the patient? If the cost overruns are as significant as we have been led to believe, as has so sadly happened on many Government IT projects, where will the extra money come from?

This is my first Adjournment debate as the public health Minister and I congratulate the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on securing it. As he rightly said in his opening words, the GP practice is the cornerstone of health care throughout England and Wales. I assure him that as the public health Minister I am keen to ensure that we continue to value the services provided at the primary level, an essential part of which are GP practices. We should also examine how we can develop those services.

In the past few weeks, I have received a number of different stock-takes on the issues that lead to treatment in the acute sector. It is clear to me and, I am sure, to everyone in this Chamber, that work at the primary end could help reduce the load on the acute sector, by ensuring that we prevent the development or worsening of illnesses which then need to be dealt with in a hospital environment. I assure the hon. Gentleman that my time, commitment and attention in this role will be very much spent examining how we can celebrate good practice. There is already a lot of good practice among GPs, in providing services directly and connecting with others to provide services for their patients. I want to make that clear from the outset. I am not the only one who signs up to that; across government there is recognition of the importance of primary care.

In the Department of Health it is clear that support for NHS primary care has never been greater. The Government's assistance to family doctor services has demonstrated itself in several ways. First, there has been an unprecedented increase in investment in primary care. Secondly, we have fostered innovation, with a greater range of services being offered to patients. We all realise, not only as MPs but as potential patients, that public information about the different forms of treatments available influences patients. In addition, as technology advances and as treatments improve, there are many more options at a GP's disposal in order to deal with an illness and to prevent one through screening or other procedures. The climate of medical advances, public concerns and public demand in which we live is very different from that when the health service started all those years ago.

Thirdly, we have increased the importance of primary care in the NHS. I assure the hon. Gentleman that we are set to continue that trend. In fact, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will launch a White Paper on primary care services in July. We want to engage all health professionals—of whom GPs are an essential part—MPs, councillors, the public, community organisations and other groups to help us examine what primary care people would like locally. That is not about wholesale reorganisations but about trying to engage in health at the most local level. Some of the issues we raised in our manifesto complement that. Fourthly, we have improved the rewards for NHS workers in primary care both financially and in terms of professional responsibility, and we continue to invest more money in the NHS than ever.

However, it is not just a case of having more resources but about how those resources are used and GPs in particular feeling that they have an influence over the use of resources at their disposal. Investment in primary care health services in England has risen by a third over the past three years. That increased spending means that more GPs work in primary care than at any time in the history of the NHS.

The hon. Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison) raised a point about training. I agree that we must be constantly watchful and I will consider in more detail the issue of registrar GPs. However, the number of GPs increased by 3,752—13.4 per cent.— between 1997 and December 2004, and the number of practice nurses increased by 20.4 per cent.—nearly 3,800—over the same period. As a result, people can see GPs and practice nurses more quickly.

The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire talked about constituents being able to see a GP within 48 hours and a practice nurse within 24 hours and raised a concern about people not necessarily being able to see their own doctor in that 48-hour period. A small minority of GP practices do not provide longer-term bookings, and the Department of Health, strategic health authorities, primary care trusts and practices are actively examining that together. If someone needs urgently to see a GP within 48 hours, they should be able to do so, which is why we set that target. However, given that GPs have to manage their own practices, it may not be known which GP they will see.

On the other side of the equation, people with ongoing illnesses should be able—as is the case in most practices in Don Valley—to book ahead and see the GP of their choice. In asthma and antenatal clinics, and other facilities in which there might be a specialist GP, that can be planned for. Therefore, it should not be the case, as came up during the election campaign, that people are told that only the 48-hour option is available to them. I am pleased to say that that does not happen in the majority of practices, and we are working actively with PCTs and other organisations to deal with cases where it does. As a Member of Parliament rather than a Minister, I cannot understand why most practices in Doncaster can deal with the problem through straightforward planning whereas others cannot.

Will the Minister write to me as soon as possible in response to my specific point about the cut in Eastern Deanery's funding, which has led to a reduction of 12 places—a 75 per cent. cut—in the number of final-year, self-construct GP registrars? That cut greatly concerns my local medical committee and I hope that the Minister will look into it and get back to me.

I will find out further details about that and write to the hon. Gentleman.

There are not only more GPs but more specialised GPs developing their expertise in particular areas depending on the service that they want to provide for their patients. There are also better facilities. Some 1,400 GPs with special interests deliver a range of extended services, such as dermatology, in a local setting that is convenient to patients. Since July 2000, 2,848 general practice surgeries have been replaced or refurbished as we modernise the NHS's infrastructure after years of under-investment. More money also means more services. Bedfordshire Heartlands primary care trust is investing £4.9 million this year in the treatment of people with long-term conditions, and has been developing means of care that will allow people to be treated at home instead of in hospital.

The hon. Gentleman talked about decisions on premises in his constituency, and I know that he has spoken with the chief executive of his local trust. He will be aware that a decision has not yet been taken on any premises and that the trust cannot give the go ahead to the Leighton Buzzard surgery plans independently of the other three premises being considered. I know that he is actively engaged with the PCT and I hope that the lines of communication are open so that he will feel that there is real engagement in determining the facilities to provide services to the local community and that his concerns are being addressed. No final decisions have been made but the PCT is considering the matter.

One of the Government's priorities, as I hope the hon. Gentleman is aware, is to create healthy and sustainable new communities in the south-east. There are 44 PCTs in the four growth areas of Ashford, London-Stansted-Cambridge-Peterborough, Milton Keynes and south midlands, and the Thames Gateway, and the Bedfordshire Heartlands PCT falls within that area. We must deal with housing growth and the development of health services to meet the needs of population growth. I know that the PCT is considering those issues in the medium and long term, and additional funding has been incorporated to take account of that. Discussions must take place alongside development to deal with the long-term health care needs of the communities that he and other MPs in the surrounding area represent.

We are trying to provide innovative ways to access care to meet patients' demands. The hon. Gentleman raised concerns about the independent sector and whether its involvement at primary care level would too strongly undermine the role of the GP practice. We do not want to undermine the role of the GP practice but we are examining options for other service providers, which could include entrepreneurial GPs wanting to expand. As I have said, a number of GPs specialise in certain areas of health care and may want to use those skills to provide, for example, satellite services outside the GP practice.

The voluntary sector could also be involved. As a former Home Office Minister responsible for the national drugs strategy, I know that the voluntary sector often plays a key role in helping GP practices—for example, with referrals for drug treatment. There is no prescriptive, "one size fits all" approach; it depends on what services are needed. There is not a blueprint to be handed down. We want to engage GPs in the process and are not seeking to undercut them.

In the final moments available will the Minister deal with the cost overruns of NHS Connecting for Health, which could be as high as £25 billion and may come from primary care?

The hon. Gentleman raised scepticism about the choose and book system. One reason for creating the system is that it will deliver choice at the point of referral and booking, giving patients a choice of time, date and place for a first out-patient appointment. Also, GPs will be provided with instant information to make those referrals. It is planned that some 80 per cent. of practices should be using the choose and book system by the end of 2005. The system has been implemented through pilot schemes across England and that has provided a foundation for how the service will be developed. I will write to the hon. Gentleman about the finances if that is helpful. I acknowledge that some GPs have introduced their own computer systems, but it is one thing to have a computer system in an individual practice and another to have a connected system helping GPs to help their patients.

The hon. Gentleman raised the issue of time. Research carried out for the Department of Health by the health information company, Dr. Foster, found that discussing the choice of hospital lengthened GP consultations by just 36 seconds. Obviously that would not always be the case; for a start, it would depend on the patient and how many questions they ask. However, demonstrations and testing have shown that booking an appointment with a patient takes approximately one to two minutes. The heart of the consultation should be about what is wrong with the individual.

It is a great honour to be given this opportunity so early in the new Parliament to address the key issue of international social and economic justice, particularly at such an opportune moment. As we approach the G8 summit, World Trade Organisation talks and a six-month European Union presidency, it seems that the stars are aligned in such a way that this could be an historic moment for not only the Government and Parliament, but how we lead the world on this agenda.

I intend to address how we should be tackling what I see as a tyranny of oppression that affects so much of the developing world. It is not a tyranny that any dictator has imposed, but a tyranny of oppression that we can see symbolised by poverty, disease and malnutrition and a lack of access to water and basic sanitation, health care and education. It is a tyranny of oppression that is fixed by a set of global circumstances that it is within our power as international actors to do much to alleviate.

Today in the United Kingdom, the moment is right. We have a recently re-elected Government who are committed fully to international development, and we also have cross-party support for tackling global poverty. Crucially, the UK will also shortly assume the presidencies of both the EU and G8 in the run-up to the vital WTO talks in Hong Kong. For a brief moment, it seems that everything is lined up in the right direction.

Perhaps most significantly, the British and international publics are pressing for action, most visibly through campaigns such as the momentous Make Poverty History campaign but also through others such as the excellent Trade Justice Movement, which has lobbied us so effectively in Parliament over a number years. Several representatives of the Make Poverty History campaign have informed me that they have been overwhelmed by the public's enthusiasm for an ambitious agenda. Indeed, the campaign's ubiquitous white wristbands—even though they have become a focal point for the powerful negative externalities of global trade such as work force exploitation—are symbolic of perhaps the greatest groundswell of opinion in support of global action since Band Aid 20 years ago.

Make Poverty History is a unique campaign, because it is not asking us to pledge money per se; instead, its primary goal is structural. It asks us to challenge how we view the developing world and our relationship with it. Essentially, Make Poverty History is asking us to make a long-term political pledge, with each wristband symbolising a commitment on the part of its wearer to pressurising those in power to tackle the global inequalities that condemn billions in the developing world to grinding poverty. I firmly believe that in Britain today we have an unprecedented opportunity to respond positively and energetically to that popular pressure.

The political developments to date, with the agenda led by the Government and the popular pressure to reform, are considerable, and we have great cause to feel optimistic. Ultimately, however, our achievements to date, our ambitions on debt relief and aid, and our hopes of achieving the millennium development goals will be hugely diminished if we cannot combine that with similar concurrent progress on trade. Of the three main concerns of the Make Poverty History campaign—aid, debt relief and trade—it is the last that I wish to discuss today. That is because I believe that, although we can never afford to be complacent, we are already pushing the agenda on debt relief and aid, and others will follow if we keep our nose to the grindstone.

The momentous efforts of our Prime Minister, who was much criticised for spending time on international diplomacy, are to be applauded. When his personal commitment and efforts bring President Bush to the table, jointly proposing to write off the debt of 32 countries if coupled with economic reform and the measures to tackle corruption, this will be a milestone in transatlantic co-operation and bode well for the G8 summit. As the White House spokesman Scott McLellan said only a few days ago, debt relief was

"one area where we have a shared goal".

On the surface, the aid package is much less hopeful, and I trust that the Prime Minister and all his Ministers will make every effort to persuade the President to go further and faster. Indeed, I note that some are already speculating that that will happen. I would welcome the Minister's reassurance that diplomatic pressure will continue behind the scenes up to G8 and beyond, because he knows that if the US were to match the 0.7 per cent. of national income recommended by the United Nations for international aid, the US would not only get the thanks of the global community but it would help us reach the target of an extra £14 billion being pledged before G8, and I would be first to send a note of congratulations to the White House.

It is on international trade justice that we face our stiffest challenge, and our efforts in that arena will ultimately define the limits of our success in the crucial months ahead. The US Trade Secretary has set his face against calls for an immediate cessation of cotton and sugar subsidies, as demanded in the Commission for Africa's report, even though the World Trade Organisation has ruled that US cotton subsidies are in breach of trade rules. Even on our own doorstep, the indefensible horror that is the common agricultural policy gives the lie to those who constantly point an accusing finger at the US alone. CAP was described by the Commission for Africa as the world's most protectionist trade regime. To make it worse, abuses of trade rules by both the US and the EU have consequences that are so transparent and obvious that no sane person would not cry out for immediate reform.

Whenever we look back at the millions of people harmed by smoking, we try to identify the point in time when the manufacturers unarguably knew what their product was doing. We did the same with health claims in the UK coal industry in order to determine liability for the billions of pounds now being paid out because someone knew that damage was being done to miners' health.

It is now clear—it has been clear for a while—what damage is being done to developing and impoverished nations and those at the receiving end of the protectionist policies of the US and the EU. We are complicit unless we move to change those abhorrent rules of trade that dump subsidised products on developing nations and undercut their indigenous agriculture and industry. It is only through fair trading arrangements that development can be sustainable in the long term. Although aid and debt relief are vital—they grant developing nations a breathing space—without equal terms of trade, such countries can never hope to grow and prosper.

Handouts and bail outs provide little in the way of incentive to invest in the construction of a vibrant industrial base, a flourishing agricultural sector or a robust trading infrastructure. Nor can they ever hope to provide the sort of stable, consistent funding upon which adequate vital public services can be financed. At best, they keep developing nations in a state of perpetual hope—and, at worst, in permanent despair.

From a hard-nosed western perspective, we would clearly benefit from fairer trading arrangements with the developing world. Apart from the overwhelming moral motivations, there are powerful economic and political imperatives for fair trade. For example, CAP export subsidies sting the British public twice over. According to Oxfam, not only does the policy cost UK taxpayers £3.9 billion a year, but, as consumers, the average family of four pays £800 extra more every 12 months than it would in the absence of CAP.

Moreover, aid and debt relief do not represent long-term value for money for the taxpayer. That is especially so if the recipients of the money are simultaneously denied the opportunity to repay the donors by generating their own wealth through productivity and trade.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the case that he makes. Although I accept what he says about import barriers and especially export subsidies, does he not accept that the most recent and significant reform of the common agricultural policy has, from the beginning of this year, largely removed production subsidies from agriculture throughout the EU, and that although the process is transitional, at least it is now actually beginning?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful intervention. We are undoubtedly moving in the right direction, and the speed at which we do so is important. I agree that progress is being made, and that it is being made because of international pressure, applied not least by this Government. We need to continue to make progress, and to do so faster, because the implications of not doing so are staring us in the face at this very moment.

I am very pleased that the UK Government have recognised the central role of trade in development, and that we have built considerable momentum in that direction to date. Of course, if we are to achieve the millennium development goals, secure the conditions for a successful pro-poor outcome to the Doha round, and ultimately lay the foundations for a fairer global trading system, no one can deny that we, the Minister and his colleagues face a challenge of immense proportions. However, as the non-governmental and campaigning organisations acknowledge, we are taking important steps in that direction. Indeed, the Government have already shown their clear desire to play a leading role in tackling global trade injustice.

Perhaps the most significant recent development has been the Government's recent acceptance that the Commission for Africa's March 2005 report should form the basis of UK policy. That is hugely welcome. It is particularly encouraging when we consider that powerful document's central argument on trade: that developing nations should be able to manage their own trade policies and paths to development rather than having them dictated by wealthy states. Leaders of developing countries have frequently reiterated that sentiment to those who are willing to listen. The President of Tanzania expressed that view succinctly when he implored developing states to recognise that

"Development cannot be imposed. It can only be facilitated. It requires ownership, participation and empowerment, not harangues and dictates".

As the Commission for Africa's report rightly stresses, it is simply inappropriate to dictate policy to fellow sovereign nations. Isolated from key decisions over their own future and often sensing little immediate progress, Governments and citizens of poor countries are also likely to become progressively less enthusiastic about taking the painful measures that developed nations have declared necessary for their reform and recovery. More often than not, the result is stagnation, opposition and even resentment both domestically and internationally. By contrast, the results can be considerable when poor nations are provided with the opportunity to manage their own economic development.

The UK Government have acknowledged the force of that argument. In its July 2000 White Paper, "Making Globalisation a Force for Good", the Department of Trade and Industry underlined the importance of affording developing states the autonomy to determine their own development priorities. It clearly stated that

"developing countries need the space to design and sequence trade reform packages in a way that is appropriate for their particular circumstances, and then integrate them into their own development and poverty reduction strategies."

The enthusiasm of the Minister, of Cabinet Ministers, and of the Prime Minister for pushing that message in the coming months is essential, because it is only by building a multilateral consensus on the importance of enhancing the room that developing states have to manoeuvre on trade issues that we can hope to secure significant and lasting change. We must therefore have those goals in mind when we assume the presidencies of the EU and the G8. Europe will undoubtedly be our busiest arena in this respect. The fact that the UK presidency of the EU will inevitably be dominated by the consequences of the rejection of the European constitution will certainly make it even busier, but I see no reason why that should necessarily distract us from our focus on eradicating global poverty.

After all, if Europe is indeed looking for a new direction, a new purpose and a sense of collective mission, we will be extremely well placed to shape that new identity positively. To that end, we must be sure to highlight two ever-present challenges on the international fair trade "to do" list—subsidies and market access. As the Minister knows, the economic partnership agreements will provide a prime opportunity to raise the issue of market access.

With the possibility of free access to the European market, EPAs could hold great promise for the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries involved. According to the Trade Justice Movement, however, that promise will be negated if the EU negotiates EPAs in a way that includes reciprocal trade liberalisation and new rules regarding the Singapore issues, namely competition, investment and public procurement. The path that the EU takes could have crucial implications for poverty reduction and for development. A 2003 impact assessment by PricewaterhouseCoopers postulated that a bad EPA had the potential to destroy west Africa's manufacturing sector, so we must move forward with consideration. The pace and structure of reform must be in the interests of the developing nations, not just the western, leading developed nations.

Alternatively, the EU could back a fair EPA, or an alternative viable agreement that does not demand full and immediate liberalisation. The European Commission could also encourage its developed world partners at the WTO towards a firm agreement on special and differential treatment that empowers developing states to set tariff levels according to their specific industrial and agricultural requirements. If the EU can be coaxed, cajoled, bullied or bested down the latter route, it will represent a significant boost to the long-term development potential of many least-developed countries, and it will help to build an invaluable developed-world consensus on the benefits of empowering poor nations to choose how, when and what to liberalise. Such an outcome would be a historic coup for the UK presidency.

Halting unfettered, pure, laissez-faire liberalisation will not make developing nations any freer to manage their economies if their vital agricultural sector is simultaneously undermined by developed-world export subsidies and dumping. That point has been highlighted by the case of the EU sugar regime. Conspicuously absent from the "Everything but Arms" agreements until 2009, the price of sugar in the EU, according to the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development, has been maintained at three times the world market level by tariffs of up to 140 per cent. It is perhaps unsurprising that the WTO recently ruled that the sugar subsidies are illegal, as it did with similarly unjust American subsidies of cotton. It is vital that we interpret the ruling in a way that enhances development opportunities by eliminating those subsidies and increasing the import quotas from less developed countries.

More generally, the UK must endeavour to ensure that a core priority of its EU presidency is the rapid phase-out of agricultural subsidies, and it must ideally aim for the Commission for Africa's goal of 2010, even though it is ambitious. Moreover, as is appreciated, progress on agricultural subsidies is central to the ultimate success of the Doha round, and we must be ceaseless in our insistence that the EU agrees a date at the WTO ministerial talks in Hong Kong in December for the total phase-out of subsidies.

In addition to the EU presidency, the G8 presidency and the Gleneagles summit give clear opportunities for the UK to press a new model of global trade on its developed-world partners. Although there are institutional limitations on the G8 in terms of its ability to influence the WTO, the UK can still reasonably hope to build momentum for change if it uses that platform to reiterate consistently a pro-development line. After all, those Heads of State assembling in Perthshire in July ultimately control the bulk of global trade and unofficially dominate the major international financial institutions.

I endorse the thrust of what the hon. Gentleman says, but I hope that he will not ignore or play down the significance of tariff barriers. Is he aware that in 2003, Sri Lanka, for example, paid no less than $244 million to the United States in duties and $77 million to the European Union, and that those figures were notable by comparison with Indonesia, which paid respectively $426 million and $180 million? Does he agree that those countries recovering from the tragedies that have afflicted them simply cannot afford to dispense with $1 billion a year by pumping that money into the treasuries of already very much richer nations?

The hon. Gentleman makes a clear point about why there cannot be a blanket, universal approach. Things must be done on a nation-by-nation, case-by-case basis because of the different situations in the developing nations. The historical development of subsidies, tariffs and protectionist measures in one nation is different from another. He makes a good point.

I will return to the subject of trade talks—looking six or seven months ahead. As with the presidency of the EU, it is imperative that we approach the G8 summit with a clear set of goals. In terms of trade, foremost among those must be to bring significant pressure to bear on the issue of enforced liberalisation through International Monetary Fund and World Bank loans and debt relief packages. The recent review of conditionality by the Department for International Development set a positive tone in that respect and was most welcome. It recognised the need to place development at the heart of the constructive relationship between donor and recipient. The concept of partnerships for poverty reduction is groundbreaking in its recognition that dialogue rather than dictation should characterise the interaction between poor and rich states. Such a message must be fundamentally promoted in discussions with our G8 colleagues.

If we are seriously to commit to enhancing the developmental autonomy of poor states, another key issue will be aid for trade. As the Commission for Africa report points out, developing nations struggle to adjust to changes in trading patterns and to capitalise on fairer trading conditions because of their weak capacity to trade. Targeting aid specifically at improving trading infrastructure, such as by securing efficient transport links, reliable energy suppliers or enhanced technical expertise, is therefore vital for assisting development. The costs are unsurprisingly high. Recent World Bank research estimated that an additional $10 billion to $20 billion a year will be needed to ensure adequate, basic trading infrastructure investment in the developing world. The international finance facility proposed by the Treasury, which is facing some stormy waters overseas, would go a long way towards meeting those costs, as part of our much wider efforts to achieve the millennium development goals.

Of course, there are many other issues that we could and should push our developed world partners to take urgent action on. The requirement that will determine success in all those areas is, above all, the need to change attitudes. We can only ever hope to nudge Governments gradually and incrementally towards a fairer trading system if, fundamentally, they see the real need and appreciate the benefits. If Governments truly believe that trade justice is critical and if they are willing to prioritise it and to think about security as a global concept, the chances of developing states gaining greater freedom to determine their own path to prosperity will surely be enhanced. That is why the popular campaigns running at the moment are so important.

There will, of course, be vested interests in any state that stands to lose out from a fundamental change to the global trading system. Given the potential for that opposition, the timing will never be perfect for any Government to approve such changes. When asked to carry out such restructuring by another Government, it is always easy to negotiate, bargain and agree small concessions dressed up in generous oratory. If Governments are asked to make such changes by a significant proportion of their electorate and with the support of their own cross-party politicians, however, it becomes much easier to go ahead and more risky to procrastinate or fudge. With a transnational mass movement now agitating for change and a Government committed to taking action on global poverty, we have genuine cause to hope that this could be the year when inertia is no longer the easy answer to uncomfortable questions.

I do not underestimate the challenge that faces the Minister and his colleagues in the months ahead. At times, it will probably seem to him that all he hears are voices in the press and the non-governmental organisations, and politicians and colleagues, berating the Government for failing to achieve every milestone that I know that he so much desires to reach. At the outset of a very tricky and turbulent period, I say to him that he has our best wishes, our support and our hopes. When any hurdle is failed, he will hear us shouting from the sidelines to get up again and take another run. That may sound critical, but it is actually encouragement. When each hurdle is cleared, he will hear the cheers and he will deserve them. This debate is part of the clamour for action. Accept the noise for what it is: a growing international mood that we cannot turn our backs on our neighbours any longer.

We want to succeed. Change the rules so that the voice of the developing nations is heard more loudly from the sidelines. Change the rules so that the developing nations are actually playing on the same pitch, on a level playing field. I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this issue and I urge the Government not to blink when confronted with vested interests. "At our best when at our boldest"—never has a truer word been spoken.

I congratulate very sincerely the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) on his choice of subject at an opportune time: the lead-up to the summit. It is very appropriate that he introduced the subject and did so in an effective way, emphasising the moral dimension behind trade policy that is often overlooked. I agreed with a large part of what he had to say. Indeed, I would subscribe to some of his more colourful rhetoric about the indefensible horrors of the common agricultural policy, as well as his more general arguments.

I shall explain why I am speaking in an unfamiliar Back-Bench role. It is partly because I share the Chancellor's view—and that of the leader of the Conservative party expressed today—that we cannot treat trade policy as if it were in a separate box. It is part of the broader approach to global development, the international economy and the future of developing countries. There is no point trying to deal with aid and debt relief in one compartment while ignoring the trade dimension: they are part of an interrelated whole. Those of us who are interested in better economic policy, particularly helping growth in developing countries, have to attend to trade policy issues.

On a purely personal level, I spent a substantial part of my professional life dealing with development matters in developing countries, particularly trade policy. I argued for many years for a trade liberalising agenda, but things are still—alas—very much the same as they were 20 or 30 years ago. Many of the trade barriers that we argued about vehemently in the 1970s are unfortunately still there, but none the less it is important to restate the arguments.

I take a slightly different tack from the hon. Member for Ogmore; I want to reinforce what he says, but I have a slightly different point to make. Very often we use vocabulary about trade justice and fairness that is confusing. The word "fairness" in trade policy is used in several quite different, and sometimes rather unhelpful, ways. I use the term "fair trade" in the sense of free and fair trade in broadly the same way as the hon. Gentleman. In a sense, it means free trade with a purpose: opening up markets, getting rid of distorting subsidies and achieving the aim of helping poor people in poor countries.

Unfortunately, "fair trade" is often used by different people in different ways. Certainly, in the days when I was doing battle with the European textile lobby—a body called Comitextil— it would try to justify the introduction of quotas by using the term "fair trade policy". Very often, one finds American protectionist lobbies say that they are demanding fair trade, giving the term a completely different and opposite meaning.

The term is also used in a third way, which the hon. Gentleman used, to defend non-reciprocity in trade. There are arguments about reciprocity and I shall come to them in a moment, but the meaning is different and it does not just concern open markets. In some contexts, it defends protection. There is also the issue of preferences. "Fair trade" is often used as a way of justifying preferences for some developing countries over others, and defending quotas for supposedly more worthy developing countries. This is an issue in relation to textiles, sugar, bananas and so on. We need to deal with that.

Lastly, "fair trade" is used in a context that we often encounter in supermarkets, where fair trade products are advocated because they are produced with better social standards or in some other way. That may be desirable but, again, the meaning is completely different. The words "fairness" and "justice" are used in many ways and I want to be a little more precise about what exactly we are talking about.

Sometimes the arguments are muddled unhelpfully and a good example of that is textiles. There has been a retrograde move in international trade policy in the past few weeks. Regrettably, the Trade Commissioner in Brussels, Mr. Mandelson, who had made some effective interventions, seems to have gone backwards and accepted demands from the French Government that textile quotas should be strengthened or reintroduced, particularly for China. It is clear that those demands have come from producer interest groups in western Europe, but quotas have been justified on the grounds that we must protect other developing countries from China. That is a separate argument, but it is being used and intermingled dishonestly. We are used to that in the sugar agreement, which is a complex problem that has been with us for three decades at least. There is an unholy alliance between sugar beet producers and high-cost producers in the Caribbean and elsewhere to protect an inefficient regime that does great harm to developing country exporters. Different aspects of fairness are used in different ways and sometimes unhelpfully.

I turn to two tricky issues of trade policy, and there is a right answer to neither. The first is reciprocity, upon which the hon. Member for Ogmore touched. Should developing countries concede liberalisation when negotiating trade agreements and, if so, in what circumstances? During the election and earlier, we all received deputations from trade justice groups, Churches and so on. I agreed with 95 per cent. of their arguments, but they wanted me to say that opening up the markets of poor countries is a bad thing and that we must fight against that. That may be so, but many poor countries such as India have suffered great damage from excessively protective trade policies, and I am not sure that I want to subscribe to them.

We must consider more critically the argument for reciprocity. Under existing rules, which were developed under the general agreement on tariffs and trade and have been carried forward by the World Trade Organisation, developing countries can seek special and differential treatment of trade in goods. Different negotiating principles are involved in services but an offer principle applies and countries do not have to offer concessions if they do not want to. Poor developing countries, particularly in Africa, that do not want to participate do not have to do so.

The World Trade Organisation specifically protects developing countries from undue pressure to open up their markets if they choose not to do so. Many of the lobbyists on trade justice seem not to appreciate how the system operates and mix it up with a separate matter: how the European Union, in its bilateral relationships, and sometimes the World Bank, in its aid packages, use trade liberalisation as a condition.

The simple answer is that developing countries should not be forced to adopt policies that they feel passionately are against their interests. There should be no coercion, but in many cases it will be in the interests of developing countries to pursue more liberal policies. Throughout south-east Asia, Thailand, Malaysia, India and China have radically reduced their import quota and tariff regimes to their own betterment. That should not be imposed, but it is often in their interests.

The hon. Gentleman made an interesting point about reciprocity and referred to China and the far east—the Asian tiger economies. Does he agree that they had a period of protectionism to build up their domestic industries before liberalising their tariffs and allowing themselves to be open to competition from elsewhere? That was one of the keys to their success.

Some did and some did not. History is varied, but there is a model and Korea is perhaps the best example of a country that developed behind severe barriers to trade and foreign investment, grew spectacularly rapidly and, in recent years, opened up both to trade liberalisation and democracy. It has carried that off effectively. However, other countries—for example, Hong Kong and Singapore—never had trade restrictions. From the outset, Taiwan had a much more liberal economic system. There were big differences among the Asian countries.

At the moment, the problem area is Africa. Is it right that African countries should be asked or recommended to break down trade barriers? The answers are complex. One of the first jobs I ever had, as a young economist, was working in African government in Kenya. I was involved in the negotiation of industrial projects—concerning pulp and paper factories and textile factories—that depended for their viability on quotas and tariffs. For decades, those institutions have drained wealth from African countries in a damaging way. It would have been better for the countries concerned if they had pursued a more liberal trade policy. As it is Africa, we are not supposed to say that, but trade liberalisation might well have helped, rather than hindered, those countries in their development.

I accept the point that the hon. Member for Ogmore made that it is a different story in agriculture. When large numbers of peasant farmers are subject to the fluctuations of world commodity markets, a different set of arguments kicks in. However, we should not automatically buy the argument that it is in the interests of developing countries to pursue closed economies for a significant period of their development.

As usual, the hon. Gentleman is making an immensely challenging and thoughtful speech. Does he not agree that, despite the complexities of the issues and the need for a case-by-case approach, there are at least two guiding principles that are relevant to the duties of developing countries in trade policy? First, developing countries certainly should not be required to open their markets to subsidised exports by countries that are already much richer than they are. Secondly, if developing countries are to maintain some policy space to continue their own tariff or subsidy regimes, retention of those regimes should be time limited. There can be no benefit to developing countries permanently seeking to sustain themselves using a sort of dependency culture.

Order. Interventions should be brief.

Those are both good points and I agree with them. The first is especially useful. As I understand it under trade laws, if one is faced with competing inputs that are subsidised, it is possible to introduce what are called countervailing duties. It is recognised that it should not be allowed to dump subsidised products on other countries, so the principle is accepted. If developing countries are being coerced into importing subsidised food or other products, that is clearly wrong and those countries should be protected from it. I completely accept that point.

The point about time limiting relates to my second point, which is about the issue of preference. One of the complications that has grown up in the trade system is often unhelpful. It is that different groups of countries are protected against other developing countries. I have great suspicion about the layer of preferences that have been introduced by the European Union playing off one developing country against another. That is now happening in sensitive areas.

One of the problems in textiles, which I will come back to, is that, after decades of arguing, the rich countries have been persuaded to get rid of—eventually—the quotas that were first introduced with the Lancashire long-term textile agreement in the mid-1960s and that were consolidated in the multi-fibre arrangement of the 1970s. After three decades, they were at last persuaded to get rid of those quotas. Now, because of competition from China, the argument is resurfacing that the decision was premature and we need to reintroduce the quotas, not just to protect our industries but to help poor little places such as Lesotho and Swaziland that have cut out factories that try to exploit little loopholes in the quota regime. Although I am immensely sympathetic to Lesotho, Swaziland and the rest of those countries, which include, on a much bigger scale, Bangladesh, there is great danger of that argument being seriously abused to perpetuate a regime that is massively inefficient and causes great cost to developing countries and our own consumers. I hope that we will not go down that road.

My next point will reinforce what the hon. Member for Ogmore has been saying. It is right that problems of market access and production subsidies are the main enemies and the things that must be fought. We have to argue for access to the markets of rich countries, and for production subsidies to be got rid of, particularly in sectors such as cotton. Such subsidies are shameful and inexcusable. Those should be the priorities.

My final, simple point is that everything must take place within a framework of rules. Poor countries and small countries have more to lose from anarchy than big rich countries, such as the United States or China. That is why the World Trade Organisation is so important. One of the more dispiriting aspects of the entire debate on trade policy and fair trade is that many people who share my emotional support for developing countries and their aspirations have become hostile to multilateralism and are attacking the WTO. Any organisation has its weaknesses, but to destroy the rule of law in trade would be deeply damaging and retrograde. The debate must be located in that context.

I, too, welcome the choice of debate from my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies). It is timely and appropriate given the current major debate on the best way for the international community to address world poverty and particularly poverty in Africa. As has been commented, this year will be a key period in political history if we are to achieve meaningful change.

Our thoughts are focused on the G8 summit in Gleneagles in a few weeks' time. I am encouraged that there are real signs of progress on the issues relating to aid and debt, but we need the world leaders at that summit also to make progress on the third main issue: world trade. As we can tell from today's debate, that is possibly the most difficult and contentious of those three major topics. It involves not only the simple movement of what is still a tiny fraction of our wealth to poorer nations, but substantial change in the operation of our economies and a phasing out of the huge range of subsidies and tariff rates that currently protect a sizeable amount of our own production. We need our political leaders to show courage and determined commitment to achieve change, and to do so urgently, before the opportunities fade away from us.

Our last substantive debate on world trade took place about 18 months ago, when we had the opportunity to discuss the excellent report prepared by the International Development Committee, following on from the Cancun ministerial summit. I attended that summit as part of the parallel parliamentary conference, so I had the opportunity to witness at first hand the frustration of many nations that their priorities on development issues were squeezed out by an overloaded agenda that eventually toppled over, with no real progress in any of the major areas. At that time, there seemed little sign that any substantial agreement would be reached, and there was a danger that major players, such as the USA, would slip back into relying on bilateral trade agreements and establishing free trade areas. However, there are now signs that most nations see the benefit of reaching a comprehensive multilateral trade agreement and, particularly in the west, there is increasing public pressure on leaders to consider the needs of the world's poorest in a development-focused round.

The Commission for Africa report highlights the fact that unless Africa increases its diminishing share of world trade, it will fail to achieve sustainable growth and poverty reduction. However much aid we put into the continent, if we do not increase its share of world trade, we will never achieve the goals. As the report points out, in stark contrast to what has happened in the emerging economies in India, China and Brazil, the last 30 years have seen stagnation in Africa, with the composition of its exports essentially remaining unchanged.

The commission identifies the two main causes of the collapse in Africa's share of world trade. The first is its low capacity to produce and trade, which has been consistently hindered by protectionist policies such as those in the European Union, as my hon. Friend identified. The commission does not hold back in condemning current trading systems. It states that

"barriers and subsidies are absolutely unacceptable; they are politically antiquated, economically illiterate, environmentally destructive, and ethically undesirable. They must go."

Secondly, the commission identifies the advance of other nations such as China and India as having made it more difficult for Africa to break into world markets at this time, as competitors have established strong advantages on the world market. Any new trade agreement that we consider this year must take into account both those issues, and it must ensure that there is a proper sequencing of the reforms and that special and differential treatment obligations are an integral part of any final deal.

It is important that, when we reach agreement, a distinction should be made between the needs of middle-income and often larger nations, and those of the poorest nations, which include all those of sub-Saharan Africa. For a time at least, it will be vital to provide the poorest nations with some form of protectionism, so that they do not simply swap one form of export dumping from the USA and the European Union for a huge tide of exports from emerging economies, with which they cannot, at this stage, be reasonably expected to compete on anything like equal terms. We need to meet that challenge this year.

Since the Cancun summit, the EU has agreed to drop three of the most contentious Singapore issues: competition, investment and transparency in public procurement. The continued strength of the G20 group, which encompasses nations such as China, India and Brazil, shows that middle-income nations—we should recall that they comprise more than 50 per cent. of the world's population—are willing to show their weight on the world scene.

The recent cases brought by Brazil at the WTO tribunal against the EU and the USA on subsidies for cotton and sugar show that the G20 has a new and sophisticated political strategy, to which the richer nations will need to adapt quickly. That was completely underestimated at the Cancun ministerial summit, but now there is a growing realisation that the EU and the USA need to engage in the talks, out of not only altruism, but a recognition that they need to co-operate with emerging world economies if they are to protect their own trade positions in turn.

Does the hon. Lady agree that it is important that there should be a synchronisation of reform and relief in relation to sugar, for example? Does she accept that there is a real concern that if EEC reform takes effect in 2006, relief provision for developing countries suffering from that reform will take effect only between 2007 and 2013? There is an inequity that needs to be addressed.

Yes, I agree. The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. The EU has a duty to ensure that a proper agreement is made multilaterally and that a tribunal ruling on which it has to make an immediate decision is not made against it. Unfortunately, in such a case, developing countries' needs would probably end up being ignored. Increasingly, the EU and the USA are realising that nations from middle-income countries are now prepared to take cases against them to the WTO and that they have to respond to that challenge, while taking into account, as the hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out, the needs of the poorest nations.

The agreement reached at the WTO last July involved concessions to eliminate, in principle, all agricultural export subsidies in the richer nations and substantially reduce trade-distorting farm supports, including specific action on cotton. That shows a new trend in the current trade talks. Crucially, the EU and the USA came to an agreement, even though each side had a tendency in the past to blame the other when pressurised on its own agricultural support. They agreed that a €3 billion reduction in EU export subsidies will be accompanied by a matching reduction in the USA's trade-distorting export credits and food aid.

That is a good sign, but the crucial test is whether a timetable for those changes can be agreed. They also have to agree about a large number of other outstanding issues concerning industrial products and services.

Prior to the ministerial meeting in Paris at the beginning of last month, the WTO director general, Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi, indicated that a high level of convergence was still needed in five areas if there was to be a breakthrough at the Hong Kong summit in December, moving to a final agreement during 2006. He mentioned agreements on agriculture and on non-agricultural goods, the need for a critical mass in service officers under the general agreement on trade in services, on which there has been little progress since Cancun, as well as significant progress on rules and trade facilitation, and a proper reflection on the development agenda.

The Paris meeting last month concentrated on agriculture, and there was a welcome breakthrough on something that is so technical that I had a bit of trouble understanding what it is. Apparently, it is an agreement to calculate tariffs on a percentage basis of the goods value. I understand that that has held up negotiations for many months. All sides recognise that much more needs to be done before the next ministerial summit, which is due to take place in July. That is why the G8 summit, which will take place prior to that meeting, offers an additional opportunity for reaching further agreement on producing a clear timetable for tariff reductions. It is a good sign that the new US trade negotiator, Rob Portman, has declared that an agreement can boost jobs and prosperity, and can help lift millions of people out of poverty, if we do the right thing. I hope that our Government will continue to strive for further major concessions at the G8 summit, and will hold the USA in particular to its statements on supporting a multilateral deal.

Time is beginning to run short, particularly for the USA, in reaching that final agreement. The second term of the Bush presidency has witnessed an increasingly stormy relationship between the Senate and the President, and it is clear that there are strong protectionist tendencies in both the Senate and the Congress. In 2007, the President's fast-tracking negotiating authority will run out, and there is little prospect of it being renewed. Accordingly, it is vital that we have a skeleton agreement by the time of the December conference, and I hope that the prospect of success in getting that can be improved in the next few months.

I also support the statements of my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore about the recent negotiations on the EU economic partnership agreements with the African, Caribbean and Pacific nations, and I especially support our Government's position on those negotiations. I share the concern of many that there seems to be an attempt to reintroduce the Singapore issues through the back door without equal rights to negotiate on EU regulations and subsidies, when it was patently obvious from Cancun that there is no call for this from developing nations. That is the group of countries that needs the highest level of concessions in their favour. I agree with the Government's approach: developing nations must be able to choose the pace, sequencing and product coverage of economic partnership agreements, and remaining EU tariffs should be eliminated, without conditions on the poorest nations. I hope that the Minister can give an assurance today that there will be no change in the United Kingdom's position on that.

I congratulate the Fairtrade Foundation on its continued success in the United Kingdom, in terms of both its market share, which increases by significant amounts every year, and its important advocacy work in trade issues and the need to secure trade justice for the world's poorest. I have been fortunate in being involved over the past few months in the arrangements to try to achieve fair trade city status for Glasgow; it would then have the accolade of being the biggest retail centre in the UK to have attained that status. I also welcome the announcement last week of the Scottish Executive First Minister, Jack McConnell, who wants to follow on from the excellent example set by the home nation of my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore by achieving fair trade nation status for Scotland.

Many thousands of our constituents are greatly concerned about trade justice, and I know that they, along with Members present, hope that 2005 is the year in which we achieve the real breakthrough, by making world trade much fairer and freeing millions of people from poverty.

I echo the final point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow, North (Ann McKechin): all who examine the opportunities to make poverty history recognise that 2005 is a pivotal year. If we fail this year, there will be a less rosy picture of the future for all the non-governmental organisations and campaigners who have campaigned for many years. They are hoping—with the G8 summit, the UN millennium council in September, the WTO talks later this year and the opportunity for the UK Government to take an important lead as a result of their presidency of the EU and of the G8—that this is the year of major change.

I also congratulate the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) on securing the debate, on doing so in such a timely fashion and on making such a strong case, which I endorse. I am well aware that as a new boy to these debates I could easily fall into the trap, as perhaps others have, of believing that coming new and fresh to them enables one instantaneously to find an inspired policy solution that has strangely bypassed armies of policy thinkers and academics over the past few decades. I do not hold that view and I reassure Members that I do not start from the position of thinking that I will inject the debate with that flash of inspiration, although I would like to think that one day I might. This is a question of probing the issue so that we can move it forward and of an Opposition party encouraging the Government.

The debate is largely consensual, which is good because we can concentrate on the positive things, but it could become weak and flabby and lose the sharpness of the challenging debates that the Chamber often experiences. The background is not just the opportunities that I mentioned, but the Live 8 rock event and the gathering of people concerned about achieving a positive outcome from the G8 summit in July. That has helped to raise the issue's profile. Those who have campaigned for years are aware that away from the glamour of the rock concerts, the hard graft on the ground in developing countries still needs to go on.

The fundamental principles of wanting to establish trade justice for developing countries is based on our understanding of a policy of enlightened self-interest: we have an interest but we must be enlightened to the extent that we are aware of the impact of our policies on those countries when we implement things. Let us consider the development of the policies, particularly by the west, over the past 10 or more years. My hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) has much more front-line experience in that regard than me. There is much emphasis on the west's having involved itself in pursuing the self-interest part of the policy, but the enlightenment bit does not appear to have kicked in a great deal. I hope that that element of "enlightened self-interest" is kick-started in 2005.

Although I welcome what I hope is not momentary compassion from those who will attend rock concerts in a few weeks' time, the way that the debate is developing suggests that there is a certain schizophrenia among the public in this country and in the west in general. Sometimes difficult decisions have to be taken and people start saying, "We want to cut hospital waiting times", "Deal with the potholes in our roads" or, "Improve the rail service"; often the same people who turn up at the rock concerts or who wear the campaign wristbands will question why so much money is spent on debt relief and aid in other countries for people we do not know when we still have not got things sorted out in this country. We must bear that theme in mind. Political pressures will inevitably fall on us politicians, and we will have to face difficult decisions about the development of, and poverty in, less-developed countries when those topics are not in the media or the subject of public attention. However, we must sustain momentum.

When people in the west realise that the implementation of trade justice policies might mean that some parts of their country's economy become less profitable as the cold winds of global trade make some companies more marginal, and when they realise that improvements in labour standards in other countries might mean that we cannot buy our trainers, footballs and fashion accessories as cheaply, people may question why we have gone down that route. We must keep the public on board when pursuing those policies and we must recognise that there will be implications for our lifestyles and standards of living.

The hon. Member for Ogmore rightly emphasised the tyranny of oppression on the world's poor and the golden opportunity that we have this year. My hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham, who has a great deal of experience on this subject, while supporting the contribution made by the hon. Gentleman, pointed out that there may be more disagreement behind the scenes and behind the language used than there appears at first sight—for example, about the definition of the word "fair". Everything looks fair from someone's perspective if it benefits them but it is never fair for others on the receiving end of policies that do not benefit them. The language used in the debate masks more disagreement on the world stage than our debates here give the impression of.

My hon. Friend also rightly argued against the one-size-fits-all policy for future trade relations and emphasised the need to move as rapidly as possible away from export subsidies and trade barriers, which are unjustifiable across a large number of economies and commodities.

The hon. Member for Glasgow, North discussed the important role that the United States plays, and, in that context, we had the announcement of the outcome of the Prime Minister's recent visit to the US President. Although there were agreeable words at the press conference last night, I have significant concerns that the fact that the United States spends about $100 billion a year in pursuit of its policy in Iraq compared with $4 billion in Africa indicates its priorities. If we are to make a significant difference to the way in which the G8 and other countries pursue policies, it will be essential to bring the United States further on board.

I have a number of questions for the Minister, as I am sure he will be delighted to know. The first follows up a question I raised during departmental questions. I asked the Secretary of State about economic partnership agreements, which have been mentioned by others, and especially by the hon. Member for Ogmore. I asked for reassurance that ACP countries would be given a genuine choice between signing up to EPAs and pro-development alternatives. The Secretary of State answered:

"Yes, I agree with him. In the end, it is for ACP countries to decide whether they wish to sign up to economic partnership agreements. They can have confidence about the choice that they will face if they see that there are alternatives if they do not like the deal on the table. From my conversations with Trade Ministers in developing countries, I know that they are clear that all is to play for on these agreements. They know what they want and I am sure that they will use their bargaining power to achieve it."—[Official Report, 25 May 2005; Vol.434, c. 691.]

That was said in the context of a letter of 11 April sent to the UK Government, in which the European Commission said that a statement made by the UK Government on 21 March

"represents a major and unwelcome shift in the UK position as it focuses exclusively on the potential risks of EPAs".

The letter goes on to list a number of concerns about the way in which the UK's interpretation of EPAs, and of giving ACP countries a genuine choice, is not reflected in the views of other European countries or in the agreement by the Council of Ministers. The letter says:

"Peter Mandelson is taking up our concerns and will press for a revised UK line, noting that their statement is contrary to the agreed EU position and harmful for our common objective of promoting development through trade."

I would be grateful if the Minister would let us know what progress has been made in those negotiations with Peter Mandelson. One assumes that the Government speak the same language as the Trade Commissioner, both literally and politically, and so I hope that the Government can make progress in ensuring that less-developed, ACP countries genuinely have a choice.

Also, I would welcome the Minister's clear interpretation of the revised line taken by the European Commission regarding EPAs and would like him to say whether the Government agree in principle that debt relief and aid should not be conditional on enforced trade policy. I am aware of the time, and of the fact that the Conservative spokesman and the Minister need to respond, so I shall end my remarks now.

First, I should like to say how much I welcome this debate, which is timely. Secondly, I congratulate the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) on securing the debate and on the excellent way in which he introduced it. It certainly was not a weak and flabby introduction; his remarks were strong and taut. I share many of his concerns, particularly those relating to the difficulties faced by developing countries as a result of agricultural subsidies, particularly those to do with dumping and western protectionism.

The Conservative party is supportive of the broad aims and objectives of the Make Poverty History campaign and the fair trade movement. They have certainly made a very important contribution to placing these issues right at the top of the political agenda. It is important to present a united British front to tackling the problems of Africa. We are supportive of the aims and objectives of the millennium development goals and we are committed to British development work overseas.

It is important to state that increasing aid budgets alone is not sufficient: Africa needs trade. To maximise the benefits of trade, international trade needs to be both freer and fairer. We understand that this cannot happen immediately, but we are committed to working towards genuinely free and fairer trade by supporting developing countries and less-developed economies through the transition period.

It is clear that international trade has lifted millions of people out of poverty, particularly in China and south-east Asia. Tragically, however, sub-Saharan Africa has not only been left behind, but its share of global trade has declined from 6 per cent. to just 2 per cent. in the past 20 years, despite significant levels of aid, particularly in recent years.

The economic benefits resulting from greater openness and freer trade are immense. Countries across the globe have benefited through trading, which has led to faster growth rates, cheaper imports, new technologies and stronger political ties, as well as increased security. Protection for developed countries at the expense of the developing world must come to an end. For every pound in aid that rich countries give to poor countries, the poor countries lose £2 through protectionist barriers. It is clear that opportunities for international development are being restricted by western protectionist policies. As the World Bank has said:

"Current trade restrictions are the biggest impediment to economic advancement and poverty reduction in the developing world".

This is a critical time for the UK to play a role, particularly as it takes over the presidencies of the G8 and the European Union. The Government have a duty to use their influence to promote freer and fairer trade in the developing world. The EU and US should allow poor countries tariff-free access to our markets for raw materials and added-value products, thereby ending tariff escalation.

The global marketplace is a highly uneven playing field. The following example has been used before by other hon. Members. The ACP cotton producers have liberalised and removed their subsidies and could easily compete with US cotton producers, but the protectionist policies exercised by the US mean that the ACP farmers are not competing with US farmers, but with the US Treasury. That is not acceptable. Burkina Faso, Mali, Benin and Chad have all suffered. This is neither free trade, nor fair trade and it is preventing many African countries from successfully developing and exporting good quality, efficiently produced products.

We all accept that the international trading agreements are immensely complex. As the hon. Member for Twickenham rightly said, it is essential that we have an international framework. However, there is concern regarding a number of aspects of the trading agreements. Economic partnership agreements have already been mentioned and there are issues with the current EPA negotiations. First, there is a lack of scrutiny over the negotiation. Secondly, the ACP groups will be moving from non-reciprocal preferential access to reciprocal trading agreements. Thirdly, in direct contrast to the WTO Doha development round, no commitment has been made on the consideration of an ACP country's development status. If the Minister has time, I would welcome his stating the Government's position on those three issues.

There are also concerns regarding the "Everything but Arms" agreements. The Minister will be aware that the utilisation of those agreements among least-developed countries has been very small—only 3 per cent.—the main reason being that many countries prefer the Cotonou agreement, because the EBA is non-contractual and offers less stability. Unfortunately, the stringent rules of origin within the EBA arrangements have deterred the ACP countries, as they are prevented from sourcing products from other ACP countries. I support the argument that the rules of origin have been set excessively tightly and should be relaxed to allow poorer countries to gain maximum benefit. It is also debateable whether the EBA agreement should require LDCs to provide reciprocal market access to the EU prior to graduation from LDC status.

Other hon. Members have rightly mentioned the common agricultural policy, which has encouraged over-production until recently, and continues to do so, distorts prices, imposes high tariffs on imports and subsidises exports. Over the past five years, EU export subsidies have amounted to a staggering £20 billion. Further reform of the CAP is essential. It has been estimated that food and farming in developing countries would increase by $7.5 billion per year, making a significant contribution to alleviating poverty, particularly in Africa. There is an argument that ACP countries should not have to open their markets to EU agricultural products until all the EU's trade-distorting subsidies have been removed. There must be a transition period before full reciprocity occurs in the agricultural sector and that should be linked to CAP reform.

Export dumping, as the hon. Member for Ogmore said, is one of the most damaging of all current distortions in world trade practices. Developing countries' agricultural sectors, which are vital for food security, rural livelihoods, poverty reduction and trade, are being crippled by the practice of major commodities being sold at well below the cost of production prices in world markets. EU consumers and taxpayers are forced to finance policies that damage developing countries. Oxfam recently calculated that EU wheat is exported at prices that are 34 per cent. below the cost of production. The price of skimmed milk powder is 50 per cent. and that of sugar 25 per cent. below the cost of production. I hope that the Minister will agree that the continuation of such trade policies is completely unacceptable. Would he outline the Government's position towards export dumping and tell us what steps the UK is taking to work with EU partners and the US to end that practice?

The Conservative party supports much of what the trade justice lobby has done in bringing fair trade to the top of the political agenda. Protectionist measures that shelter some EU and US farming products are not free and fair trade. The trade justice lobby believes that fair trade requires some protectionism on behalf of developing countries. However, as the hon. Member for Twickenham rightly pointed out, high levels of infant industry protection, including total bans on competing imports, particularly in the absence of offsetting incentives to exports, are extremely inefficient. That has been tried before. In the 1950s and 1960s in Latin America, local industries were protected behind tariff walls in a bid to make them more competitive. Unfortunately, they remained uncompetitive infant industries. The ruling elite merely raked off monopoly profits. The hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned India, which had high protectionist barriers. When the tariff barriers were removed, the Taiwanese, in particular, destroyed much of the heavy industry, especially the steel industry, that was protected in India.

The newly industrialised countries of Asia have tried a much more export-orientated approach that exploited foreign investment to boost local capacity and to compete internationally. The result is two decades of growth that have lifted many millions of people out of poverty. However, we must be aware that as countries move towards freer trade, they will not be able to make the transition overnight. It is our duty to support such countries during the transition period.

There are also serious concerns about the pace of liberalisation, particularly as it affects the fiscal situation of developing countries. If the ACP countries reduced or were forced to reduce their tariffs too fast, there would be significant problems for their revenues. The World Bank has estimated that the EU's tariff-free access to their markets will incur losses amounting to 1 per cent. of GDP and 10 per cent. of the Government revenue for sub-Saharan African countries. This must be closely monitored.

We must also recognise that much of the poverty across Africa is a result of economic mismanagement, misrule, corruption and the misguided ideology of certain African rulers. The failure of many African countries to establish good governance, the rule of law and economic stability has clearly contributed to poverty and suffering. To arrest that trend and lift populations out of poverty, African Governments must create the conditions in which a market economy can develop and thrive: the rule of law, stable Governments and the establishment of private property rights.

In conclusion, the level of poverty around the world is unacceptable. Nearly half the world's population live on less than a dollar a day. One billion people do not have access to clean water; 100 million children do not go to school and 40 million are suffering from HIV/AIDS. We have a moral duty to take action. Trade, both free and fair, is the best means of alleviating poverty in a sustainable way in the developing world.

I join others in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) on the quality of the case he made. At the risk of upsetting other hon. Members, I suspect that only a true Welshman could have managed such lyricism, passion and fluency. I agree with the first point that he made very strongly: as a Government we warmly welcome the Make Poverty History campaign, the Live 8 concerts and the campaigning of Bob Geldof and others. It is helpful to have so many groups and individuals campaigning hard not just in Britain but across Europe and the rest of the developed world.

As my hon. Friend and others rightly said, we recognise that there is a huge opportunity for the developed world to do something for Africa and to make a real difference this year. Britain has a particular responsibility as we will host the G8 summit and hold the presidency of the European Union. There is a real opportunity this year, not only because of the G8 summit, with Africa as one of its centrepiece agenda items, but because there will be a five-year review of the millennium development goals at the UN summit in September, and because the World Trade Organisation talks are taking place in December. The Government have made it clear that, for 2005, we want to prioritise Africa and to see more progress on aid, debt and trade.

I also welcome the contributions made by the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable), who in this debate is lurking on the Back Benches. I agree broadly with the thrust of what he said. The World Trade Organisation is an absolutely critical body, democratic in its structures. He was right to make the points that a rule-based trading system is crucial in protecting the interests of developing countries and that we must continue to work to support and develop its effectiveness.

If I had one slight quibble with the hon. Gentleman's broad analysis, it was on the issue of food security, where I believe that there is a case for protection of some products, although the question is: what products? I flag up to him and to other hon. Members that we are working with ActionAid and the Food and Agriculture Organisation to try to identify what products should be given that special product status.

I also welcome the contribution made by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North (Ann McKechin), and I take this opportunity to pay tribute to her campaigning work on debt relief, particularly during the last Parliament. I hope that a series of objectives in respect of debt relief will soon be achieved, including the 100 per cent. write-off of the poorest nations' debts to the World Bank and the African Development Bank. As she knows, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is engaged in talking about that issue and also about aid.

That brings me to the point about the US made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore and by other hon. Members. We will continue to have very active discussions with the Americans across a whole range of development issues between now and the end of 2005. It is crucial to get their agreement and support for development across that range of issues—not just on debt relief, which is attracting so much attention this week, but on aid. The announcement that President Bush made yesterday is welcome, but there is a series of other things that we want the US to make progress on, particularly on trade, and we will continue to talk to them in the run-up to Hong Kong.

I agree with the fundamental point made by all hon. Members that despite rapid globalisation and growth in trade over the past decade, Africa's share of world trade has more than halved. We should not continue to accept that situation. Oxfam estimates that a 1 per cent. increase in Africa's share of world trade would be worth five times as much as the continent's current share of aid and debt relief. There is therefore a huge prize to be won for those of us interested in development and helping Africa and in making progress in the current round of trade talks.

Although few would disagree that trade is an important engine for growth, we must also recognise that for that engine to push full steam ahead, there are a series of other obstacles, in addition to unfair trading rules, on which we need to try to make progress. That is related to the point about aid for trade made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore. The series of other obstacles that we need to work on may concern infrastructure—to which, I believe, the hon. Member for Twickenham alluded—or developing the capacity of Ministries of Trade, or access to capital for businesses to develop. Indeed, we are in discussions with our G8 partners and with the other international financial institutions on aid-for-trade support. Trade and development are global issues; they require a global response. The UK and the EU on their own can make a difference, but they are not the sole solution to the situation in which we find ourselves.

It is clear that the failure of the Cancun talks remains in the back of everyone's mind. None of us want a repeat in Hong Kong of what happened in Cancun. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North rightly made clear, several positive things emerged from Cancun, not least the clarity of the developing nations' voice in the process. The agreement on the trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights is also welcome.

Like my hon. Friend and other hon. Members, the Government also welcome the breakthrough last year on the terms of the July framework agreement, which paved the way for negotiations to continue. As she said, there is a long way to go before the aims of the Doha development round are realised, but we expect by the end of July to have the first draft of the package of measures for discussion at Hong Kong. Again, that is part of the process to build up the momentum that will be necessary if we are to achieve an effective and ambitious agreement.

Undoubtedly, agriculture is central to the trade talks and to securing a good outcome from the Doha development round. We are addressing the grave distortions in agricultural markets that prevent developing countries from trading their way out of poverty. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds) referred to cotton. In Benin, cotton accounts for some 85 per cent. of total exports and 20 per cent. of the national income, but its producers, who are very poor, must compete with heavily subsidised EU and US producers. Bearing in mind that, in 2001, the US gave more in assistance to its cotton farmers—$4 billion—than the entire gross domestic product of Benin, one gets some sense of just how unfairly the WTO rules are stacked against developing nations.

The EU has committed itself to abolishing all its export subsidies. We need to agree an end-date with the Americans and other developed countries during the WTO negotiations. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness and others asked how the Government were taking forward such negotiations. We are pressing in the discussions for the end-date to be 2010, as we made clear in our manifesto. We have not changed our position on that, and we continue to have discussions on that basis.

Let me deal with economic partnership agreements and try to reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North and other hon. Members that our position on them has not changed. The letter that the hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) referred to was from a particular EU official, albeit a senior official. I do not agree with his attempt to assess our motives in the position paper that we drew up in March. We are having a series of discussions with other EU nations to try to secure their support for the position that we have advocated. In talks that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have had with partners in Europe, we have pressed the case for our position on EPAs, and we will continue to do so. Indeed, at the end of this month, I shall be meeting counterparts at an ACP-EU ministerial meeting, and I hope to hear from them at first hand how negotiations are proceeding.

On the point of the hon. Member for St. Ives about alternatives to EPAs, the Government have funded some research on what alternatives might look like, and have made it available to those who are taking part in the negotiations so that they have the information to hand. The ACP negotiators whom I have met have indicated that they want the discussions around EPAs to continue at present—they are still very much in the early stages—but we shall keep in touch with them should they want further discussions with us about alternatives to EPAs.

The Government made very clear their views on forced liberalisation. We do not believe that policy choices should be forced on developing countries through aid and debt relief. We shall try to increase the transparency of our arrangements by publishing the conditions that we attach. I hope that that answers most of the points made by hon. Members.

I draw attention to this issue because of constituency reasons. Eight weeks ago, I was on a tube train on the Jubilee line in central London in the middle of a weekday afternoon when three young men who were probably 14, 15 or 16 years old got on to the train, carrying between them a large plastic bag containing stalks with leaves. They proceeded to spend the whole journey picking the leaves and chewing them. It was the first time that I had ever seen that on a tube train, and I wondered what the significance of it was. The three young men were clearly intoxicated and in their own world, taking part in something that was important to them.

The young men were Somali. During the recent election campaign, I had lots of discussions with members of my local Somali community. After that, I thought that it was important to raise this issue as early as possible in this Parliament. People in my Somali community in Ilford tell me that the consumption of khat—there are at least 40 different words for the substance in different languages—is a growing social and community problem. It is not just a problem for the Somali community, because it is not only Somalis who are chewing the leaves of this shrub. It is a wider problem, which could become serious unless the Government take some action to deal with it.

What is khat? It grows throughout the Arab peninsula, north-east Africa and other parts of the world. It is a shrub that grows 6 to 12 ft high and is known scientifically as Catha edulis. It goes by 40 different street names, including qat, kat, chat, gat, tohai, tschat and mirra. It has been grown interspersed with coffee in many countries and is very profitable for the producers. It has been suggested to me that in war-ravaged, divided Somalia, the production, sale and export of the plant are as valuable as the heroin poppy in parts of Afghanistan. That raises big questions about what will happen.

Chewed in moderation, as it has been for centuries, khat alleviates fatigue and reduces appetite. It can create among people a social environment and mild intoxication, and that is why, for centuries, men in Muslim societies in the middle east and Africa have often enjoyed chewing it. I am told that it has an effect similar to amphetamines, which are sold illegally and sometimes legally in many parts of the world. However, if it is chewed for long periods—several hours—it can result in manic behaviour, grandiose delusions, paranoia, hallucinations and other effects. It is also believed—and there are studies to back this up—that it can have carcinogenic effects on the mouth, that it increases the possibility of heart attacks, and that it has other effects, including very serious psychotic ones, on numbers of individuals.

Yet khat is perfectly legal in this country. There are no restrictions on its sale. One can walk through certain areas and find little shops that advertise its sale in the window. That is not the case in all parts of the world. It is regarded as a schedule 1 drug in the United States, and it is controlled and banned in several European countries, Canada and New Zealand. We must therefore ask why this country has not taken action against it up to now.

Some people would say that there are cultural and community questions and sensitivities to be considered. Yes, there are, but, as the Somaliland Forum says on its website:

"This drug is eating at the fabric of society at every level. It is an economic drain as well as a social ill that has a devastating effect on the nucleus of the society—the family. What once was considered leisure has now become a necessity, like food. Its use is spreading faster than AIDS because it is accepted by society as harmless, and even those who understand its harm do not strive to educate the public of its ills."

That is from a publication in Somaliland, the northern part of Somalia.

Another publication, The Somaliland Times, carried a very long article by Abdul Halim M. Mussa, entitled, "The Problems of Qat for Society and Health", on the front page of issue 59. The article details the damage that khat has done in Kenya, Ethiopia, Yemen, Djibouti and Somalia.

Another issue reports the discussions on a peace treaty in Somalia in 2004, and quotes one woman, Eng Rukia Osman Mahmoud, who was involved in the negotiations:

"Our men have become lazy over the years because of the widespread trade that forces them to just sit and enjoy the product. Our children have nothing to eat, let alone go to school, because their fathers cannot work".

She claims that

"about 75 per cent. of the eight million people in Somalia chew khat, with men and boys accounting for the largest percentage",

and concludes:

"Women and children have suffered for so long, and now that peace is in the air we have to look at ways of reconstructing the country in all aspects . . . This will have to involve everyone, including men, and may be more effective only if a ban has been imposed on the khat trade, because trading in this commodity poses a challenge to rebuilding efforts."

Clearly, the Somali community in this country has grown. There are also people here from Yemen and other countries in which khat is chewed and is prevalent in the culture and in society. These are difficult issues, but we usually have some control over substances that make young men in this country clearly seriously intoxicated during the day. We do not allow tobacco or alcohol to be sold to people under a certain age. We do not allow unrestricted access—in fact, we ban or strictly control access—to amphetamines, for example.

Although a few critics might say that we should, it is generally not acceptable in this country to argue for a deregulatory free-for-all in which anybody can buy and take anything that they like, regardless of the social and human costs, let alone the medical consequences for the individuals concerned and their families. Yet, khat is not controlled, and we must wonder why. People in this country can buy limitless quantities and chew the substance for hours without any control: no regulation, quality control, tax or other measures. Other countries have a different attitude.

The Government are aware of the problem, and there have been a number of parliamentary questions on the matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) asked a question in 2004 and received a written answer from the then Home Office Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), which stated:

"The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs keeps the situation in respect of all controlled drugs under review. At its meeting on 2 October 2003, the Advisory Council's sub-committee the Technical Committee considered the impact of Khat. The Committee concluded that further research needed to be carried out before any informed decisions could be made.

The Home Office is in the process of commissioning a piece of research into Khat use in the United Kingdom. We expect the research to be completed by the summer of 2005." —[Official Report, 30 March 2004; Vol. 419, c. 1347W.]

It is almost midsummer 2005, so where is the research? I want to know, so I have been doing some digging. I have been on the Home Office website and had help from the Library, and something very interesting has happened.

On 27 May, the Home Office website, under the heading "Diversity Research", listed a report published by Turning Point called "Khat use in Somali, Ethiopian and Yemeni communities in England: issues and solutions". The website said:

"This report was commissioned to explore khat use and treatment issues in England, and to make good practice recommendations. The report interviewed individuals and carried out focus groups in the communities concerned, and consulted a range of professional drug treatment specialists".

There was a button to download the report, and we tried, but the report was not there because it had not yet been published. I went online again last night, to see whether it had been published, but found that the passage had disappeared. I do not know why it was taken off the website, but that is strange.

Today, the Library helpfully sent me an e-mail that said that the parliamentary and briefing delivery unit of the Home Office had informed it that

"We intend to publish this report in the autumn."

I wonder whether the report is finished. I do not know the reason for the delay, and I wonder whether something is going on internally. Will the Minister explain what is happening and why there has suddenly been a memory hole? The report has disappeared, and I do not know why.

More seriously, when the report is published—I hope that it will be soon, in the autumn and not later in the year or next year—I hope that the Government will give serious consideration to all the growing scientific evidence. I refer them to an article on the BioMed Central website entitled "Khat use as risk factor for psychotic disorders: A cross-sectional and case-control study in Somalia". I refer them also to the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology in May 2005, and the article entitled "Khat chewing is a risk factor for acute myocardial infarction: a case-control study". There is lots of growing evidence about the damaging effects on health, and we have also heard evidence from the community. In the words of one of my constituents speaking about Khat yesterday,

"This is a menace. It should be banned. It is dangerous and ruins family life."

That Somali-British mother is aware of the issues and the damage that is being caused in our communities.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

No.

I believe strongly that the Government must now give serious consideration to the reports in their possession and to any forthcoming reports. The potential damage must be considered, because there is growing evidence of khat being exported. I have been studying the local press. A newspaper in Milton Keynes reported on 3 February that people from Milton Keynes had been arrested in the United States. It said:

"Travellers from Milton Keynes have been turned back at US airports after trying to smuggle in the drug qat . . .

It is understood armed American customs officers caught at least five "mules"—recruited in Milton Keynes—with the leafy narcotic in their luggage during the last 12 months."

People try to fly the drug across the world because its potency when fresh lasts only for about 48 hours.

It is illegal in the United States.

It is illegal in the United States, and I am glad that it is. If my hon. Friend wants his own debate on the subject he is entitled to ask Mr. Speaker for one, but I am not giving way at the moment, however many times he tries to interrupt me.

The Minister needs sufficient time to respond, so I will conclude with a plea that the Government have widespread consultation with Somali and other communities in this country and listen to the views of clinical psychologists, the medical profession and those who can see the damaging consequences of khat consumption in this country and internationally. There is growing evidence of those consequences and we must not be in the position of other countries taking action to deal with the problem when we have not.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mike Gapes) on securing this debate. Assiduous as he always is, he has brought his constituents' concerns to Parliament and I am delighted that he has had an early opportunity to raise those concerns. He may have known about the matter in detail for only a short period, but he has clearly become something of an expert already and I am sure that he will continue to make his views known in Parliament.

As my hon. Friend explained, khat is a leaf that is traditionally chewed, although it can be made into a tea. It is grown only in east Africa and the southern Arabian peninsula, mainly Yemen. The plant has been used for centuries in that region and has traditionally been used by some Muslims to enhance religious meetings dedicated to praying and reading the Koran. Khat gives the user a mild amphetamine-like euphoria and takes half an hour or so of chewing before taking effect. Users report feeling more alert and talkative, with increased energy levels. It is said to increase self-esteem and create a sensation of well-being.

Typically, in those communities where khat use is prevalent—primarily Somalia, but also Yemen and Ethiopia—the older males of the family chew the plant for some hours. That can be significantly disruptive to lifestyle and we know that khat use has associated physical health problems due to lack of sleep and food intake, related oral infections and, anecdotally, an increase in aggression levels. Mental health issues from longer-term use should also be considered.

Crucially, there are also wider social issues. Wives of habitual chewers report having effectively been made lone parents by their husbands' spells in khat dens. It is reported that teenage boys as young as 15—perhaps similar to the boys whom my hon. Friend saw on the tube—are chewing khat because it is the only way to communicate with their fathers. There are also suggestions that women are increasingly using khat, although that is said to be socially unacceptable and to take place in secret.

Evidence suggests that individuals using khat excessively are at an increased risk of losing their role in the community and becoming isolated. Prolonged daily use often means absence from family life, unemployment and social exclusion. There are also considerable social costs to the rest of the family in terms of poverty and sometimes, regrettably, domestic violence. It can also affect communities as a whole, leading to a lack of male role models and community cohesion, and increased exclusion from the wider community.

That raises important questions about what can be done. Treatment is similar to that for other stimulants. The National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse is leading the development of a range of service provisions for non-opiate drug misuse—including stimulants—and is encouraging the development of treatment in the context of assessed need. Drug action teams are expected to review the provision of services and ensure that they commission services that are appropriate and relevant to the communities that they serve. In theory, therefore, where a local primary care trust or a drug action team identifies a particular need on behalf of khat misusers, local commissioning should be able to address that.

However, the greatest impact may be social rather than physical. As I have already explained, khat use may result in the frequent absence of the man in the house from family life. As with other substance misuse, if the individual is a regular user, it is also likely that they may have difficulties securing employment or maintaining sustainable full-time employment. That often causes tremendous domestic tension—something that my hon. Friend referred to—especially when spending money on khat becomes an economic drain on the family's income. Heavy khat use can cause increased aggression in the individual, which I know my hon. Friend is also concerned about. Given that common family tension, regrettably, as I said before, the result is sometimes domestic violence.

I hope that I can reassure my hon. Friend that the Home Office keeps a close eye on the situation. He referred to the Home Office website and difficulties he had in finding some information that he had previously managed to locate. He was kind enough to alert me to that earlier and I reassure him that I have already set in train an investigation to find out precisely what happened. I assure him that by the end of this week the Home Office website will be fully updated with all the information that we have about this issue, including the ongoing studies and the Hansard transcript of this debate. I will certainly ensure that all the information that we have is freely available on the website.

As I said, the Home Office keeps a close eye on the patterns of khat misuse in this country. The Government have funded and supported two separate pieces of research by Turning Point and the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders into the impact of khat misuse. Those two reports will hopefully be published in the next few months and certainly by the end of the year—whether in the autumn or slightly earlier remains to be seen.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I am reluctant to give way because the tradition of the House is that that is done with the agreement of the Member who secured the debate and the Minister. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South was clearly not happy to accept an intervention, so although I often make interventions myself, I regret that on this occasion I do not feel that I ought to accept one. The Member who secured the Adjournment debate has to be happy about interventions and agree to them.

The work by Turning Point was commissioned specifically to map users' needs in terms of service provision. It will identify the treatment services currently provided, establish where there are gaps in service provision and consider examples of good practice—not just by drug agencies—in supporting khat users. The report will help the Home Office to address the concerns of the Somali community in respect of khat misuse as part of our wider diversity strategy. It will include a review of the availability of appropriate drug-prevention materials and information to raise awareness among practitioners and the community. Ultimately, the work should help local drug action teams and treatment services to develop good practice and support systems to deal with the real and current problems presented by khat misuse.

The NACRO research is a longer-term piece of work and will look specifically at the impact of khat use among Somali communities living in the UK. That follows up a study carried out by Paul Griffiths for the Home Office in 1998, which was called "Qat use in London: a study of qat use among a sample of Somalis living in London." That publication may be of interest to my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South.

The new study will examine the issue in more depth and in particular will investigate levels of khat use, changes in level of use and any associations with other types of substance misuse, the relationship between khat use and crack use by some Somali women, and any offending behaviour associated with khat use. Some members of the Somali community have suggested that the misuse of khat is symptomatic of the social isolation of Somalis in Britain. Since the bulk of the community began arriving 12 years ago, the population has roughly trebled in size but continues to be segregated, living in our inner city areas.

The community appears to be divided fairly evenly on whether khat should be a controlled substance. There are concerns about the lack of treatment for khat use and a lack of support for associated mental health problems, which we are now addressing by way of the research that I have mentioned already. However, there are also concerns about the underlying causes of khat misuse. For example, poor housing and overcrowding are said to be common among Somali families, making young people reluctant to go home and causing them to feel vulnerable.

There are higher levels of unemployment in the Somali community and there is a lack of recognition for professional and educational qualifications obtained in Somalia. We know that a disproportionately low number of Somali young people obtain the grades necessary to attend university, which can lead to low self-esteem and a perceived need to use stimulants as a form of escapism. Those issues will be covered by NACRO and Turning Point in their research, and we look forward to the publication of the relevant papers.

On the question of whether khat ought to be brought under the control of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, the Government look to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs for advice on whether to classify substances as controlled drugs. The ACMD last formally considered the misuse of khat in 1988 and advised that there was not sufficient evidence at that time of a social problem arising from its misuse in the United Kingdom to justify bringing the plant under the controls of the 1971 Act.

The minutes of the ACMD's technical committee meeting from 11 January 1988 stated that an international conference in Madagascar in 1983 first raised global concerns about khat. The minute went on to note that the ACMD had been advised that although the plant grew naturally in east Africa, it had been informed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew that it might be possible to grow the crop in greenhouse conditions and in the warmer climate of the south-west—for example, on the Isles of Scilly. I am pleased to say that domestic production has not become a reality, and I am sure that my hon. Friend is grateful for that.

As I said, the ACMD concluded in 1988 that khat misuse was not a problem in the UK and that therefore controls under the 1971 Act were not justified. I know that the ACMD has kept a watching brief over the issue of khat in more recent years. Before the general election, during consideration of the Drugs Bill, the Opposition tabled amendments to have khat classified as a class A drug. The then Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), resisted the move during the debate, but undertook to write to the ACMD to request a comprehensive study of khat, especially in the light of the research to which I have already referred. I am reliably informed that during its last meeting on 19 May, the ACMD formally established a khat working group to consider the matter and carry out that important work. I am sure that my hon. Friend looks forward to the further deliberations of the ACMD, and I promise to ensure that his concerns and a transcript of this debate are brought to the attention of the advisory council.

I am delighted that the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), will respond to this debate. I watched him on his first outing at Home Office Questions, and he behaved with considerable panache. He surprised me, because I asked him an unscheduled question about identity fraud, which he could not have expected. He not only answered the question, which is laudable in a Minister and a little surprising, but he knew that I had asked previous questions on the subject. I formed the impression there and then that this is a Minister who means to do business and who does his homework.

We all accept that the Minister has taken on a challenging role. I should like him today in so far as it is possible to help to solve a problem that relates to his role and that confronts me. I want him to provide an assurance that is fundamental to the debate about security and immigration. I recognise that it is not too easy for him to provide that particular assurance, but it is needed. It is especially important to those who want a balanced approach to such topics, and who are not, as some politicians appear to be, paranoid, xenophobic, in some cases racist, and alarmist.

I want the Minister to provide an assurance that gives real credibility to the Government's approach to such issues as immigration and security. It is the assurance that the rules about entering the country are kept and kept properly. We are all aware from our constituency work that people who want to abide by the rules and who have legitimate cause to be in the country or to enter the country often find it difficult to do so. It is therefore particularly annoying when some people appear to abuse or to get around the rules.

I suspect that it is less easy for the Minister to provide such an assurance when regional airports are considered. That belief has grown as a result of information that has reached me about my own regional airport, Liverpool John Lennon airport. It is my local airport, and I wish to see it prosper and thrive. It is typical of a new generation of regional airports. They are expanding, and there are more and more flights. Recent figures show how much some carriers flying to those airports are growing their business. The airport is typical of such regional airports, as it attracts largely the budget carriers, the no-frills airlines, rather than many scheduled flights. Owing to its dealing largely with non-scheduled flights, it is typical also because it does not have to pay the high levies paid by airports such as Heathrow, Gatwick and Birmingham for security, policing and all the other ramifications of being a major international airport. That is possibly where the problem starts.

I knew that people had come in through Liverpool airport, had been detained and had subsequently absconded, and I knew broadly what the causes were. The problem was caused by inadequate numbers of immigration staff to cope with the flow of business. Business can be quite hectic and often at quite problematic times such as the middle of night, when some of the no-frills airlines are happy to use airspace, and some of the scheduled airlines are not.

I knew that the problem stemmed in part from a lack of proper secure accommodation, and I knew also that there were poor arrangements for detaining people for reasons of immigration or security. I knew that the arrangements for removal were the subject of a private contract, which was itself the subject of certain negotiations, and that at times the contract or immigration activities had to be supplemented by special branch, which was not contracted to do so but had stepped into the breach.

I accepted that there were problems for the airport. There were problems for the police, who had to deal with people in the community who had no right to be there. There were problems for airline security, which in some cases would not know who such people properly were. There were also problems for the airport owners, who would prefer everyone to enter and leave the airport properly identified and registered, and for the carriers, who of course were providing the business. There were a number of people in play, and several reasons why sorting out such matters would be problematic.

Knowing that, I tabled some simple, straightforward questions to the Home Secretary, asking how many entrants to the country had arrived at John Lennon airport who had subsequently absconded. I asked some time ago, and I said that I wished to examine the figures for the past three years. I received the answer that information on the number of entrants at individual ports who had absconded or not reported back was available only by examining individual case files at a disproportionate cost. That led me to form the impression that the Home Office simply did not know.

I did not believe the Home Office—it was probably safer not to do so—but had I done so, I would have been disappointed that it could not provide information that I already had, at least in part. I knew that there were absconders from Liverpool airport; I knew that they included people from a range of nationalities, including people of Asian, Chinese and Nigerian extraction; and I knew that some of them had subsequently attracted the attention of special branch—not, I am glad to say, in connection with terrorist offences, which would have been critical, but in connection with people trafficking and the like.

By that stage, I was in possession of an e-mail from the chief immigration officer at Liverpool, which stated:

"The Immigration Officers working at JLA cannot, and should not, be held responsible for the high number of absconders we have there. They all work extremely well under adverse circumstances, often performing tasks outside their remit. The quality of casework is high—there are facilitators, imposters and holders of bogus documents arriving at this airport . . . Liverpool JLA is under-resourced in terms of staff and facilities and the staff are working under a great deal of pressure to maintain the integrity of the control. Indeed, the lack of detention facilities"—

this went on for some time, it being a critical problem—

"has meant that the control has been compromised on many occasions".

So, I already knew that. I also knew that there was good evidence of what one could call recurrent scams. One was of tourists from Brazil on magical mystery tours. Each group arrived at Liverpool JLA with the same travel agency. They were regarded with some suspicion, but owing to the prevailing circumstances at the airport, they had to be discharged. They normally stayed for one night in a hotel—one of the cheapest but not the cheapest—and the following day most of the tour party had gone, presumably to tour elsewhere, and the only person remaining was the courier or the travel operator's representative. That scam was repeated on more than one occasion. I have every expectation that some of those people are abroad in this country, no doubt clutching plausible-looking Portuguese identity documents.

Since raising the issue—I did not do so to be difficult, but in order to have the problem solved—I have been to the Home Office and spoken to those in charge of the airports, and I have been given assurances that new, more secure procedures will be put in place and that there will be a northern command. The airport people tell me that new systems will be developed that will make such problems a thing of the past. I am grateful for those assurances; I am pleased to see that new rigour.

The point is made—I accept that it is valid—that much of the security that we need and require is fairly covert. People are tracked on flights by others not wearing uniforms who work for the Home Office or an agency, with a view to ensuring that we all travel safely and that there are no highly undesirable customers on our flights. I accept that not all security is up front, but the problem has not gone entirely. Since I made all those points, there has been an industrial dispute at Liverpool, this time involving the airport security—those who control the airport grounds. People working for Securicor—I believe that that is the firm and apologise if it is not—have complained about the low rate of wages that they are paid for doing a critical job.

More embarrassingly, in the run-up to the general election, I was contacted by Mercury Press, which told me that the car park firm covering the vicinity of the airport was employing illegal immigrants. I did not discover that story myself. In other words, there were people walking around the airport car park of whose identity nobody could be truly certain. I accept the explanation that the airport gave me—some of those people should have been checked, and that the firm was checked and that its tender was by no means the lowest—but I remain to be convinced that we are entirely on top of the problem.

As a result of my interest in the area, I have received reports from other airports; I do not think that Liverpool is the only airport at which circumstances may be less than ideal. I have been told anecdotally of people wandering through places in Coventry airport where they ought not to be. I am reliably assured that in the past few weeks a Chinese woman arrived at John Lennon airport, refused to talk to anybody and presented no documents. She is now simply gone; we do not know where she is. I suspect that she is somewhere in the country, but she is not known by or identified to us. One can consider that case as a specific. One Chinese woman is not Osama bin Laden, but my point is that if the fact that that can happen is no secret to me it is certainly no secret to far more cunning people who run human trafficking or drugs into the country and have malevolent intentions.

I require an assurance that the problem is recognised and that there is an intention to address it seriously. Most informed opinion would say that people who wish to get into the country for no good reason would not go through the fearsome apparatus that we have set up in places such as Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester or Birmingham. They will use no-frills carriers and expanding airports. When things tighten up at Liverpool, they will move to other expanding airports. Blackpool is one airport that wishes to expand.

Immigration and security need to expand just as fast or the regional airport will become the Achilles heel of the system. That means that a number of things should happen, which most of those airports would recognise, as would most of the staff working at them. It means a review of funding for the security arrangements and immigration facilities. It means a review of staffing—basically, more people are required. One of the great problems in Liverpool was the shift pattern, which meant that an employee would have to leave somebody whom they had detained in order to deal with another flight coming in. I believe that that situation has been rectified; I sincerely hope that it has.

The situation at Liverpool could just as easily be replicated at Blackpool or at any other regional airport that wishes to expand three, four or five years down the line. We need better integration of security. One of the problems at Liverpool, where a number of organisations were involved with security in one way or another—car park security, airport security, immigration security, special branch, local police and a range of other people—and one of the anomalies of the immigration episode relating to the car park was that some of the people one expected to be informed and know about such situations were not informed by the local police. Sometimes one hand does not know what the other hand is doing.

Fundamentally, we need the problem to be taken seriously. One element requires significant resource commitment. When somebody is picked up as problematic, difficult and not having proper documentation—in other words, under suspicion—then, given that the person has committed an offence, there needs to be a capacity to progress rapidly to prosecution where possible. We need prosecution services to back up detention arrangements—if I may put it like that—so that the reputation of the airport and of England internationally is one of dealing forcefully with people who deliberately intend to breach arrangements.

I am talking not about asylum seekers, but about people who seek illegal entry into the country knowing that they are doing so. In Liverpool only a few weeks ago, there was a case of a Nigerian who arrived with a Belgian passport. We would all agree that Belgian passports are among those most commonly used by people who arrive with fraudulent intent. The said person was sent out of Liverpool and back to France, from where they had come. They were not prosecuted there and then in Liverpool, although perhaps they could not have been; I do not know the circumstances as precisely as I might. However, I do know that after they were sent back they reappeared a few days later with the same document at Stansted airport, and that there was the same outcome. Had that person been more forcefully addressed at one port of call, they would not have appeared at the other.

The last thing that I want to do is discourage the expansion of regional airports, which are huge economic drivers in many regions and can do a great deal for regeneration. I hope that John Lennon, Coventry and Blackpool airports do the business in their areas and become a basis for increased prosperity. However, it takes only one major incident to destroy all the good work and public relations of a good, thriving local airport. At any airport, the under-resourcing of the immigration—or any other—department, and inadequate contracts with private firms that are supposed to provide security, will ultimately undermine sound immigration policy and sound security.

I do not come here in a spirit of aggression or of trying to find difficulties, but with a problem that has, as it were, arrived on my desk and that I have endeavoured to solve. We ought not to mask that problem, but to address it. I look forward to the Minister's reply and hope that he will accept that we have a problem, although he may describe it differently. I hope that we can all join together in considering how it can be addressed and in believing, as I am sure we all do, that it ought to be addressed, and addressed fairly rapidly.

I thank the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) for his kind words at the beginning of the debate and for his assiduous work on this issue, particularly with respect to John Lennon airport. As he knows, I am a Greater Manchester Member of Parliament but, as a native of Liverpool and with a constituency that borders Merseyside, I find that John Lennon airport is local to me too. It is probably almost as close to the hon. Gentleman's constituency as it is to mine, and I use it regularly. As long as I am the Minister in this job, I can assure him that it will receive regular unannounced visits from me.

As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have been in this job for only a few weeks, but we have already exchanged words about identity fraud and theft across the Floor of the House, and today we are discussing improving even further our immigration controls. He shares many of my concerns about such issues. I see him as a Liberal Democrat who is perhaps ready to support identity cards. I hope that I am right in that assumption; we shall find out in a few weeks.

The hon. Gentleman asked for assurances on a number of issues and was right to do so. He said that the rules set are kept, and that reflects the integrity of the immigration system. Adequate levels of control at regional airports should be maintained, in which respect staffing and resources are appropriate. I shall come on to each of those issues.

I shall set out some background. There are 41 permanently staffed air and seaports of entry in the UK, approximately 350 smaller ports that receive fewer than 100,000 arrivals a year and a number of registered and unregistered airfields. At the smaller ports, immigration service resources are deployed from the permanently staffed ports to meet arriving traffic. In addition, powers provided under the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 are used to clear passengers—for example, with written notification to the carrier—when that is appropriate. Passengers subject to control are examined to determine whether they qualify for entry. That examination includes checks against the UK immigration service database.

The hon. Gentleman specifically referred to regional airports. The debate taps into the issue of regional airports in this country, which are flourishing, particularly given the growth of low-cost airlines. He will know that roughly 100 million people pass through UK ports each year. That figure is increasing rapidly, particularly at airports, because of the growth in low-cost carriers. Those services are focused on some of the smaller regional airports. That has been an extremely welcome development in boosting not only the regional but the sub-regional economy, particularly of Merseyside, as I think he recognised at the end of his remarks.

The success of John Lennon airport is playing a significant role in the wider revival and regeneration of Liverpool and Merseyside. The airport has seen a 29 per cent. increase in traffic levels, to 331,000 passengers in April 2005, compared with 256,000 during the same period of 2004—an increase of 75,000. The hon. Gentleman is therefore right to say that the airport's importance is increasing, and what I have described is also true of other airports.

The increase in traffic presents challenges. It means that the operation of the immigration service must be flexible to ensure robust, effective and efficient control, and I think I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we have that. I assure him and the Chamber that the immigration service has kept traffic flows under careful review across the regional airports of this country. We have responded with practical steps at regional airports to ensure the integrity of our immigration system. Indeed, complaints are reaching Ministers that the processes are too rigorous. I have already received a few letters from MPs saying that processes are too rigorous at some regional airports. People are perhaps not used to having to queue to have their passport swiped.

That process, introduced last year, is one way in which the Government are enhancing the security of the process at regional airports. There are other ways. The immigration service operates an intelligence-led approach to border control. All flights are risk-assessed in advance of arrival, and resources are deployed accordingly. Enhanced document checks were introduced on the EU control on 31 March 2004. That means that all documents are seen and handled and, if a risk is sufficiently high, checks are carried out against the immigration database by swiping all European economic area documents. That was not the case until recently. Those enhanced measures have had an impact on processing times, and some passengers now need to queue for a little longer at ports of entry, but we believe that that is a proportionate response in terms of securing our borders.

The immigration service is in the final stages of an internal restructuring process, also begun on 31 March 2004, which has separated border control and enforcement activities into discrete national directorates. As I think the hon. Gentleman acknowledged, those matters were previously handled together under a regional structure; now, the functions have been separated and there is a focused border directorate. That allows the two directorates to engage more effectively with their stakeholders and to target resources more efficiently, and it enables both border and enforcement staff to have a clearer focus on delivery throughout the country.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned staffing. About 500 new front-line staff are being recruited this year, some of whom will help to bring regional airports up to their staffing complement. Increases in passenger numbers are taken into account when determining a port's staffing complement and the associated financial bids to fund any additional posts. An external recruitment campaign is being conducted for Heathrow, with internal trawls for immigration officers at Birmingham, Bristol, Gatwick, Glasgow, Luton and Manchester completed, under way or due to commence.

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that, to reflect the increase in passenger traffic, Liverpool John Lennon airport has recently increased its staffing to 10 permanent immigration officers and one chief immigration officer. That is up from seven and no presence at CIO grade. In addition, 15 immigration officers are to be posted to Manchester to provide a more flexible capability to respond to the needs of other airports in the area, such as Liverpool. Similarly, 12 additional immigration officers are to be posted to Birmingham to provide additional cover at Coventry airport, which, like Liverpool, is seeing an increase in traffic. I think that the hon. Gentleman referred to that.

Within each command, the deputy director can flexibly deploy staff resources as priorities and risk assessments dictate. A ports modernisation project has been initiated to establish a template for a model office and to identify gaps and deficiencies in resources, facilities, equipment and accommodation at individual regional ports, although the hon. Gentleman has, on this issue, focused on Liverpool.

Much has already been done to improve the facilities at regional airports. The POISE IT system used in the Home Office is being introduced to regional airports that do not have that facility. I hope that that, in part, answers the hon. Gentleman's legitimate concerns about the quality of data being held and processed.

I am relieved to hear that, as one of the issues raised by staff in Liverpool was the inadequacy of IT provision. Such provision is obviously critical in tracking people from country to country. I would be grateful to the Minister if he could expand further on that point.

I can a little. The system will provide much better management of information on passenger flows through Liverpool, and it will be rolled out to the airport before the end of this year. It is a staged process, which is happening with other airports—Bristol, Coventry, Humberside, Leeds, Bradford, Prestwick and Newcastle—being the priorities. All other permanently staffed non-POISE enabled airports will have the system by 1 October 2005.

The duty to provide port facilities for the operation of immigration control is in section 25 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. That provision commenced in April 2003 and obliges the manager of a control port—a port where a control area has been designated under the Immigration Act 1971—to provide free of charge to the Secretary of State such facilities at the port as he may direct as being necessary.

Each port is unique, and a dialogue is maintained between the immigration managers and port control managers to provide, refurbish or extend facilities in line with the volume and nature of passenger traffic arriving at the location. Solutions may be devised and implemented during the project, which is targeted to complete work on 31 December 2005. Some work has already been undertaken, and more is ongoing, to improve the provision of services and service delivery at regional airports. For example, as the hon. Gentleman may know, the immigration service moved to new accommodation at Liverpool John Lennon airport in April, and that provided a larger immigration hall and new office facilities.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned absconders. A great deal of work is being done on that and is being put into detention capability at airports across the UK. The new escort and holding room contract, which came into effect on 1 May, provides both an enhanced response time to escorting requests and additional support for regional airports. Holding room cover has been extended to include provision for 24-hour cover at both Manchester and Ramsgate, and in addition arrangements are now being effected to extend contractual coverage to Liverpool, with a new temporary holding facility becoming operational from 1 July, which is in about three weeks.

To conclude, all these steps are contributing to significant progress in securing the UK's borders. Asylum applications fell from 8,770 in October 2002 to 4,225 in September 2003, a drop of 52 per cent. That success has continued; monthly applications have fallen a further 22 per cent. in the first quarter of 2005, compared with the first quarter of 2004, and are now down to the lowest monthly levels since March 1997. That has been achieved by deploying a wide range of measures, some of which I have outlined today, to strengthen our border controls both in the UK and abroad.

Having said that, I assure the hon. Gentleman that we are not complacent. I think that he wanted an assurance that we will continue to keep the problem under review and deploy resources where necessary. The Government have a significant number of steps under way to improve further the security of our borders, such as the e-borders scheme, which will further develop the technology used to monitor passenger flows into the country. Other procedures under way include a MATRA—a multi-agency and risk assessment group—at each airport. I assure him that Liverpool has such a team, bringing together all the diverse players in the airport environment to put security at the very heart of what is done. Liverpool now has such a team in operation, and we believe that it will continue to enhance the security there; issues raised can be addressed through that group.

I shall write to the hon. Gentleman with more detail. I congratulate him on securing this debate; it is an important subject and he has raised it assiduously. He and I, as north-west MPs, are as one in wanting the highest standards of security at our regional airports.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Five o'clock.