It is a pleasure to speak this morning about this particularly important issue. Few Members are present, but I hope that one or two of my colleagues will pop in in due course.

My former parliamentary colleague, Oona King, who is still my colleague in the Labour party, started the all-party group on the great lakes region and genocide prevention, and it has done a great deal of tremendous work. It is still a staffed group, and some of the staff are present. It is especially important to keep the group going, because we have good contacts with countries across central Africa, especially the great lakes region, and with people in those countries.

It is particularly timely that I have a chance to debate this issue this morning. It covers the whole of Africa and the developing world, although my interest and personal experience relate to central Africa, so I shall focus on that. The lessons can, however, be generalised and applied across the developing world. The United Kingdom holds the chairmanship of the G8 and will, in due course, hold the presidency of the European Union, so we are in a pivotal position and will be able to have an impact on events over the next few weeks.

There has been a great deal in the press about development issues in general, but I want to focus on education. I recently visited three schools in my constituency—St. Mungo's high school, Larbert high school and Stenhousemuir primary school—which were participating in the "Send My Friend to School" scheme, which is part of the Global Campaign for Education. Across the world, children and campaigners have made model friends, each of whom represents a child who is missing out on an education. Many of those children are in Africa and, of course, in central Africa.

The campaign is designed to enable school students in developed countries to make the link between their own education, which is, quite correctly, taken as a right, and the lives of the many children of their age in the developing world who have no access to education or who access it only for relatively few years and only for as long as their parents can afford to pay for it out of their meagre resources. On 6 July, at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, which borders my constituency, 1 million models made by schoolchildren and representing children who are missing out on an education will be presented to the leaders of the richest and most powerful nations on earth.

The "Send My Friend to School" scheme is, in effect, the children's element of the "Make Poverty History" campaign, which, as pretty much everyone in this country, including hermits, knows, will reach its climax between the "Make Poverty History" march in Edinburgh on 2 July and the concerts organised by Bob Geldof and others, which will be held on 6 July to coincide with the G8 meeting in Scotland.

The aims of the "Make Poverty History" campaign are worth restating because they come at a remarkable moment of opportunity and leadership for this country, which, as I said, will simultaneously hold the chairmanship of the G8 and the presidency of the EU. The campaign aims to drop the debt, to have more and better aid and to make trade fairer by removing unfair subsidies to producers in developing countries. If the UK can lead the world in delivering, it will enable developing countries to develop. Development implies hospitals and roads, a growing economy, with inward investment, and the rule of law and democratic governance. It also implies education for all, and that, more than any other area of experience, is the point of contact with the lives of children and older pupils and students in developed countries. That is why initiatives such as "Send My Friend to School" and the Global Campaign for Education are so important.

At this pivotal time in our national and international life, we should constantly re-stress that 100 million children have no access to education. Another 150 million cannot finish primary school; in some cases, they have just a few months of primary school. Those, of course, are rolling figures. Their impact is not only personal, bad though that is. The wider impact is that it is impossible for countries to move out of the cycle of poverty and non-development; they are not able to call in sufficient financial or human capital to run their schools. Without an education system to which all children have entitlement, there can be no justice for developing countries.

As a result of war, poverty and the collapse of states, education in the region has suffered hugely. In a region where more than 4.5 million people are thought to have died as a result of conflict and genocide, education is vital for two reasons—it can address the poverty and hunger that are one cause of conflict and it can neutralise ethnic and political divisions.

Education in the region has been hard hit by conflict, and in many parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo it has disappeared. Grass roots organisations have taken the lead in creating a local education structure, which shows that learning is valued, but the biggest problem, especially in the DRC, is the general collapse of the state, which affects everything from health to roads. According to some estimates, only a third of children attend primary school. Before the civil war began in the late 1990s, at the end of the Mobutu period, the figure was about two thirds, so there has been a substantial decline. The figures are similar in Burundi.

The education system was targeted in the Rwandan conflict of 10 years ago. Teachers and other educated people were singled out for assassination, and teachers were both victims and perpetrators of the genocide in state and, sadly, church schools. Schools were ransacked and destroyed, as was the ministry of education. Many teachers lost their lives. Little documentation or school supplies remain. Hundreds of thousands of households were left headed by children, who as a result did not receive an education. Although in theory education is free, fees and the cost of materials keep many children away from school. Having said that, the Government were quick to re-establish an education system after the genocide, and by 2000 the primary school enrolment rate was 97 per cent. for boys and 95 per cent. for girls. A quarter of men and just under two fifths of women are illiterate.

Access to education is an issue, especially for vulnerable groups. When money is tight, girls are often kept at home, although the figure of 97 per cent. is extremely good for the area, particularly since the reconstruction following the genocide and civil war. In the Congo, 4.6 million children are out of school, of whom 2.5 million are girls, and almost half of adult women are illiterate, compared with about a quarter of males. The gender issue clearly applies as strongly there as it does everywhere else.

Pygmies are another vulnerable group; they tend to be especially poor and find it harder to pay school fees. Pygmy children are subject to bullying from other ethnic groups. The times when families leave their settlements to go to the forest usually clash with the school calendar, so children are often left with relatives in the village. As a result, children miss vital training on how to live in the forest and use it sustainably. The education system in the Congo does not value the understanding that many Babongo or Batwa have of the forest; indeed it conflicts with their being able to pass on their deep understanding of forest use, and it undermines important cultural practices.

Before the genocide the Rwandan education system mirrored and reinforced ethnic divisions in the country, with ethnic and regional quotas. The current view seems to be that formal education in the great lakes region is not a major factor in causing conflict. However, there are problems. In Rwanda, under President Kagame, ethnic classifications have been abolished and discrimination banned, but history, an important subject, is still not generally taught. There have been no new textbooks since 1994, and—this might be a secondary challenge—no agreement on how to present the years of genocide, which will become more important as time passes.

In Burundi, there is a strong geographical imbalance in that southern and central provinces are much better provided for. That is the result of various factors, not least of which is the fact that every president from 1965 to 1993 came from the south. Army officers need at least a secondary education, and the army wields enormous power, so the imbalance has serious political implications. According to International Alert, the

"serious distortions in access to education . . . are one of the primary causes of the conflict"

in Burundi.

In a broader sense, education and training are a crucial part of practical measures to stabilise the region. The training and education of customs officials is seen as an important part of efforts to fight uncontrolled flows of arms and natural resources fuelling armed groups in areas such as the Kivus and Ituri. The training of the civil service and the new national army are vital to re-establish the state, to reduce corruption and the abuse of power and to bring some measure of development to the region.

In Rwanda, the education system is strong compared with that of Burundi and the Congo and pays its teachers relatively well. The Department for International Development, as the Minister might mention, has a substantial programme in Rwanda and is contributing to teachers' salaries by giving direct budget support. It might do the same in the DRC and Burundi in due course.

In the great lakes, and in the DRC especially, the education sector needs enormous support for materials, salaries, buildings and administration—the stuff of education in the United Kingdom, and which seem fairly prosaic, but there are almost no resources in many parts of the country. Indeed, there are literally no resources at all in parts that I visited, particularly at points further away from the main conurbation in Kinshasa and the east, and from the smaller conurbation, if we can call it a conurbation, around Goma.

Schools would attract many more children if they provided meals and were genuinely free. Education is enormously important if the region is to recover from the devastation of the past decade and is to avoid a repeat of past conflicts. The UK is in a strong position to help.

I know that the Minister will have several things to say about the many very good things that the UK Government are doing in conjunction with our European Union allies and other developed states, but I must tell him of my experiences in the Congo and the reason for my interest in the subject. I first became interested in the Congo on a visit there as part of the all-party group with colleagues from the Labour party and the main Opposition parties. We were shown around a series of educational and health assets in Kinshasa and Goma and at points some distance from Goma. When one visits these places, one has a particular idea of what words such as school, hospital or clinic might mean. In the Congo, however, they do not look much like schools or hospitals. We visited one hospital that was just a collection of huts. One hut had a bed in it and was described as a ward. A woman was dying in it, entirely unnecessarily. That experience branded me, but it was a crucial political lesson.

We visited several schools, which again in essence were collections of huts. Invariably, four or five children would be sitting on the floor. Some would have slates, if their parents could afford them, but others would not and would share or look on. Around the top of the huts—it was the same in each place that we visited—there might be four or five children in the classroom and 30 or 40 children peering through the gap between the walls and the roof. Those were the children who did not have access to any kind of education because their parents did not have the means to fund it. In good times, those parents had the agricultural wherewithal to exchange to pay teachers to teach their children, but quite frequently their children were withdrawn after a very short period.

Such visits—in this instance conducted under the auspices of the all-party group, but funded by organisations such as Save the Children, Christian Aid and the Tearfund—bring home the importance of tackling the whole issue of education and other aspects of infrastructure development in Africa.

The example of the Democratic Republic of the Congo helps us to understand the immensity of the human and technical problems facing people seeking to build a new infrastructure in an African country with much potential but very little material wealth. Until the early 1960s, the infrastructure of the DRC, which was then the Belgian Congo, began to develop. That period ended—this is relevant, at least historically—when Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was elected but murdered shortly thereafter. There were schools in the more developed areas, in Kinshasa, and there were universities too.

Following the death of Patrice Lumumba, we had many years of President Mobutu, who constructed a classical African dictatorship, whereby the natural mineral wealth of the country was looted to buy mansions in Brussels and elsewhere. Those of us who were thinking about spending ill-gotten gains—which none of us would have, of course—might not choose to buy a mansion in Brussels, so perhaps he had bad taste as well as a great deal of loot stashed away. Essentially, that was what this classical African dictatorship used its resources for, and certainly not for infrastructure or education. It was the epitome of the corrupt dictatorship, which led to so many people to hold the wrong-headed view today that African states are intrinsically incapable of achieving progress. That, of course, is so far from the truth.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo's own Parliament there is an all-party group that mirrors our group—the imaginatively named all-party group for the UK. Its members told me that, after several years of armed conflict and many years of mismanagement, the Congolese education system has deteriorated considerably. There is, however, some room for hope because there is a degree of stability under President Kabilla. Resources are extremely modest, and most of them come from outside the country. Only about 1 per cent. of people in the DRC have taxable employment, and most of them work for non-governmental organisations. There is a limited tax base and, outside the main cities, almost no funding for schools and education and hospitals.

School attendance has been weak According to my parliamentary colleagues in the Congo, almost half the children who are eligible do not attend school—about 48.3 per cent. About 4.5 million eligible children are at present outside the education system. Only 25 per cent. of children reach year 5. The figures are much worse for provinces directly affected by the civil war and, of course, for girls, where the gender element kicks in.

The Congolese Government at present allocate about only 1 per cent. of their budget to the building of school infrastructure, further weakening the imbalance between the needs of the people and the resources available. In order to improve school admissions and to increase the number of eligible children attending school, the focus needs to be on the rehabilitation of the school infrastructure. Funds are needed to build new schools to cope with the great demand among the Congolese people—reflected well across central Africa—for a decent education.

The emergence of a rehabilitation and reconstruction programme, which was put together with the international donor community, calls for the rehabilitation of 265 schools—about 25 schools per province. That would restore hope and contribute, with other social programmes, to improving the living conditions of Congolese children, but is clearly, ultimately, a drop in the ocean.

The university sector in the DRC is fairly modest in its operations but it has some capable and dedicated academics, working, as one can imagine, with incredibly meagre resources. After independence, the Congo had three universities. Lovanium university was built by the Catholic Church and the University of Kisingani by Protestant missionaries—historically there has been a heavy Church influence in the provision of higher education in the Congo. The only public tertiary education institution was the Université Officielle du Congo. The universities were essentially merged under Mobutu in 1971 for political reasons that are now somewhat opaque. They were run down, had no lights or running water and were not what we would describe as universities.

Since the end of the civil war and the beginnings of a degree of hope and reconstruction in the DRC, a modest amount of funds has been generated and directed towards higher education. However, one needs a higher education sector as one needs tertiary and vocational sectors in between primary and secondary education to ensure that countries such as the DRC are capable of developing talent and working on their infrastructure. Retaining their talent also requires funding to keep people employed in jobs so that as soon as they are trained they do not disappear abroad to earn more money in South Africa or the UK. That is an issue for the UK Government to address and I know that the Minister and other Departments—particularly the Department of Health—are aware of that.

Central Africa has often been passed over by the media because it does not hold much strategic interest for developed countries such as Britain. A great deal is being done by non-governmental organisations such as Save the Children, Christian Aid, the Tearfund and the Red Cross, which all have an impact on education, whether it be through the provision of water, the establishment of infrastructure or helping to fund teachers. As Britain chairs the G8 and serves—through the Government and the Prime Minister—as president of the European Union, we are in an unparalleled situation. The actions that we take now and over the next few weeks will have the most fundamental impact on the quality of life of people in countries across Africa and the developing world such as the DRC, Burundi and Rwanda.

I know that my hon. Friend the Minister will make some remarks about Government policy in some areas that I have mentioned—fundamentally, primary education. However, we must not forget what might be considered to be the more rarefied areas—the higher reaches of higher education—because they also matter in the development of the DRC, Rwanda and Burundi. I look forward to hearing what my hon. Friend the Minister has to say.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Falkirk (Mr. Joyce) for raising this debate on a topical and important issue. Like him, I recently visited a school in my constituency and was pleased to see the children preparing the cut-outs that the teacher will take up to Gleneagles. That is a visual way of emphasising the importance of universal primary education, something we tend to take for granted in this country but which, in many parts of Africa, people struggle and save to get.

I want to use my experience in this field. Until the election on 5 May I was a teacher in a school in Bradford that had a link with a school in Kenya, and I have the papers in front of me on the group of students who will, I hope, come to this country in a few weeks' time. I have also been involved in Uganda where I saw at close hand some of the work being done, particularly to develop primary education and, as the country grows, to address the need to expand secondary education and put in place systems of educational administration to allow the country to evolve.

I shall start with Kenya. I first got involved in Kenya back in 1992 when, as a member of my community, I was asked to help raise the funds to build a school in what was then part of the President of Kenya's constituency. Having got a container full of material from schools in Bradford, the container went missing and the material never got to the schools for which it was intended. That emphasises one of the issues that people face: corruption. Although the people in the schools wanted the materials, certain officials along the way were keen that the money went elsewhere. I therefore believe that systems of governance and control are key in terms of any funding and support that we develop for the future.

Thankfully, when Mwai Kibaki was elected a few years ago—I know that there are problems with his Government at the moment—one of the first things that his Government did was to reintroduce primary education. However, last year, when I took a group of students from Bradford to Kenya, I saw at first hand the effect of a blanket reintroduction of universal education without the necessary funding. The primary school that I visited, with which we have a link, had seen its roll grow by 60 per cent. There were more than 1,000 students in that school, and it had had an extra two teachers to cope with the influx. The only way in which the school was able to cope was by running the school in two shifts. Although it is good that children are getting primary education, they may not get the full quota, and there are still children in Mygat in the Rift valley who are not being educated. Again, the only way in which progress will be made is for there to be greater expansion of training of teachers and investment in buildings.

In Uganda, except in the north of the country, there has been a very long period of stable democratic government, although we will see what happens next year when the multi-party elections take place. That has enabled many schools to develop. I have visited several schools in Uganda, and have seen at close hand the work that they have done. I have also seen the work that the British Council has done. It has introduced initiatives such as working with the administration in Masindi to organise exchanges of education officers with officers in this country. That has gone a long way, not just to dealing with the issue of providing universal education, but to developing the systems that need to be put in place to support its structure. I hope that the Minister will be able to encourage the development of more schemes such as those. They have provided lasting links, which have enabled both groups of young people to move forward together, and helped to develop education for students both in Bradford and in Kenya and Uganda. The next few months provide an historic opportunity to build on that good will. I hope that the links and the experience that has developed over the past few years can be developed further.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (Mr. Joyce) on introducing the debate, and apologise for missing the first five minutes of his clear and important account. I have been to Democratic Republic of the Congo once, with Oona King, who was an excellent chair of the all-party group on the great lakes region and genocide prevention, and with my hon. Friend the Member for City of York (Hugh Bayley) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke). It is good to see some of the officers of the group present.

I want to ask my hon. Friend the Minister to think about one point in particular, which does not take us away from what my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk was talking about. As an educationist I found it moving to visit a couple of schools in Democratic Republic of the Congo where children were learning in the most difficult circumstances. There were huge numbers of them in small, dilapidated school rooms.

The most moving thing of all was to see peer education, in its widest definition, going on. Other children, who could not afford to go to school, would be standing about outside the school. When school finished, the children who had been would come out and do some teaching for those who did not have the opportunity. Sometimes the children outside would be from the same family as those who had been to school; families had to pay for schooling, and to decide which children would go there. What better example could there be of the way in which education can be passed on, by the very youngest?

Clearly, we want to ensure that all the children can attend school. The Minister will no doubt discuss the moneys that are to be provided in the aid budget to advance the school building programme.

My hon. Friend was right that my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk gave an excellent account of the state of the education system in the great lakes region, but does he agree that one area in which our Government can assist is teacher training? Many of the teachers in Democratic Republic of the Congo were lost in the conflict, and many have also died because of HIV and AIDS. There are teachers, but many are unqualified and have had no formal training. Accordingly the education is very basic. We can assist with both curriculum development and teacher training.

My hon. Friend has obviously read the speech that I have not written; that is exactly the point that I wanted to make, and I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk spent very long on that. The most important thing that we can do by way of aid provision to enhance education in places such as Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi is to bolster the teacher training framework. We can do that well by trying to match every teacher training institution in this country to Africa; not necessarily the great lakes region. I worked for 10 years in one of our great teacher training institutions; perhaps we could challenge the institutions to form a partnership, establish links and see how they might inform the teacher training that is already happening.

The saddest thing is that the best teachers are the ones who are taken from the classroom to train other teachers. Perhaps that is inevitable, but we cannot afford to let that happen in isolation. We need advances to be made on the framework, which we need to be built on to a considerable extent. Otherwise, sadly, the very children who need that education will lose out.

My institution, the university of the West of England, has links that I have tried to deepen and widen because that is something simple that we can do. It will not be enormously expensive; we are talking about a free exchange, in which we bring people over to this country and, more particularly, go over and help them to set up their structures. When I visited the Sudan, the obvious weakness was the insufficient structure to ensure that the education system was robust enough.

I hope that we can take something from this debate. Often, Adjournment debates are about Back Benchers just making our points and hoping that we receive a polite and helpful response from the Minister, but I am giving the Minister a direct challenge. We could write to every teacher training institution in this country and tell them to form a partnership with one of the African countries—perhaps, given the size of those countries, a region in an African country—and see how we can advance the teacher training framework. I look forward to seeing how that proposal goes down with the Minister.

I begin by warmly congratulating the hon. Member for Falkirk (Mr. Joyce), not only on securing a debate on an extremely important subject but on demonstrating his deep knowledge of it, as well as his passion and commitment to it. In the context of the debates in which a large number of countries will be engaged—at the G8 summit, the UN millennium council in September and the World Trade Organisation later in the year—getting fundamental issues such as improvements in the availability of education opportunities in countries in the great lakes region of Africa and other developing countries should be high on the agenda if we are to break through the cycle of deprivation and conflict that countries such as Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and others have experienced.

The hon. Member for Falkirk emphasised that those countries, particularly Rwanda and the Congo, have in the past decade been riven with conflict, genocide and war, and the poverty and displacement of people that they create. I understand that in the great lakes region more than 4.5 million people have been killed through genocidal violence in the past decade. As he said, a large number of children in the Congo and in other countries are not attending school. A great deal of emphasis must be placed on widening the education opportunities in those countries.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) spoke about his visits to Uganda and to Kenya and emphasised that his attempt to take aid our from a school in Bradford was a salutary experience; many others attempting to bring aid to developing countries have had similar experiences. There was a silver lining to the cloud, in that he said that he can see that structures can be built to ensure that aid, particularly for educational development, can be delivered. We want to ensure that that is delivered.

Similarly, the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) rightly emphasised the importance of making links with developing countries and of providing opportunities for teacher training so that their educational capacity can be developed in the way that he described. Perhaps, he would argue, that is the greatest contribution that we in the UK can make.

Looking at the wider picture, the conundrum that developed countries have to face is the extent to which we feel it appropriate to micro-manage the delivery of civil society in developing countries. Should we stand back, provide basic tools and ensure that we do not hold them back through our trading relationship and cripple them with debt, simply leaving those countries to find their own solutions? Is that not a better way of helping them out of their problems in education, health and other sectors if we want development in those countries?

It is difficult for countries to look at the microcosm of a particular school or sector in developing countries such as those in the great lakes region and to judge whether it is appropriate for the Department for International Development, for example, to engage in individual funding programmes for teachers in Rwandan schools. I think that judgment is right, but one has to watch and to take care that the aid and support given for funding teachers in Rwandan schools is not misused and treated as replacement funding for what the Government of Rwanda should be contributing themselves, but are using for other purposes. There must be an exit strategy in any such funding. The aim is not for the United Kingdom to continue to fund education in Rwanda for ever.

No doubt the Minister will comment on the Government decisions in his reply—it seems that he will have a reasonable time to do so—and on the Department's contribution now, and on what efforts it is making to ensure the development of the Government's capacity so that the Department can withdraw its support and direct it elsewhere in such a way that the systems do not then collapse.

The hon. Member for Falkirk raised the issue of tertiary education in the Congo. Reports and assessments of the capacity of tertiary education in Democratic Republic of the Congo show that a great deal of work needs to be undertaken in the tertiary sectors, not just in the primary and secondary sectors. When one considers the agricultural capacity of a country like the DRC, there is tremendous disappointment that the country is not currently training its future agronomists and undertaking sufficient research to be able to fulfil its capability.

The hon. Member for Falkirk is absolutely right; I should be interested to know what assessment the Minister and his Department have made of the need to support the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors in the great lakes region.

In preparing for the debate, I received a report from the Aegis Trust, which updated me on the arrangements for the Kigali memorial centre and other memorial centres in Rwanda, the purpose of which is to teach the children and other residents of Rwanda the lessons of the period of genocide. Most of the centres were developed 10 years after the genocide. The Department for International Development has provided Rwanda's Ministry of Education with capital funds and has helped the Aegis Trust to preserve some of the memorial sites, so that lessons will continue to be learned in the same way as lessons are learned, appropriately, about the holocaust in Europe.

Given the utmost importance and urgency of the need for young people to engage positively and to learn from the genocide, and given the respect that the Aegis Trust has established among the general community and the Rwandan Government, as well as the international recognition that the memorial sites are receiving, does the Minister agree that support from Her Majesty's Government for the ongoing education programmes at the genocide memorial centres would contribute significantly to the long-term promotion of peace and stability in a volatile region?

Clearly, one thing that we know from this debate and the experience of the genocide is that education programmes cannot be undertaken when people are running in fear for their lives. The only thing that they, and especially children, learn in those circumstances is fear, violence and the truisms of inhumanity if there is no protection. Clearly, every effort must be made to avoid the possibility of future conflict.

I understand that great efforts are being made in Rwanda to ensure that there is proper integration in schools and that lessons are learned from the fertile soils from which conflict grew in the education system itself in the early 1990s. I understand also that Rwanda's education system is strong compared with, for example, those of Burundi and the Congo. As I said, the teachers are paid relatively well, and DFID contributes significantly to teachers' salaries through direct budget support. The question is what assessment the Minister has made of the rod that the Department has made for its back by providing funding in Rwanda but not, for example, in the Congo and Burundi. Teachers from the DRC and Burundi are going to Rwanda, where they can be better paid. Is there a case for making a greater aid package available through direct budget support for paying teachers?

The education sector in the great lakes region and especially in the DRC needs enormous support in terms of materials, salaries, buildings and administration. If schools provided meals and they were genuinely free, they would attract a great deal more teachers. Education will be enormously important if the region is to recover from the devastation of the past decade and avoid a repetition of past conflicts. I am sure that the UK can continue to play a strong role in developing education in the region.

I add my congratulations to all hon. Members who have spoken and to the hon. Member for Falkirk (Mr. Joyce) on securing this important debate at this significant time, particularly as the United Kingdom holds the presidency of the European Union and the G8. The hon. Member for Falkirk spoke with great knowledge and experience of that part of Africa. He was absolutely right to highlight the role that Oona King has played in keeping such issues at the forefront of the political agenda. I have read that she may continue her interest in the area, either through the United Nations or some other body, and I hope that she will continue to work for the people of the great lakes region of Africa.

The hon. Member for Falkirk rightly highlighted the significance of education in developing many of Africa's economies and societies, and mentioned some of the visits that he and I made to local schools. Those visits are important, not only in forging links, mentioned by the hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen), but in trying to educate primary schoolchildren in the UK to make them understand that not everyone in the world benefits from the educational system that they do, or is as fortunate as they are, and that they should understand and do what they can to facilitate better education elsewhere in the world, particularly in that poor part of Africa.

The hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) made a brief but intriguing contribution. I hope that the Minister will respond in his winding-up speech; he has plenty of time to do so, which he will be delighted about. He was asked about bolstering the teacher training network, which would increase capacity, as the hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) stated. I should like to know whether the Minister has thought about that but also about increasing links between the tertiary and the further education sectors in the UK and its counterparts in Africa. Significant parts of the further education sector in the UK are keen to increase such links.

It is clear that education must be a priority in sub-Saharan Africa if the area's fortunes are to change. The Conservative party supports educational initiatives in the great lakes region, both through non-governmental organisations and direct budgetary support. The area suffers from tremendous geographical, political and economic challenges, on which both the Department for International Development and the international community need seriously to focus if we are to find a successful conclusion. Like the Government, we are committed to working towards the UN target of spending 0.7 per cent. of our national income on aid, facilitating projects and income streams on top of those that are being currently provided.

As well as our strong commitment to development assistance, our long-term objective is to ensure that developing countries graduate from dependency to functioning democracies and sustainable economies and societies. That can be achieved only if we help African countries to develop their education systems. The World Bank has said, quite rightly, that the most important key to development is education. Education is the cornerstone of an economically and socially prosperous society. Without a properly educated work force, it will be impossible for the sub-Saharan nations to reduce poverty, increase trade and ultimately see sustainable economic growth. Across the world, it is estimated that 115 million children do not go to school, and eight out of 10 of those live in sub-Saharan Africa or southern Asia. If we are to see an end to poverty and suffering in Africa, we must improve education.

The millennium development goals provide ambitious targets for the world to attain. Achieving universal primary education by 2015 will be challenging but Britain must continue to provide support for educational projects, especially in the great lakes region. Raising educational standards has beneficial side-effects and will contribute towards making the other millennium development goals more achievable. Higher standards of education may help to control the spread of disease, increase economic activity and encourage a more pluralistic and tolerant society. I welcome the progress made so far by nations that now offer free primary education. That is a fundamental step if we are to see a real step-change in the educational prospects of the population.

Ensuring that pupils stay on for a full course of schooling is clearly an even greater challenge. Unfortunately, none of the great lakes nations is close to providing a full course of primary schooling. Only 40 per cent. of children in Rwanda complete five or more years of education. The figure is 64 per cent. in Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi, but Tanzania has made significant progress. With great assistance from DFID, 1,925 primary schools have been built, more than 3,700 new teachers have been employed and, next year, every child in Tanzania should receive free primary school education.

Sadly, there remain severe gender disparities. Worldwide, more than 74 million girls are not enrolled in school; two thirds of the total number. The countries of the great lakes are no exception, with just 47 per cent. of primary school age girls attending school in Burundi and Democratic Republic of the Congo. For there to be gender equality in education, there need to be major cultural changes. That cannot happen overnight, but as 70 per cent. of the world's poor are female, it is vital that there be an improvement in quality education for girls. Cultural barriers often leave girls without legal, political or economic rights. High-quality education for girls is the first step toward redressing the balance.

Improved education for girls has long-term knock-on effects. Educated women tend to have fewer and healthier children, and those children tend to receive an education also. By having children later, women are often able to participate in economic activity. In Africa, children of mothers who received five years of primary education are 40 per cent. more likely to live beyond age five. That is a staggering statistic. The UN girls' education initiative will, we hope, start to redress the balance and bring an end to gender inequality.

The Conservatives recognise that DFID contributes in various areas and assists countries that have fallen behind, particularly in implementing the millennium development goals. Unfortunately, the education systems of the great lakes countries are characterised by limited access, hidden costs, poor quality and illness. I shall address all those issues, which need to be tackled simultaneously if we are to make a significant difference to education in the great lakes area.

First, I shall address the problem of limited access. Although primary education is now nominally free across the whole great lakes region, access remains far from universal. In countries such as Uganda, education facilities are mainly in urban areas, leaving those in remote villages, and particularly those in the fishing, nomadic and conflict-ridden areas, without access to education or teaching facilities. What does DFID propose to do to ensure that people in those difficult-to-reach areas can access education? What progress is being made toward that goal?

In countries in which conflict continues, such as the DRC, children are unable to go through areas of continuing violence to reach schools. The hon. Member for Falkirk gave some interesting statistics to demonstrate that the level of education has decreased since the conflict began in terms of the number and percentage of children going to school.

Even in areas in which education is provided, there is often overcrowding. In Kenya, teachers are regularly in charge of classes of 100 children. That has led to learning shifts, which have been criticised for overstretching teachers who often have to teach significant numbers of children in consecutive shifts, which must have a detrimental impact on the quality of education.

Of those children who enrol in school, the drop-out rate remains concerningly high, with one third of African children dropping out of school before they have acquired basic numeracy and literacy skills. For those who complete primary education and are willing to further their studies, there are few high-quality, low-cost secondary and tertiary education facilities. In a modern, globalising world, primary education is not sufficient to equip students with relevant skills such as IT, nutrition, hygiene and basic health care education.

Of those students who make it to tertiary education, a substantial proportion—some 20 per cent. in Uganda—leave their countries to follow a career abroad. Greater investment is needed to equip students with practical skills that will benefit their countries of origin by ensuring that they stay there and contribute economically and socially to their countries' development. We must work with countries and NGOs in specific regions to ensure that the brain drain is minimised.

UNESCO is trying to address the adult learning problem in Burundi, by focusing on adult literacy and technical and professional education. Some 260 adult literacy volunteers across the country have so far been trained. I very much hope that adult learning programmes will feature in other countries' education programmes. I would be interested to hear what DFID is doing to ensure that the education focus in the great lakes region is not just on the primary sector but on expanding the secondary and tertiary sectors.

Secondly, I want to mention the hidden costs. Despite the acknowledged steps that have been taken to provide free primary education, the evidence shows that it is rarely completely free, and parents are often forced to pay hidden costs, levied under such pseudonyms as development funds or contributions. In Uganda, which is often held up as an excellent example of free education provision, the costs can be as high as 33 per cent. of the discretionary household expenditure, and many parents are unable or unwilling to pay.

The third element is poor quality. The educational progress of the countries of the great lakes region is harmed by the poor quality of much of the teaching. There is no universal curriculum, so standards vary and providers change regularly, which results in repetition and a lack of continuity. In many cases, schools are failing to equip their students with the skills and knowledge that would benefit their countries in the long term. Education in Rwanda and Tanzania in particular has been criticised for a lack of focus on development priorities.

Fourthly, pandemic illnesses, such as malaria and HIV, contribute to the very high drop-out rates experienced in many schools, either due to pupils themselves becoming ill or because the death of a parent or guardian leaves the child as the primary provider for their siblings. That is why education must not be considered in isolation. Providing vaccines and medicines to the largest number of people in the widest possible area will not only improve the health of the population, but help to combat drop-out rates in education.

To reach the millennium development goals by 2015, it is estimated that Africa will need 3 million more teachers, but in 1999 alone in sub-Saharan Africa nearly 1 million children lost their teachers to AIDS/HIV alone. When that is coupled with a loss of teachers in conflict areas—particularly in Democratic Republic of Congo recently—it has a serious impact on countries' ability to provide the necessary education.

We are all familiar with the atrocities in Rwanda and during the civil war that ravaged the DRC, and many other Members referred to them. Divisions in the education system, particularly between ethnic and tribal groups, can lead to disproportionate levels of power accruing to a dominant or powerful group, allowing it effectively to take over the running of a country and keep power and wealth in a small group of hands. As we have seen, that sometimes has disastrous effects. I understand that there is evidence that that problem is being seriously addressed in Burundi, and I would welcome any comment from the Minister that DFID is monitoring the situation carefully and ensuring that any aid for education is channelled across the tribal and ethnic spectrum.

I have just a few specific further questions for the Minister. Do the Government favour channelling bilateral aid for education through national Governments or through non-governmental organisations and other channels? The hon. Member for St. Ives mentioned that, and there are dangers in creating dual streams of income, as the NGOs can pick the best people from the Government because they pay more, leaving the Government lacking people. What other countries are providing similar assistance for education in the great lakes area, and is the Department for International Development working closely with other donor countries to ensure that there is no duplication in provision? How often do the donor countries meet, and is there a difference among the countries in the great lakes area?

I welcome DFID's support for the fast-track initiative, but does the Minister believe that it will be successful in improving co-ordination of aid and African countries' national education plans? How does that fit with the disparate nature of the funding streams going to different organisations to provide education? Finally, what progress is DFID making towards funding the new scheme for higher education, with particular reference to the millennium development goals in sub-Saharan Africa on science and technology, which replaces the existing scheme that, I understand, ceases in March 2006?

I am aware of the important contribution that DFID, UNICEF and others have made to the education systems of sub-Saharan Africa. I believe that programmes such as the UN girls' education initiative and the fast-track initiative, which encourages partnerships between international agencies, Government and civil society, are the way forward if we are to bring high-quality, universal education to the children of the great lakes countries.

Sustainable and substantial improvements in the quality of life in sub-Saharan Africa depend on the continent being able to tackle the underlying causes of poverty, foremost among which are poor education standards. The education systems in the countries of the great lakes area urgently require further investment and support if they are to meet the MDGs of providing universal free primary education and gender equality in education. I hope that the Minister understands that he will get our full support if he continues to do what DFID is doing now.

I join others who have spoken in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (Mr. Joyce) on securing this debate. I am not at all surprised that he should want to pursue the subject in this way, having had the privilege of visiting his constituency and talking with many of his constituents who are interested in these issues at a meeting chaired by Pastor Michael Rollo at Larbert Pentecostal church. When my hon. Friend's constituents read today's Hansard, I am sure that they will be impressed that he has so skilfully articulated the concerns that they expressed to me at that meeting.

I enjoyed listening to the hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen), in what I think was his first contribution in the House in a debate on development. He was clearly drawing on a long-standing interest in the great lakes region, and I am sure that he will make many more contributions on such subjects.

I join my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk in paying tribute to our former colleague Oona King for the way she led the all-party group on the great lakes region and genocide prevention and for the way she championed education and, more generally, the need for more international assistance for the countries of the region. My hon. Friend clearly intends to continue and accelerate her work, and I pay tribute to all those involved in the all-party group.

I welcome the Global Campaign for Education's "Send My Friend to School" initiative, which is trying to present 1 million buddies—that, I think, is how they badged it—to the leaders of the G8 in Gleneagles on 6 July. If hon. Members will indulge me, I want to pay tribute to the children of Alexandra school in my constituency. They dragged me along to design a buddy, but it was very substandard in comparison with their own efforts, and they put me very much to shame. I pay tribute to their work and interest, as well as to the interest of their teachers, and I know that their buddies are winging their way to Gleneagles.

It is appropriate that my hon. Friend, whose constituency neighbours Gleneagles, should initiate the debate so close to such a key meeting. It is a key opportunity for the international community to begin the process of regalvanising political will and increasing momentum behind efforts to meet the millennium development goals, especially the key goal of providing access to universal primary education.

Let me touch briefly on the interesting suggestion made by the hon. Member for Rochdale about the need for more schools in the UK to link up with schools in Africa. Since 2000–01, we have been funding initiatives exactly like that through DFID's development awareness fund; for example, we are currently funding the global schools partnership, which is being implemented through the British Council. Some £3.2 million will be provided over three years to encourage precisely the types of link to which the hon. Gentleman referred. Similarly, we have funded 11 projects worth a total of £909 million to encourage knowledge and understanding of the prospects for development and of efforts to reduce poverty across the developing world, particularly in Africa. One project has sought to encourage regional educational links between schools in Oxfordshire and a region of Uganda. My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), whose constituency is not that far from Oxfordshire, may well be familiar with that initiative.

On the issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk raised in relation to the great lakes, it is clear that, as those countries begin to emerge from conflict, one of the best ways to consolidate the peace and the progress out of war, and to encourage sustainable development, is to try to give every child at least a basic education and the skills that they need to participate in the modern world. As my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk and the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds) rightly pointed out, every child has a fundamental right to education. More than that, we know that education can unlock progress towards all the other millennium development goals, be it reducing child mortality, improving maternal health or making progress in tackling HIV/AIDS.

We know that, sadly, progress to date has not been anything like good enough. Some 100 million children are still out of school and, as hon. Members made clear, 60 million of them are girls. We are not even on track to meet the first millennium development goal, to get equal numbers of girls and boys in school by the end of 2005. The last time I saw the figures, some 75 countries were off track for meeting that millennium development goal. Again, that is a powerful reminder of the importance of our G8 and EU presidencies, and the opportunity to regain the momentum behind the need to meet the MDGs.

There are many reasons to support and fund education, which hon. Members have touched on, and I should like to raise two in particular. The World Bank conducted a study in 17 African countries that showed a clear correlation between education and lower HIV/AIDS infection rates. Similarly, research has indicated that giving girls just one extra year of education increases their eventual wages by, on estimate, between 10 per cent. and 20 per cent.

In January this year my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development published our strategy on girls' education, announcing, in rough terms, a doubling of our funding for education. He also highlighted how we were working with Governments in Africa: first, by seeking to remove tuition fees and other barriers to accessing primary education; secondly, by tackling capacity and supporting Ministries of Education in providing leadership, helping to develop capacity and promoting girls' education in particular and education more generally; thirdly, by strengthening community and parental education; fourthly, by ensuring that appropriate measures are in place in all our partner countries to tackle abuse and violence towards girls and to prevent the spread of HIV; and fifthly, to provide the physical facilities, such as clean water and good sanitation facilities in schools, which are also essential if we are to attract people into them.

There is reason for hope, given the progress being made on education in the great lakes region. There are good stories to tell, particularly in Uganda and Rwanda, which are examples of what can be achieved when Governments recognise the importance of investing in education as part of the process of peace-building and reconstruction. Uganda introduced universal free primary education in 1997, although I recognise that "free" needs to be couched with the caveat to which the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness and others alluded. However, that removal of user fees has resulted in an increase in enrolment from some 3 million pupils in 1996 to some 7.6 million in 2003. Nearly as many girls as boys are now enrolled in primary schools in Uganda.

The key challenge in Uganda is to address the quality of education being provided in the context of such a large expansion at the primary school level and then, as hon. Members have mentioned, to start the same process of expansion in secondary education and at the higher and tertiary levels. The proportion of those who actually complete primary education is still disappointing, as are the numbers who satisfy the requirements for post-primary education.

One needs to acknowledge that the Ugandan Government have been the first to recognise those challenges, and have a strategy in place for improving the quality of and access to all levels of education. The UK Government's task is to get behind that strategy and support the Ugandan Government in tackling those challenges, and in the past 10 years, we have provided some £75 million in direct assistance to the education sector through projects and targeted budget support to do exactly that. We continue to support the expansion of the education sector through budget support. In addition, mindful of the continuing insecurity, particularly in the north, we are also supporting UNICEF by funding projects through NGOs that are seeking to improve access to basic services such as education.

The situation is similar in the DRC, where NGOs such as Oxfam, War Child, CARE, Save the Children, International Rescue Committee and Catholic Relief Services all play a crucial role in service delivery because of the disruption to Government services caused by conflict, of which we are all aware.

At the end of his remarks, the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness asked how we get the balance right between investment in education through budget support and investment in education through NGOs. One must recognise that, in the DRC and in conflicts generally where Government systems have broken down or have almost broken down, NGOs are often the best way to have an impact on education, but that in the long term one needs to build up Government systems. Budget support is often crucial if we are to expand access to education to reach all parts of a country, not only those parts in which NGOs can operate.

Rwanda, too, has made remarkable progress in rebuilding the education system since the genocide in 1994. Net enrolment in primary schools is 91 per cent., which is the highest percentage in the great lakes region. The Government have put in place a comprehensive education plan, and there is parity in enrolment for girls and boys at both primary and secondary levels. The Government of Rwanda are also committed to redressing the legacy of ethnic quotas, which were practised up to 1994.

Does my hon. Friend agree that although schools clearly have an educative function, they also have a fundamental function in strengthening social relations and making them more cohesive? To that end, the all-party group has a relationship with Professor Zeldin of Oxford university, and has produced a report on how that function might apply in Rwanda in particular. May I provide the Minister with a copy of that report at the end of the debate?

I would be delighted to read the report, and to discuss it further with my hon. Friend if he so wishes.

The point about Rwanda is similar to the point about Uganda; although good progress has been made, much still needs to be done. Rwanda also has similar problems with its levels of completion. Half the country's children do not complete their primary school education, and one in 10 do not enter education at all. The hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) made a point about the need to extend access to some of the more difficult rural areas as well as to the urban ones.

We also know that the educational performance of girls is worse than that of boys, and that sadly girls have disproportionately less access to Government-funded education. Similar issues about the capacity of education systems in Rwanda are still very current. There is a need to build capacity at national and district level and to reform and modernise the teacher training system and the curriculum.

DFID is working very working closely with the Government of Rwanda to try to tackle those issues. Last year, it disbursed two thirds of its £46 million aid portfolio for Rwanda through general budget support. Since 2001, we have also given £13 million directly to the education sector to provide textbooks, distance education teacher training, education on HIV/AIDS, ICT technician training, and a rural technology transfer project. On the gap between the levels of enrolment of girls and boys, we are working with the Rwandan Ministry of Education, focusing on how we can improve access to girls' education together.

With DFID support, the Rwandan Government removed all user fees on primary education in 2003 and are now examining ways to extend the removal of tuition fees to nine years of basic education. We have provided considerable technical assistance to the Ministry of Education, not least to improve the educational response in Rwanda to the challenge of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. As a result, many more teachers and education officials are aware of the crucial role that education can play in that regard.

I asked whether the Department has considered extending the direct aid for schools and teachers' pay in Rwanda to other African countries. Will the apparent success of the approach that the Department is taking in Rwanda be extended to other countries?

The hon. Gentleman has asked that question just as I am moving on to consider the DRC and some of the lessons from Rwanda for the DRC. Hon. Members will understand that it is not yet appropriate to invest in education in the DRC in the same ways as we do in Uganda and Rwanda, because it has only recently come out of a conflict situation. The priority in the DRC must be to continue to build a peaceful political process and to invest in the support necessary for elections, but we are beginning to consider how we can put more investment into basic services, such as education. As hon. Members said, the education sector in the DRC is chronically underfunded, but partnerships between Government, Churches, non-governmental organisations and local community organisations have managed to keep some schools going. The task is to build on what exists already, and we are working with UNICEF, the World Bank, the Belgians and other donors to explore ways in which we can move the education sector on.

The hon. Member for Rochdale asked about Kenya and rightly alluded to the difficulties that we face there because of corruption. We welcomed and continue to welcome the election of the new Government that took place in December 2002 and the peaceful transfer of power that followed. The removal of tuition fees in Kenya has heralded a significant increase in the number of pupils coming into schools, which we also welcome. However, there are clearly continuing challenges for President Kibaki's Government in tackling corruption, and we hope that they urgently accelerate efforts in that regard.

Hon. Members asked about the need to expand access to secondary education in the great lakes area. I accept that we need to continue to do that, albeit with the caveat that universal access to primary education must continue to be the top priority. Under our sector support and budget support programmes in the great lakes area, we have been supporting the Ugandan and Rwandan Governments in improving the management of equality at all levels of the education system, including the secondary system and tertiary and higher education. In Rwanda, we are providing technical assistance to the Ministry of Education to help it to develop a national council of higher education and a student financing agency—the prelude to developing the capacity that it needs to expand higher and secondary education.

I want to pick up on the role of regional institutions—the New Partnership for Africa's Development and the African Union—in helping to tackle problems of capacity and to improve access to teacher training, which my hon. Friends the Members for Stroud and for Glasgow, North (Ann McKechin) picked up on in interventions and which the Commission for Africa highlighted in the report that it published in March. We are responding to the work initiated by the AU and NEPAD. They have set up a high-level working group that will take into account existing capacity and seek to identify the many gaps on the ground in terms of access to higher education. It will then produce a fully costed sequenced work plan to begin the process of expanding access to higher education, perhaps through investment in human and physical capital through regional centres of excellence.

NEPAD is particularly keen to develop a regional teacher training programme, which I know will warm the heart of my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud. In particular, it could draw on information and communications technology for distance teacher training. NEPAD's target countries for that programme are Rwanda, the DRC and Burundi. We are working to ensure that such work is closely integrated with the Governments' own plans to expand access to higher education in those countries. A series of initiatives is already under way, not least through the commonwealth of learning and the Open university-led consortium on teacher education in sub-Saharan Africa. The key is to harness the efforts of all those programmes together. We are working closely with developing countries to that end. [Interruption.]

Order. Hon. Gentlemen who are entering the Chamber for the next debate must pay some attention to the one that is going on.

I want again to praise the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk in initiating the debate. It has been a very useful discussion of the key issues that affect education in the great lakes area, and the lessons for the wider African education system.

I appreciate the opportunity to introduce a subject that is important to me locally, but which is also timely and important nationally. I have been buried in paper in the past few days and pay tribute to the Association of Colleges, the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, the higher education teachers union, NATFHE, and others, for briefings that I have received.

The context of my remarks is the good news story that adult education in Britain is among the most developed in the industrial world. We rank No. 2 on education participation in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, with 3.5 million people involved in it. The participation rate is, it would appear, declining, but that is probably for demographic reasons and the growth in the number of very old people in the population. In general, however, Britain is well placed in this sector.

In the past few months, however, anxiety has been growing about the future of adult education. That has been most forcefully expressed by the Association of Colleges, which has estimated that participation could decline by 200,000 a year, at the start of the new academic year of 2005–06. It subsequently upped its estimate to 300,000. That has since been confirmed, I think, by the Learning and Skills Council, which is also working with estimates in that range. The Association of Colleges has talked of the state of affairs as a "funding shambles".

There are three headings under which I want to discuss the subject. The first is funding; the second, which overlaps with funding, is priorities; the third is governance, including centralisation, target setting and the role of the Learning and Skills Council. Before I start on those headings, however, I want to make a brief detour into local and personal details that explain why I take the subject seriously.

Richmond college, the adult education college in my area, is exceptionally highly regarded, even by the standards of the sector. It is a beacon college and a centre for excellence in many ways. The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry visited a few months ago to pay tribute to its work. Its enrolment has doubled in the past five years, but what will probably give the Minister the greatest pleasure is the fact that about 55 per cent. of its income is raised through fees. That is twice the national average and it is way out ahead of the pack in that respect.

What is important about the college is, however, not simply the numbers. It does two things, to which hon. Members would probably all, from their constituency experience, pay tribute. First, it provides a sense of community. My constituency has many transient young professionals who do not sink roots, but who find a sense of community in the college. There are many people who are socially isolated—who, because of handicaps and difficulties, have little social communication. The adult education college brings them together.

Secondly, the college also manages to help people to realise their potential in exceptional ways. I am sure that we all have relevant stories, but a few months ago I was asked to hand out the awards at the outstanding learners evening, and there were some remarkable examples. One young man with quite advanced cerebral palsy and little muscular control none the less succeeded at college in mastering advanced IT skills, and he now runs his own small private business. A Traveller from the local Traveller site was the first in generations to have learned to read, and she now reads bedtime stories to her grandchildren. A young black Londoner from south-east London, who could not get on an access course nearby, had to spend two hours a day travelling to south-west London to do an access course in drama. He was recruited to play the lead role of Othello in the annual play, and on the strength of the critics' reviews is now launched on a potentially successful drama career. Perhaps the most striking example is that of a man who travels for five hours a day from Essex to attend a college course in Dutch. He has never missed a class, yet he strives to do it against a background of learning difficulties and serious mental illness—difficulties that he has overcome.

That leads me to a personal point. I feel strongly about adult education because of what happened in my family. I guess that many people have a similar background. My mother, like many of her class and generation, left school at 14 to work in a York factory producing chocolates. She was an intelligent and creative woman, but her role in life was to produce children, bring up the family and to put three hot meals a day on the table for the men in the family.

Necessarily frustrated, she became what in modern parlance we would call a desperate housewife. The frustration drove her to mental illness—she spent a period of time in a mental hospital—and prolonged depression. She was saved, mentally, by adult education. She learned about poetry, art and philosophy, which were enormously difficult for people without rigorous intellectual training. It also required a lot of moral courage to operate in a community that disparaged such learning. I still remember the bitter arguments across the dinner table. My mother was berated for not doing anything "useful", such as learning to type, and was asked why she persisted with arty-farty subjects that were of no use or value.

I cite that personal example because it illustrates a fault line that runs through all debates about adult education. It was illuminated by the Minister in Education questions last week, although I do not know whether he intended to do that. He mustered all the withering scorn that he could to put down a Conservative question, saying that we should not waste our resources on what I think he called "Australian cake-making". It was not a terribly well chosen example because there is no such thing, but we all know what he meant. The Government have the idea that some subjects, such as plumbing, IT and operating machine tools, are useful, and that the leisure courses, such as Australian cake-making or flower arranging, which are populated mostly by middle-aged, middle-class women should, to the extent to which that form of education should be tolerated, be paid for in full.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that people in my constituency who develop hearing difficulties and who attend a lip-reading course now have to pay £186 for a course that used to be free, thus making it difficult for them to improve their way of life? Is he aware also that the learndirect centre in Wokingham is threatened with closure as a result of that policy, which will destroy many of the good opportunities to which he so rightly draws our attention?

Yes, the right hon. Gentleman is correct. British sign language—I think that that is what he refers to—is not an accredited course and it therefore falls on the wrong side of the rather arbitrary fault line that is drawn through education. As he is a former Conservative Minister, I should mention in passing that his party has been through the same process. In 1991, the Conservatives tried to distinguish between useful and non-useful adult education, but they got a bloody nose and wisely retreated from that course of action.

On the main argument, I shall speak first about resources and then move on to matters of priority. We could have one of those rather futile debates in which critics say that the Government are not spending enough and the Minister says that they are, but that does not take us very far. It would probably be more useful to establish exactly what is happening with resources, which is a more subtle problem.

The starting point is the spending review, which the Government use as their base and the Opposition parties used as their base case in presenting alternative spending projections during the election. In the spending review, the further education sector was allocated 7.5 per cent. annual cash growth, which was quite a generous settlement. It is a mixture of inflation, improved quality and additional tasks and obligations on the sector, with which nobody quibbled at the time. However, in the last year of the spending review—2005–06—that figure has been reduced to 4.3 per cent. No explanation has been given for that. There may be good reasons for it, but they have never been given.

To compound the problem, the Learning and Skills Council sent a letter on 2 June to all college principals explaining how that 4.3 per cent. growth is to be made up. Within the aggregate, there is a remarkably large 10.3 per cent. growth in funding for 16 to 18-year-olds, but a cash cut of 3 per cent. for adult education. Therein lies the source of the problem. It is not just that there is a cash cut of 3 per cent. The colleges estimated that they needed 5 per cent. growth to maintain constant provision, but, in effect, they have had a cut in funding of 8 per cent. for the current year. The sector expects, on the basis of information received from the Learning and Skills Council, that the position in 2006–07 could get a great deal worse.

Is my hon. Friend aware that in the colleges that place a large emphasis on adult education, such as Somerset college of art and technology in Taunton, the effect is more than £1 million a year in budget reductions, which is about 8 to 10 per cent. of the overall budget? Consequently, many courses are being discontinued, leaving students in my constituency and elsewhere stranded.

That is the case. In practice, the issue confronting college principals is whether they deal with that problem by, as my hon. Friend says, cutting courses or by raising fees. That is the issue on which we should focus.

I have no ideological problem with raising fees in certain circumstances. There may well be a good argument for it, and my local college makes substantial use of fee income, which is more than the national average. So it is not a fundamental ideological problem. However, the problem with proposing a substantial increase in fees at this juncture is that it is superimposed on a fee increase for which the Government had already budgeted. Even before the recent cuts were announced, they said that colleges should raise the source of fee income from 25 per cent. of their total to 27.5 per cent., which translates into a 15 per cent. increase in fees on Government-approved courses. Taken together with the cut in funding in cash terms, either a large number of courses will disappear or, as the Association of Colleges predicts, the fees for many non-priority courses, as they are regarded, will double or treble.

This is a serious issue, and I am tantalised by the problems described. More money is going in, yet we hear of courses disappearing. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is not just courses, but lecturers, that are disappearing? Some of them may be facing compulsory redundancy and the bosses in some of those institutes can get away with that.

Yes, and many of those members of staff who are going to lose their jobs have highly specialised and valuable skills that will be permanently lost. It will be difficult to bring them back in a few years' time, and the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about that.

A quick point. Given that so much of the budget is biased towards 16-plus education and schools have been more successful in getting people to stay on, does the hon. Gentleman accept that the effect is disproportionate because of the disparity of funding between schools and further education? The learning and skills councils, therefore, have had additional problems, which means that they end up cutting back even further.

The hon. Gentleman touches on a related issue, which is the unfairness—I think that is what he is talking about—of the funding gap between FE colleges and schools for the same age cohort. That is a valid point, but I am dealing with a somewhat different issue, which is the fees that would be paid for adults.

rose—

Perhaps I will press on and take the hon. Gentleman's intervention later.

The problem with a substantial increase in fees at this stage is that there would be two consequences. One is the substantial impact on people with disadvantages and on low incomes. A change that has been slipped through quietly and has not had adequate attention drawn to it is that a special stream of funding, which is available for child care and transport for people on very low incomes and with disadvantages, is being substantially cut—by 24 per cent.—simultaneously with the other provisions.

The other consequence is for the mainstream courses. Price elasticity being what it is, if there is a big price increase, demand will fall, lower volumes of people will apply, courses will close, fewer people will come into adult education and there will be less income for colleges. With less income, there is less funding to cross-subsidise the low-income and disadvantaged pupils.

We have an absurd position in my local adult college because of the Government's emphasis on 16 to 18-year-olds. The college authorities are chasing pupils from private schools, while disadvantaged learners are having to be turned away, because there is no prospect of funding them. Although I have no objection in principle to fee income, a substantial increase of the type envisaged will have all kinds of unintended and damaging consequences.

That leads on to the second issue that I want to raise, which is about priorities. The Government's job is, of course, to set priorities. I do not think that anyone would quibble with that. At first sight, what they have said about their priorities makes common sense. They said that, first of all, we need to concentrate on 16 to 18-year-olds. That is entirely legitimate. The problem is, whereas that may be a good generalisation about the needs of the national economy, in many parts of the country, that is not the relevant problem. Certainly in my part of London, most 16 to 18-year-olds already go into advanced studies. We do not have a large number of young people who are unemployed. So the priorities are different. Indeed, I would question the priority given by the Government nationally to that age group because it is, perhaps, excessive.

Labour market analysis has shown that two out of three new jobs created over the next 10 years will be for adults. We have a growing problem of people becoming redundant in their 50s, but who are expected to work to 70 so that they cover the deficits in their pension funds. They are going to have to work and to retrain. That is where the real demand will be.

NIACE makes a telling observation about the skewed priorities that are being introduced as a result of the emphasis on 16 to 18-year-old education. In many cases, the further education sector and adult education are being used to cover up for the failures within the school system. NIACE makes the point:

"The price of this distinction is that every extra young full-time student place is being paid for by approximately ten fewer . . . adult students."

That is an enormous distortion and moves in the opposite direction of what the economy demands.

The second basic priority that the Government have established, which again is superficially attractive, is the emphasis on skills, particularly level 2 skills training—that is, GCSE equivalent. That may well make sense at a national level, but the problem in adult education is that it introduces all kinds of unintended distortions. For example, in the area that I represent the main demand locally is for level 3, not level 2, training. That happens to be the nature of the local economy. The national prescription does not fit. That priority also leads to some absolutely absurd situations in relation to fee income.

Until now, in areas with low unemployment such as my constituency, employers—for example, in construction and catering—have been happy to finance level 2 skill training and pay fees for their students. Under the Government's ruling, however, they are not allowed to pay fees. Colleges are required to provide free education and training and are consequently losing £20 million of fee income simply because variations in conditions in different parts of the economy are not recognised.

For many people from deprived backgrounds, what is known as "full-fat" level 2 training is not the right approach. A lot of people on low incomes who have had a difficult experience in the labour market and who are trying to gain qualifications gradually—particularly women with young children—prefer small courses to level 2 training. They want to enter the system at level 1 or through pre-entry courses. Those courses are not covered by the Government's priorities so those people will have to pay fees. All kinds of entirely unintended but very damaging consequences flow from the priorities that the Government have set.

A distinction is often made between accreditation and non-accreditation. In the further education sector, some courses are regarded as accredited and therefore worthy of certification, but many are not. A great deal of research has been done, particularly by NIACE—one of my constituents, Karen Bhamra, produced a good report on the subject—on the enormous contribution that both vocational and non-vocational non-accredited courses make to adult education. The way in which the funding system is now skewed seriously undermines non-accredited adult education. Some of it is protected through local authority funding, but much is not. An awful lot of non-accredited adult education will be swept away and a large number of courses will disappear.

Finally, I want to address the system of governance of adult education. In the early 1990s, adult colleges were made independent. There were arguments for and against that, but I will not revisit them. Now, not only has local authority accountability been lost, but we have a stream of highly centralised and prescriptive set of rules governing the adult education sector. They stem partly from public service agreements and partly from ring-fenced funding. Local labour market conditions, local preferences and the make-up of the local population are simply not reflected in freedom of choice for local colleges. Whatever is said about the level of funding, why are local colleges not better able to set their priorities, rather than them being imposed centrally in circumstances in which they are often inapplicable?

Another element in governance is the role played by the learning and skills councils, which, as far as I can tell, are a lavishly financed administrative layer. I have never understood the roles that sub-regional learning and skills councils play. In my part of London, there is an entity called London South. Although it is enormously difficult to travel from one part of the area to another and that sub-regional entity is in no way related to either London or regional government, it sets our local priorities. I suggest, not at all flippantly, that if some of the £350 million a year of administrative costs of the Learning and Skills Council was trimmed, some of the funding gap in adult education would be addressed.

When the Government were first elected, it was acknowledged in their Green Paper "The Learning Age", introduced by the current Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, that a good start had been made at giving political backing to the concept of lifelong learning and that there was a proper understanding of the role that adult education performs. Partly as a result of legislation introduced in 2000, however, we have gone back to the idea that there is a utilitarian distinction between useful skills and frivolous leisure learning. That now underlies much of the Government's preoccupation with priorities.

It may be useful to read a comment that captures an enlightened approach to adult education that is in serious danger of being lost:

"We have a great tradition of learning in this country, including the great heritage of adult and community education which developed in the 19th century . . . We must build on this tradition to restore a culture of commitment to learning . . . not all learning should lead to awards . . . many adults, including large numbers of older and retired learners will want to pursue high quality and rigorous study for its own sake, and I expect provision to be made available to meet their needs."

Those comments were made by the then Secretary of State for Education and Employment, now the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and they strike me as an enlightened and far-sighted view of what lifelong learning means. A central reason for having this debate is that I fear that that vision is in danger of being completely lost.

rose—

Order. Before I call the next speaker, I should say that six hon. Members have written to me, hoping to catch my eye during the debate. As can be seen, the debate is well attended. I want to give the Conservative and Liberal spokesmen time towards the end of the debate, and I want to leave ample time for the Minister to answer the questions that have been posed. If hon. Members are concise, I will call as many as I can to speak.

I welcome the debate because we often see education only as higher education, degrees and top-up fees, and once we have finished debating them we discuss child care and so on. Adult learning has slipped back and been put bottom of the list.

I want to make one point to confirm much of what the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) said. The city college in Norwich faces funding cuts of £630,000 in its adult learning courses—an 11 per cent. cut—and a further £175,000 cut in additional learning support. Many adults attend the college, and I have been peppered with complaints from constituents—as has my right hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke)—about courses being withdrawn. Those include courses that are both oversubscribed and undersubscribed. There seems to be no rationale behind the decisions, although I accept that they are taken locally.

Millions of pounds are being taken out of the further education sector. About 50 courses will be withdrawn in Norwich, and, as I said in an intervention, full-time posts will disappear. Some 20 full-time teaching posts will be lost, and negotiations are proceeding about compulsory redundancies.

Additional funds are coming in for 16 to 18-year-olds, but they do so at the expense of many of the positive developments that the college has made in supporting adults. The college has succeeded in attracting more and more adults. Enthusiasm is growing both in a burgeoning city and across the county, which is struggling in rural areas to keep up with modern learning. Three centres of vocational excellence in outlying areas will be closed, and it is there where local people acquire the skills to help in the areas that we are trying to develop—energy programmes, for example. Our hospitals are also trying to train our technical staff to assess infections and identify bugs, but all those programmes will disappear. Once again, we will all be asked to go down the road to Cambridge, and if anyone thinks that getting from Norwich to Cambridge is easy, they should try it.

About 10,000 learners aged 19 or over are enrolled this year on courses in Norwich. They want the knowledge and skills to compete in the employment market, and they want simply to develop their education. I find it difficult to know what is a good course and a bad course. I also find it difficult to know what is a good lecture and a bad lecture, having had personal experience of both. Aromatherapy, hypnotism and all those things are suddenly becoming quite important in the medical field, although they were pooh-poohed at one time as being practised only by witches and warlocks. However, they are now the subject of serious educational programmes, so we should never sneer at the kinds of things that go on. Learning word-processing and to become computer-literate are essential skills for adults and young people alike; if they are taken away from adults, it will affect UK plc.

The hon. Gentleman's people should not try to come to Essex to get their courses, because in some areas of Essex there has been a 10 per cent. cut in adult learning centres.

The hon. Gentleman spoke about courses. Is he aware—knowing him, I am sure he is—that the Department of Health published a Green Paper in March 2005, which identified the fact that only about 25 per cent. of people working in social care had the relevant skills? Does he think that the Government's policy on adult education will cut a means by which people who are getting on in life can pick up new skills and, for instance, go into social care?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I agree with him. I fear that we may be missing a trick or two in terms of the talents of many people in our society—even in Essex, where I believe there may be some talent in odd places. We will miss a lot of tricks if we do not allow those adult education courses to continue.

I also want to say that I do not believe that fees are the answer to anything. Many hon. Members present will know of my antipathy to top-up fees and similar measures aimed at trying to sort out funding crises. Fees will never do that—they are certainly not solving the problem in universities, and they will not do so in this situation. If there is a 15 per cent. increase in fees every year, that is more likely to put people off. Many adults I know are already being put off by the increases that are proposed for the coming year.

In an area such as Norfolk—I speak in a very parochial way about this—where there is a low-income economy, more and more skills will be lost to our society. Demographic results have shown that the number of 16-year-olds will fall over the next few years. If, in the kind of yo-yo effect that seems to go on in education all the time, we switch back to adult education again, will adults really have the enthusiasm and the trust to take up some of those courses? I doubt that, if the process that seems to be going on now is allowed to continue.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) and I join him in congratulating the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) both on his choice of subject and on the very balanced and measured way in which he presented it. Like the hon. Member for Twickenham, I want to focus on the reduction in resources made available by the LSC, and particularly on courses for those with a learning disability.

The Government have often spoken about lifelong learning and about the needs of people with learning disabilities. Before coming to the debate this morning, I revisited the Labour party's election manifesto, "Britain Forward Not Back" to see whether there was any hint of a cut of 3 per cent. in adult education within a month of polling day. If there was, I am afraid that it escaped me, but I did read:

"Further education is vital to vocational lifelong learning. Achieving a transformation in FE colleges requires both our increased investment and serious reform."

However, as has occurred quite often, and as the hon. Member for Twickenham implied, the rhetoric is slightly ahead of the resources. I wonder whether Ministers realise what is now affordable locally and how that contrasts with their aspirations for that sector. I wonder whether they have really thought through the budget cuts for adult learning and tried to reconcile them with some of their ambitions.

Between 1999 and now the sector has done reasonably well, and I welcome that. However, the tap has now been turned off, as the LSC letter that the hon. Member for Twickenham read out made clear, and the budget reductions have been aggravated by the policy change to which he also referred, which has hit those with learning disabilities particularly hard. The policy change has removed the ability internally to accredit a course designed to meet the specific needs of people with learning disabilities. National funding is no longer available to locally accredited courses, and that double whammy has hit those with learning disabilities particularly hard. I am grateful to Andover and District Mencap for giving me a clear exposition of what is going on.

There is a dearth of externally accredited courses for people with learning disabilities for which colleges can claim funding. Does the Minister plan to address that problem and ensure proper external accreditation for the courses that we have discussed?

It simply is not realistic for colleges such as Cricklade to fund such courses with their resources. People with learning disabilities often cannot travel the long distances to Basingstoke, or Salisbury as it would be for my constituents, for accredited courses. The point is well made in paragraph 4.2 of Peter Little's "Strategic Review of LSC provision for Learners with Learning Difficulties and/or Disabilities (LLDD) across the post-16 sector—Interim Report", in which he says:

"There appears to be little or no incentive for local LSCs to encourage the development of local provision for learners with more complex learning difficulties . . . since a placement at a specialist college is funded from a nationally held budget".

The impact of that is to restrict learner choice and the development of accredited courses at local colleges.

The letter is explicit about resources. There is simply a budget cut of £55 million—backwards, not forwards, to paraphrase the Labour party's manifesto. Last week, The Times Educational Supplement forecast a reduction in post-19 places of 300,000.

The LSC letter expressed the hope that

"provision for Learners with Learning Difficulties and/or Disabilities remains a priority and the LSC's expectation is that the overall proportion of such learners will be maintained."

Sadly, that is not happening, and the cuts are beginning to bite, as we have heard.

I have a letter to one of my constituents from Cricklade college. It states:

"I write to inform you that unfortunately Cricklade College will not be able to run the Summer Scheme during the Summer Holidays. This is due to the funding restrictions imposed on non-accredited courses by the LSC".

I hope that the Minister will put into perspective the Government's policy not only on adult learning, but on adult learning and courses for people with learning disabilities, as they appear to be particularly vulnerable to the changes on which the debate has touched.

It is always good to follow the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) because he brings a degree of expertise, particularly on those who require special learning help.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) on securing the debate. I think we all recognise, in our constituencies, his description of the successes of people going through adult learning. We should all use the Chamber and other places to celebrate that.

I shall address the impact of the changes in my constituency, and shall refer to my wider knowledge of the education sector as a whole. Hon. Members have raised the issue of funding cuts and the fact that they are squeezing out some of the non-priority courses offered by further education and adult education colleges.

The Association of Colleges rightly recognises the 2.5 per cent. guaranteed increase that colleges are likely to get, but in our constituencies we are experiencing reductions in provision at the very time when the Government want the take-up of education and lifelong learning to increase.

The unintended consequences of the focus on level 2 provision has been identified as being part of the problem that colleges face. Ironically, it is having an impact on the very people whom the Government intend to help and support in offering free level-2 tuition. Some adults are unable to take up such tuition because they do not have the necessary skills to take part in the training, but colleges might be forced to reduce provision of training below level 2 as funding is reduced, which will, in turn, reduce the number of adults who will be able to take up the free level-2 tuition.

In some cases, the situation is worse, because only courses from a centrally approved list that lead to nationally specified qualifications are funded by the Learning and Skills Council and are therefore free to the learner. That means that some adults might end up doing a course that they do not need to do, which is clearly a waste of resources. Courses are also being cancelled because they are not centrally approved, even though they are designed to attract learners in the difficult, hard-to-reach areas of our communities. We should also all acknowledge that some adults are put off learning by the prospect of facing an examination at the end of their course.

Some colleges might respond to the funding change by over-supplying level 2 courses. That might not be relevant to local economic circumstances, as the hon. Member for Twickenham said. Indeed, some adults who are in work and who are able to afford level 2 provision—indeed, their employers might be able to pay for it—are now being funded free by the Government. The principal of Worcester college of technology estimates that it could suffer up to £100,000 a year in lost fee income as a result.

Above level 2, there is also a demand and supply issue surrounding the level 3 requirements of many employers in areas with a relatively strong economy, such as Worcester. In the wake of the recent crisis at MG Rover and the redundancies faced by many thousands of workers, it was found that many of them required level 3, not level 2 training. Colleges are not necessarily geared to respond to such a problem, and I would like the Minister to consider it.

Adult education has long been recognised as a route into more formal learning for many workers. The employee development programme operated by Ford Motor Company provided free adult learning for its staff so that they could participate in lifelong learning, even though it may not have had any direct relationship to the work that they did for Ford. The programme is used as an exemplar for many organisations around the country. My own employer, Jaguar, developed a very similar model; it did not offer free tuition for all courses, but if an employee could show that there was some relevance—even a tenuous link—to the world of work, the tuition was provided free. A basic bricklaying course might have equipped a worker only to build a barbecue in their back garden, but there was a link, in that, at some point, they might work for the building maintenance part of the company, rather than on the production line. So adult learning has always had an important link with more formal routes of learning.

There is a more general point, however, and I want to spend a little more time on it even though it has been raised. It relates to the funding gap for further education colleges generally. FE colleges deliver the vast majority of adult education courses. They were perilously poorly funded before 1997, and there was great hope and excitement in the sector when Labour was elected. In 2001, the promise was made to close the gap in funding between schools and FE colleges, but I am sad to say that progress seems to have stalled.

The gap is generally recognised to be about 10 per cent., but a report commissioned by the Learning and Skills Development Agency and presented to the Learning and Skills Council and the Department for Education and Skills in February showed a funding gap of between 12 and 14 per cent. Will the Minister confirm the findings of that LSDA report? Will he also ensure that it is made publicly available, perhaps by the end of the week, so that we can see what has happened to the funding gap?

Worcester city has a tertiary sector. No local school has its own sixth form. We are very well served by Worcester sixth form college and our FE college, Worcester college of technology, but with a funding gap of such proportions my constituents are losing out compared with those in other parts of the county of Worcestershire.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that cuts in adult education will have an impact on older people? Many over-60s derive incredible benefit, and enhance their quality of life, from courses such as those run by Barnet college in my constituency. The massive hikes in fees put such courses beyond the modest means of many pensioners.

I accept what the hon. Lady says. It also leads to the dilemma that I suspect that those who provide the resources face—that no assessment is made of the motivation or the needs of the learner in adult education. Those who are not particularly wealthy might suffer if they want to continue adult learning, whereas others who might be quite well off will be able to afford to pay a higher fee—for example, those who want to use adult education to improve their Spanish, which will be useful when they go to their second home when the weather here gets a bit inclement. No assessment is made of an adult's ability to pay the tuition fee, and that is a dilemma for those providing the resources. However, I do not want to address that matter now.

Schools benefit more than further education colleges in a number of other ways. For example, there is no funding reduction when a student leaves or drops out of a school course. Automatic funding increases when extra students are enrolled at a school but not at an FE college, even if it is the same course. Extra money is given to schools through the standards fund mechanism. Schools get reimbursement of VAT because no VAT is paid by education establishments for under 16-year-olds. It is estimated that further education colleges, but not schools, face irrecoverable VAT at hundreds of millions of pounds and various costs, such as transport, are picked up by local education authorities for schools but not for FE colleges. The cost of maintaining and financing buildings is lower in the school system compared with that in further education.

Will the Minister meet the stakeholders in the FE sector now to try to find a way through the problems that are being flagged up before they become greater problems for individuals in our constituencies? In the longer term, I fear for the benefit of the country as a whole.

Following what the hon. Gentleman said, which I agree with, will he persuade his hon. Friend the Minister to undertake a review of the impact in the academic year 2005–06 on post-19 adult education throughout the country? Will he also ask the Minister to consider ring-fencing post-19 adult education in 2006–07? Finally, will the hon. Gentleman comment on the impact of the job losses as a result of cuts in my constituency, which include the forward centre—

Order. The hon. Gentleman's intervention is rather long.

The Minister heard exactly what the hon. Gentleman had to say and I entirely agree with his contribution. I hope that the Minister will do what he asks. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have the opportunity to raise the issue of job losses later in the debate.

I hope that the Minister recognises that the debate is not a whinge but a genuine call to look closely at what is happening in local colleges. The Government have many friends in the further education sector who are drawn to them because of their sincere belief that education and lifelong learning can and do transform people's lives. They give many adults the second chance in life that they need, and I urge the Minister to listen to his friends on the issue.

rose—

Order. I will call the first spokesman at 11.50 am. If the next two speakers could limit themselves to two or three minutes each, there will be time for two more speakers.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) on securing such an important debate. I shall have to be extremely brief, so I should like to highlight the impact of the Government's priorities on my constituency, which is an area that the Minister might expect would benefit from prioritising training in level 2 and basic skills. The problem in my constituency is that the demand is for construction skills and basic skills, particularly English as a foreign language, which both require high-cost training.

The college of North West London in my constituency outperforms against all targets. There is a massive demand, but it cannot meet that demand. The high cost of such courses and the requirement on the college to provide them free of charge mean that it is penalised for meeting the Government's targets. The principal of the college must either turn away the students whom the Government have told the institution to recruit or risk its financial viability. That is a ridiculous situation, as I am sure the Minister will agree.

As in the constituency of the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Foster), the need in my constituency is for pre-entry or level 1 training. There is a huge waiting list for level 1 training, but there is now a push to move people through to level 2, which is not where the need is. That makes it difficult for the college to meet local need. Long-term unemployment in my constituency has jumped by 50 per cent. since 2001. The college is ready and able to train the young people and adults who need those skills so desperately, but because of Government priorities, it finds that it is unable to meet that need.

I thank the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) for her remarks and will make mine equally brief. Bridgwater college is one of the first seven beacon colleges and has won awards every year from the Association of Colleges. However, the Government asked it to take on a land-based college—Cannington college—which it did. As a result of that, this year Cannington college will have a cut in funding of more than £800,000, and that is just one of the colleges—Bridgwater college itself is losing 15 per cent. of its money for students. If that continues, the college will lose all its adult learning at that level, and the land-based education, which the Government want to promote, will disappear. The problem is an increase of 50 per cent. in basic skills training. The college also wants to increase provision for 16 to 18-year-olds by 7 per cent., but it cannot do it.

I plead with the Minister on behalf of Cannington college, which provides land-based education—which the Government want to continue—and Bridgwater college, which has achieved everything that the Government have set it, which has broken records and which I am delighted to support, to address land-based and apprenticeship training. Otherwise, places such as Bridgwater college will not do what they are meant to do, which, in my constituency, is to fill the gaps left by job losses in manufacturing. British Cellophane went last month and hundreds of jobs have gone. The colleges are trying to retrain people, but they do not have the money to do so.

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) on securing this debate, which is timely, as we all know from the representations that we have received from local colleges and local education authorities. Listening to the debate has led me to wonder what has happened to our vision of lifelong learning. Has the focus shifted too closely on to giving people, mostly younger adults, the skills required by employers?

The Liberal Democrats have supported the principles behind the Government's priority areas—basic skills, level 2 qualification for adults and increasing the number of 16 to 18-year-olds who stay in full-time education. It is indeed shameful that the fourth richest economy in the world should have one of the worst drop-out rates at 17 internationally, and too many adults without level 2 qualifications. However, many questions and issues have been raised today and I hope that the Minister will address them.

As recently as March 2005, the Government published a White Paper, "Skills: Getting on in business, getting on at work", which included the following words:

"While the economic and vocational purposes of skills are vital, they are in no sense the whole story. A cultured and civilised society must also sustain a wide range of opportunities to gain skills and acquire knowledge for their own intrinsic value. Investment in personal and community learning secures health and citizenship benefits for individuals and communities."

We have heard today about disadvantaged people who are losing out, and about people with disabilities. We must all have concerns about the size of the proposed fee increases and the cuts in adult education, while supporting the basic principles of the strategy. Its implementation has had perverse and unintended consequences.

Many of us agree that there is scope for increasing fees for some courses, but we are talking about fees going up by 50 per cent. The Government's policy is having knock-on effects and, with cost pressures, concessions have been removed. In theory, those on lower incomes will still be supported, but what about people on the margin? The size of the increases will be destabilising, because even where courses are still offered, take-up will be less than predicted, so even more classes may close. We have heard about the wider benefits for the elderly, but a lot is going to be lost. If there had been better planning, the increased fees could have been phased in. Some classes can be provided in other ways, but the middle class can access courses more easily through, for example, the university of the third age and learning clubs. The disadvantaged are losing out. The impact of increased fees will be a real loss to the process of widening participation, to which we are all committed.

Many of the courses that do not attract funding may be seen as gateway courses, and popular courses have been forced to close. An obvious gateway might be a level 1 course, which colleges are not required to offer free. More generally, participation in a non-accredited course that meets their interest gives people the confidence to know that they can learn, and can be the starting point for a lifelong engagement with learning. The entitlement to free learning to achieve a full level 2 qualification is unlikely to attract adults whose experience of formal learning has not been happy. I taught in further education for many years, and it is very rewarding to take on disaffected young people who have left school and go on to become prize students. However, the right attractions must be provided to make people want to take the first step through the door, or even open the door in the first place. I am concerned that the door is being closed, and we must think carefully about that.

The provision of basic skills courses is also important. The Association of Colleges points out that it is now a requirement that only courses from a centrally approved list leading to a nationally specified qualification can be funded. That means that some adults have to attend classes that they do not need, and others are put off by an exam. That is an important point. People need to take the first step into lifelong learning. Many of the basic skills courses that colleges run in their local communities, such as pre-entry literacy, are being cancelled because they are not on the centrally approved list. Many hon. Members have made that point about local courses.

I was privileged to meet this morning a group of students with learning disabilities who were written about in The Times Educational Supplement last week. It is possible that 60 disabled students with severe learning difficulties will lose places at their local college. It is now June and it is very late to start to secure other sources of funding. In my local area, there is a course for computing for the deaf, which may pick up funding from elsewhere, but time is a factor. Other losses include crèche facilities, making it difficult for parents to return to learning, and IT in the community. Women returning to work face another restriction; they may have a level 2 qualification, but they are still likely to need a course that is funded. We are also hearing about cuts in child care courses, although I believe that the Government are trying to recruit more child care workers.

Many colleges are in turmoil. My local college predicts cuts of £886,000 in funding for courses. How did we get into this situation? As my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham said, the increase in LSC funding for November 2004 was predicted to be 7.6 per cent., but by May, the average cash increase actually granted to the colleges was 4.3 per cent.

In a way, it is good that the budget pressures have occurred because there has been a high take-up of education among 16-to-18 year olds. That is the ironic price of success; the more successful we are in increasing 16-to-19 participation, the smaller the sum that remains for adult learning. We should congratulate the Government, but say, "Hang on, we need to re-evaluate." My local college was told that it was very lucky because it had £400,000 extra cash, but that amounted to only a 2.1 per cent. increase and did not even cover inflation or wage costs.

I shall summarise the four main issues that have been raised this morning. First, we should not lose sight of the fact that learning is valuable in its own right and is not simply a way of meeting targets. It is not necessarily the targets that are causing the problems, but we must ask whether the current focus is costing us too much in terms of a broader curriculum and ultimately all that enhances our quality of life.

Secondly, the 2005–06 funding, and the reactions to it—we have had a few this morning—is yet another wake-up call from the further education sector. We should remember that this is not the first such call. We must take heed of that warning and at least re-evaluate the situation before finalising the funding for 2006–07, because the situation looks very serious.

I note that the Association of Colleges believes that it is impossible to reconcile the current and planned position of colleges, which provide learning for 3.5 million adults and more than half the technical qualifications in the economy, with the aspiration of the national skills strategy, unless there is serious reconsideration of both the funding and the way in which it is implemented.

Thirdly—

Thirdly, and lastly.

Thirdly, given the focus on 16 and 18-year-olds, why are the Government not doing more to close the funding gap between colleges and sixth forms in schools?

Lastly, localism—supplying and providing for local needs—is all-important.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) on securing the debate and on setting out with great clarity the background to the problems that our further education colleges face today. Few people in Westminster Hall today would disagree with his analysis.

I want to follow up two of the hon. Gentleman's thoughts on the crisis. First, the Government's nationally set priorities do have an impact on local provision. That point was echoed by several hon. Members, who have had the same experience in their constituencies. How does one reconcile central Government priorities and the needs of the local community? The hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) talked about the need for basic skills courses in her area, but different parts of the country have different needs. The hon. Member for Twickenham referred to the high level of basic skills in his constituency, and the need for more advanced courses, which was not picked up in the Government's central priorities. This requires that local colleges have much greater autonomy, and a much greater ability to meet the needs of local communities and respond to the needs of businesses in their area.

The hon. Gentleman also referred to the role of the learning and skills councils, and commented on their funding. It was certainly the Conservative party's policy at the last general election to replace them with a simpler and more streamlined form of funding to free up some of the resources that they currently consume and to use them to improve access to skills education and training.

Before moving on to the main body of my remarks, I want to comment on the theme enunciated by my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young). He talked particularly about how the funding changes will affect provision for people with special educational needs and learning disabilities. I spent a great deal of time before the general election talking to head teachers of special schools. One concern that they raised was how their achievement with children with learning difficulties would be maintained if there was not suitable provision post 16 or post 19. If we are to maintain the excellent work that those schools have done, we must ensure that there is proper provision elsewhere in the area for those young people.

The background to the problems that we face in adult education has been well rehearsed. The Government have set the priorities for the further education sector through directions to the Learning and Skills Council, and the Minister, in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien) at Education questions on Thursday, set out the funding priorities.

One key area of Government focus is the need to improve basic skills—literacy and numeracy. I know from talking to principals of further education colleges that many young people with whom they are working to improve their basic skills have left school in the past three or four years. A great deal of resources have been spent in the further education sector on remedying some of the deficiencies in our school system. I hope that the introduction of qualifications relating to functional numeracy and literacy will mean that we have to spend less money on basic skills in future. As the hon. Member for Twickenham pointed out, the cost of training one full-time student in basic skills can result in 10 adult part-time learners missing out on the opportunity to increase their skills.

The commitment to providing a free level 2 course to people who need to develop that level of skills is worth while, but, as the hon. Members for Worcester (Mr. Foster) and for Brent, East highlighted, it reduces the money available in local colleges for basic skills and foundation courses, which create a pathway of progress to level 2 qualifications. Many people who return to learning, perhaps after time out of the work force looking after a family, need to gain confidence and build up their skills, and level 1 and foundation qualifications are an important way of gaining the confidence to move to a level 2 entitlement. Surely the closure of level 1 and foundation courses denies people access to level 2 courses.

The Government have ring-fenced a number of adult education courses offered by local education authorities, but those account for only one third of all the adult education that takes place. The Minister's response to my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury at last week's Education questions suggested to me—wrongly, I hope—that he was interested only in those courses that fitted in with the Government's priorities. His comments about Australian cake-decorating courses perhaps suggested that all adult education courses that did not fit in with the Government's priorities were really leisure courses. We need to recognise that that is not the case.

If we consider some of the courses that will be affected by the cuts, we see that not all adult education courses that could be affected by the funding problem are leisure courses. Bishop Auckland college in the north-east is looking to cut first-aid courses, health and safety courses, taster sessions and information technology courses. City college in the constituency of the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) is looking to cut non-certificated basic skills courses—courses that people value enormously. Peterborough regional college is looking to close a range of courses and a Trades Union Congress study centre. Surely that is not the intention of the Government's funding priorities. Surely it is not the impact that they hoped to achieve by changing the way in which FE sector money is focused.

It is easy to list courses that will close and talk about the number of job losses, but we need to focus on individual learners' experiences, and what they will miss out on as a consequence of the changes. There was an article in The Daily Telegraph last week in which Mr. Edward Broderick said that his life had been transformed by an evening class in computing—a course that may be affected by the funding crisis. It had enabled him to get to grips with literacy and numeracy, which he had been unable to do before. Mr. Broderick, a part-time student at Broxtowe college in Nottingham, said that

"working on the computer has helped my spelling and it will make my job more secure if I can use laptops like the younger ones".

So there will be a real impact on people. Colleges are working hard to rectify the problem, but, sadly, many will have to close courses. My college, Fareham college, is trying to move its adult leisure provision to the community schools so that it can protect some of the access courses that are so important if we are to get people with a higher level of skills into our work force.

The problem is the inter-reaction between the Government's priorities, which are set at a national level, the needs of local communities, and funding. The Government should consider the way in which their priorities affect local colleges and local people. If they do not re-evaluate the impact of those priorities, many people who see such courses as an opportunity to gain greater skills and learn things of value to them that will improve their lives will miss out simply because the Government have not thought through the impact at a local level.

I hope that the Minister will show that the Government have listened to what has been said about the impact on FE colleges, and will consider the way in which funding streams have worked and their effect at a local level.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) on securing the debate, which has given me the opportunity to talk about the Government's commitment to adult learning, not just in Twickenham, but across the country.

As we have heard from the excellent contributions, the issue is vital because it affects people's lives and livelihoods. We have heard moving stories about individual learners, about the benefits that they have received from skills training in adult education and the difference it has made to their lives. That is why we are here—I am delighted with the turnout—because we all know the significance of this area of policy on our constituents' lives.

As the Minister said, there is an exceptionally high turnout. Indeed, not every Member who would have liked to speak or intervene has had the opportunity to do so. Will the Minister receive a delegation from MPs who are particularly concerned about the FE sector, such as those who have worked in it, as I have, and those who have colleges in their constituencies, as there are points to be made that we have been unable to make this morning?

I was going to say that we have heard not only from MPs representing their constituents because of the value that adult education brings them, but from MPs who taught in FE colleges, such as my hon. Friends the Members for Worcester (Mr. Foster), for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) and for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor)—I hope that I have got that right. There is a wealth of experience here.

Because of the concerns raised here this morning, and elsewhere, the Minister for Higher Education and Lifelong Learning and I are arranging meetings to which Members of Parliament may come to receive more detailed briefings, in which individual cases can be addressed. One such session is due this week, and one the following week, but I need to confirm the dates with my hon. Friend. Those sessions will provide opportunities to discuss individual cases as well as what we are trying to achieve generally with the changes.

We are going through a period of transition. Having been appointed to this job after the election, my first pleasant task was to celebrate national adult learners week, with which many hon. Members present were directly involved. I visited the vocational skills world championships in Helsinki and saw the talents that our younger people are displaying as a result of the support for their skills in adult education, but the media did not make a lot of fuss about it. I think that we should make a great deal of fuss about the achievements of colleges and training providers in raising the necessary skill levels of young people so that they can compete on a world platform.

Will the Minister explain to the group of students from the creative connections course who are in the Room—many of them have profound and complex learning difficulties and disabilities—why the teachers who have nurtured them will no longer be able to teach them because they cannot reach the numeracy and literacy targets that are the focus of the Government's spending priorities?

Order. I let the hon. Lady finish her point, but I remind her that hon. Members should not refer to anyone in the Gallery.

The hon. Lady is an important champion of the needs of individuals in her constituency and I am sure that I will hear from her on the subject in the coming weeks. She has already spoken in the debate about her concerns.

Lifelong learning and employability are central to our five-year strategy for young people and learners. Our two skills White Papers set out our agenda for building the skills base that this country must have if we are to maintain a competitive edge over countries such as China and India, which are investing heavily in their work forces. As a country, we need our skills strategy to succeed.

I will not apologise for the successes we have already achieved since 1997: 862,000 adults have achieved literacy, numeracy and language qualifications since 2001, a point raised by the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban); 670,000 more adults a year now participate in further education than in 1997; and almost 18,000 employers and more than 130,000 employees have benefited from the employer training pilot, which the hon. Member for Twickenham mentioned. My remarks need to be seen in the context of the massive improvement in basic skills and in other levels, and a massive increase in participation throughout the country.

Notwithstanding the very real successes that the Minister mentioned, will he take note of the anxieties expressed by Dr. Blair, director of adult and community learning, City college, Brighton and Hove? The college has a success rate over the years of widening participation among adults, but it has had to raise its fees for adult and community learning courses from £2 an hour in 2003–04 to £4 an hour this year, and to cut the length of its courses from 30 weeks to 20 weeks to maintain the level of services that it wishes to provide for the local community. It cannot go on doing so for very much longer.

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I will return later to the point about the balance between fees and other sources of income for FE colleges, but I say to my hon. Friend that City college, Brighton and Hove, had a 5 per cent. increase in funding for this year, which is well above inflation. Nine out of 10 colleges have had an increase this year, seven out of 10 above inflation and five out of 10 above 5 per cent. Although I understand the concerns that hon. Members have raised in the debate, the funding increases for this year should be seen in the context of the achievements that have been made.

To return to the point made by the hon. Member for Twickenham, a transition is taking place, but substantial extra resources are going into further education. Since 1997 there has been a 25 per cent. increase in the level of resources going into that sector.

In addition to the financial penalties that the college in my constituency faces because it over-performs against Government targets on level 2 and basic skills, it also suffers from the Learning and Skills Council's rationalisation of the area uplift. The Minister mentioned that he might be willing to meet delegations of MPs to discuss particular constituency issues. Is he willing to meet me and the principal of my local college to discuss those two issues?

I want to make clear what I said earlier about meeting Members of Parliament. My colleague the Minister of State and I are arranging for sessions in the House for Members to come and see us, to talk about and to understand the concerns that they will be hearing about from their various training providers and FE colleges. That is the opportunity for the hon. Lady to make her point.

The hon. Lady's college, the North West London, has received an 8 per cent. increase in funding this year. Although I fully understand her concerns, I point out that an 8 per cent. increase is substantially above inflation. I understand the concerns about the transition from one funding priority to another—I will come on to that in a second—but I would like to point out that that funding increase is not insignificant.

My hon. Friend is rightly spending a great deal of time looking forward to how the sector can address the needs of the economy over the next 10 years. Is it not the case that more than two thirds of the vacancies that will be filled in that period will be filled by adults, not by new entrants to the work force? Of the 2015 work force, 80 per cent. will have already left school. Is it not important to get the balance right?

Yes. The big concern is to make sure that young people coming into our work force do not lack basic skills or the ability to get and sustain good jobs. One of the major reasons for prioritising 16 to 18-year-olds is the need to ensure that our problem of a lack of skills in the work force, and particularly of basic skills, is not worsened by more young people joining the work force without those skills. One of the core reasons for the priority is spelled out in our skills White Paper: it is to avoid the problem with adult skills, despite the successes that I described earlier, becoming worse.

The reasons for the adult skills priorities being basic skills, or skills for life, is to ensure that people have the fundamental skills that get them back into work and enable them to contribute actively as members of the community. Of course the level 2 skills, that is to say the equivalent of five good GCSEs, is the launch pad for an individual. To be honest, it is a failure of this and previous Governments that we have so many adults in the work force who do not have the equivalent of a level 2 qualification. We have to take action now. That is what these priorities are about, to ensure that we deal with that problem and raise the skill levels of our work force.

My hon. Friend referred to a number of colleges whose funding is being increased. I wonder if he has the figures for Redcar and Cleveland. That college also over-performs on level 2 skills and suffers penalties, but in an area of high deprivation it offers a wide range of courses, including what I hope he will turn to presently: first-rung courses, which are about widening participation, imperative in an area such as mine. That college, I understand, is going to suffer cuts. Perhaps my hon. Friend can help me explain to the principal why that is to happen.

In fact, that college will experience not an overall cut, but a 2 per cent. increase in its overall budget this year. The question is going to be about the balance of provision and where public funds or taxpayers' money should be directed as we make the transition that we are undergoing. Local negotiation about those priorities with the funding body, the Learning and Skills Council, will ensure that that transition is managed as successfully as possible.

Will the Minister give way?

I want to make just a little more progress, if I may, so that we can address some of the points that hon. Members have raised.

We need to give people the skills that employers want now. We need to give them the capacity to acquire the skills that they will need in the future. That means winning their commitment to learning and their confidence in the institutions that deliver it. Colleges and other providers have a key role to play in promoting learning—not just in marketing their own opportunities, but in selling the personal, social and wider health benefits of learning on which other hon. Members have remarked.

We want to ensure that learning is available and accessible to everyone, of all ages and backgrounds. All adults should have the opportunity to develop a foundation of basic skills and work skills to enable them to become more employable and more adaptable to the rapidly changing needs of the workplace. Many people in low-skilled, low-paid jobs have had bad learning experiences, and we want to help them to overcome that.

We need people who never thought learning was for them to become involved in learning. We need to motivate and support them—to help them to overcome their fears and lack of confidence. Of course, as hon. Members have remarked, we want to show individuals the pleasures of learning for its own sake, for personal fulfilment—indeed, for fun—without necessarily leading to a hard-edged target; we want them to know about learning not just by themselves but as parents, grandparents, carers and part of a community.

Importantly, we must be better at meeting the needs of employers. That point was made by the hon. Member for Fareham. That is a way of helping them to improve their productivity and competitiveness in a global economy. Employers need us to be more responsive and, to succeed in that, we must build strong and sustainable relationships between our policies and programmes in learning and skills and our industries and employers. The hon. Gentleman said that his party would abolish learning and skills councils. I remind him that local skills boards include employers who play an important role, ensuring that, as has emerged in many of this morning's speeches, the local dimension and local priorities are reflected in funding and courses provided locally to meet employers' needs.

In addition to that relationship we are establishing sector skills agreements in the 25 sector skills areas. The aim is to develop credible planning, funding and delivery models for what is needed in relation to the sector skills that we have identified. Of course, the national employer training programme, which the hon. Member for Twickenham mentioned, supports employers with a system of training needs and assessment and learning delivery that meets business needs. It is crucial. The new skills academies are a key element of our new skills supply infrastructure, attracting significant interest and investment from employers.

There are some challenging goals for us. We are determined that every young man and woman will be able to reach the age of 19 ready for skilled employment or higher education. We want to increase by 75 per cent. between 2002–03 and 2007–08 the numbers of people who successfully complete apprenticeships. We need every adult, wherever possible, to gain literacy, numeracy and language skills and the skills that they need for continued and successful employment. That is a crucial part of what we must achieve. We have set ourselves a deadline: by 2010 we want 2.25 million adults to achieve competence in literacy and numeracy. We want 3 million adults to achieve a first full level 2 qualification.

The hon. Gentleman raised questions about the rationale for the level 2 commitment. It is our belief, and research has shown, that level 2 qualifications are the platform from which a person can gain a better job and more skills. That is why we want to remove barriers that adults face in trying to achieve such qualifications, and it is the reason for the level 2 entitlement. That is important because the market does not provide low-skilled adults with the training needed to achieve that level 2 qualification. That is why we need to put public money into it. If the market would solve the problem for us, there would be no need to put in public money.

We know that the training in question brings productivity gains for the employer, as well as providing opportunities for individuals, who become less likely to be unemployed, low paid or unable to get work. They become more likely to be offered training. The hon. Gentleman mentioned level 3, and I remind him that two pilots are currently operating, with additional Government funding, and are investigating providing level 3 training for employers. The hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out that in some industries it is not level 2 but level 3 training that is needed; priorities vary between sectors and areas. We look forward to the results of the pilots.

Importantly, we need, with respect to adult education, to change attitudes towards an ageing society and perceptions of what that means, and to stimulate innovative ideas and technologies to transform older people's lives—a point made by the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers). As the population ages, older people will make an increasingly important contribution to the country's economic success. Employers will have a major role to play in enabling society to adjust effectively to a new balance of life. We have undertaken to safeguard a wide range of learning provision for personal and community development. However, that will need to keep evolving so that it continues to meet changing learner and community demands.

On funding, which has been a major topic this morning, our biggest challenge is to fund learner demand. As I have said, we are investing more than ever before in post-16 learning, and the figure for 2005–06 is £10 billion. That is a highly significant sum, which, I might add, includes significant capital investment in FE. I was in Highbury college, in Portsmouth, opening a fantastic new centre, which offers a wide range of skills, including construction skills. I was also in Northamptonshire to cut the sod for a new building because an FE college there is being rebuilt. So there is substantial capital as well as revenue investment, and, in 2008, it will increase to £350 million.

We are putting more money in, but resources are finite. Sometimes, difficult choices and decisions have to be made. It is only right that we should prioritise, so I make no apologies for doing what we are doing in making priorities. We cannot meet the demand for all learning, which is almost infinite, but it is right that the Government have responsibility for providing high-quality initial education and training for young people, which means a place in school or college or an apprenticeship for every young person.

It is also right that we make a major investment in adult learning, particularly for those in greatest need, so that public funding will focus on those adults without a sound foundation in skills, including basic skills. As we know, basic skills are not enough to sustain employability, which is why we are extending the entitlement to free tuition for a first full qualification at level 2.

I accept what the Minister says, but does he accept that there was a sense of disappointment and frustration that the 7.6 per cent. increase that the Secretary of State promised in the letter to the Learning and Skills Council in November was not delivered? That increase would have helped to achieve some of the priorities that the Minister mentioned. Does he accept that there is a real expectation on him to deliver an enhanced settlement for next year; otherwise, we shall have many more stories of cuts in the years ahead?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for having the confidence in me to deliver that and I shall do my best to respond positively in whatever way I can.

Although the Government are clear about the priorities—and I have emphasised them—we do not accept that other adult education courses have to close. We do not want to lose courses that people value and enjoy, which means that providers will need to change their approach to income from fees. We have debated fees this morning. Colleges currently choose to waive more than £100 million in fees at their own discretion so that they can offer free or reduced-cost provision. That may help to raise participation, but a decision not to collect potential income must, in time, inevitably impact on quality and financial stability. We believe that there is a strong case for those fees to be collected.

Hon. Members have raised many detailed points.

Will the Minister give way?

I have given way to my hon. and learned Friend already, and we have only two minutes left, so I hope that she will forgive me if I do not.

As the hon. Member for Twickenham mentioned, allocations of learner support funds are being made by local LSCs, in discussion with colleges. There is a learner support budget of £143 million, which includes £61 million for FE colleges and £31.5 million for child care facilities for 19-plus learners. I offer the hon. Gentleman those figures.

The right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) asked about Cricklade college, which I understand has had a 9 per cent. increase overall. I understand his concern about courses for learners with learning difficulties or disabilities, which was another point raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird). A review is under way at the moment and it includes representatives from a wide range of groups. That is a priority area, but we recognise that there are pressures on the growing budget. We shall look at Peter Little's review and work with other Departments to secure appropriate provision.

I have run out of time. I regret that I have not been able to answer all the points raised this morning. This has been an excellent debate. We face tremendous challenges, but the rewards are great.

I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to hold this debate on careless driving and the case of Gillian Curran. I stress from the outset that I genuinely wish that there was no need for such a debate. However, I regret to say that the law as it stands is wholly inadequate in relation to the matters that I intend to raise.

In the course of my speech, I shall describe in some detail a tragedy of the utmost gravity for a family in my constituency. On 15 December 2003, one of my constituents, Gillian Curran, aged 24, from Coatbridge, was travelling home from work and, while in her stationary car at the end of a tailback, was hit from behind by another vehicle. Gillian suffered head injuries and was trapped in her car for 45 minutes after the crash. She died later in hospital.

From that moment, the lives of Gillian's loving parents, Patrick and Sandra, and her devoted sister, Nicola, have immeasurably changed for ever. Without warning, they lost a beautiful, bright, good-humoured and delightful daughter and sister, who had everything to live for. Everyone who knew Gillian would readily agree that she possessed a tremendous warmth coupled with an immense spirit of vitality for life. A young life—Gillian's life—was cut short far too soon.

How do we begin to appreciate the despair, devastation and depression that that family have suffered since the tragedy of Gillian's death? How Parliament recognises the life of Gillian Curran will be tested in my representations.

There was a continuous outpouring of grief from the entire community of Kirkwood, where Gillian lived and was brought up. Indeed, one family felt so strongly about the lack of justice that they took the time to write to the Glasgow Evening Times. Mr. and Mrs. Paul McLaughlan said in their letter:

"Following the tragic death of Gillian Curran, my family and I feel that the law on careless driving should be changed. The courts treat careless driving as a minor offence. It is no minor offence if through careless driving an innocent person loses their life. We think a new law, with much stiffer sentences, should be introduced to cover death by careless driving. In fact we're amazed such a law does not already exist."

They concluded their letter by saying:

"A six-month ban and a £500 fine is hardly a suitable sanction when a young woman has lost her life."

That reaction encapsulated the depth of feeling that was evident throughout the community. Parliament cannot ignore such strong feelings of injustice among people who have no axe to grind other than to see justice done.

As hon. Members will recall, Mr. and Mrs. Curran and Nicola requested that I present a petition—containing no fewer than 11,000 signatures—on the Floor of the House, calling for a change in the law.

Before I turn specifically to the law I want to set out the clear demands of my constituents. The aim of Gillian Curran's family is to bring pressure to bear on Parliament to take a long, hard look at the inadequate penalties being handed down to those found guilty of motoring offences, and particularly of careless driving that results in death. The family firmly believe that if drivers knew that there were stiffer punishments for various driving offences, they would think twice before taking risks. At present, there is no offence between that of driving without due care and attention and that of causing death by dangerous driving. I therefore believe that we need a charge of causing death by careless driving, or something similar. I will develop that theme later.

I want also to discuss the law, but it would be remiss of me not to pay tribute to Isabel Brydie and Margaret Dekker, who are leading figures of the campaign in Scotland called SCID—the Scottish campaign against irresponsible drivers. Both Isabel and Margaret have lost members of their family in circumstances similar to those of Patrick and Sandra Curran. I know that Mr. and Mrs. Curran would like me to put on record their thanks to that organisation, which has been a tremendous source of considerable strength, support and advice throughout their horrendous ordeal.

There is no doubt that the driver of the vehicle that careered into Gillian's car was travelling at speed. The case was heard at Hamilton sheriff courts. Paul Kearney, prosecuting, said:

"Police officers who examined the scene found the accused would have had a clear view of the stationary cars from 400 metres away from the point of the collision . . . The evidence suggests the accused failed to pay proper attention to the road . . . Expert officers who investigated the crash were not able to establish the speed of the accused's car, but there was no evidence to suggest any braking."

Speeding is a massive problem throughout the United Kingdom. It is not just inconsiderate driving; it contributes to the 36,000 serious injuries and 3,000 deaths that occur on Britain's roads each year. More than two thirds of all accidents in which people are killed or seriously injured happen on roads where the speed limit is 40 mph or less. The Department for Transport's "Road Casualties: Great Britain 2003 Annual Report", published in September 2004, made the following points. In 49 per cent. of fatal accidents—nearly half of them—either excessive speed or careless, thoughtless, reckless behaviour was a contributory factor. Excessive speed was the most frequently cited contributory factor to fatal accidents, recorded in 28 per cent. of such accidents between 1999 and 2002. Careless, thoughtless, reckless behaviour was the next most common contributory factor, accounting for a further 21 per cent. of fatal accidents.

I am not alone in dealing with the problem. Other hon. Members have dealt with the distressing questions posed by grieving constituents, especially after the driver responsible for the accident has been charged with only a minor traffic offence. They believe that the penalty often seems totally inappropriate in relation to the seriousness of the accident. In fact, it has led to MPs being concerned about the adequacy of road traffic law, or the application of it in dealing with those responsible for fatal road accidents.

In February 2005, the Home Office published a consultation document on the review of road traffic offences involving bad driving. That document put forward proposals for consultation aimed at closing the perceived justice gap between the two main bad driving offences of dangerous driving and careless driving. There are several concerns about the current system of traffic offences, many of which were outlined in the sixteenth report of the Select Committee on Transport in October 2004. It drew attention to the difference between dangerous and careless driving charges being often unclear. It also pointed out that there is a large gap in the range of penalties for those facing charges of dangerous driving and careless driving.

Most particularly, the report drew attention to the fact that there is no separate charge for causing death or injury by careless driving, which is my main focus in this debate. Ever more traffic offenders are being charged with careless rather than dangerous driving; the category thus now comprises driving errors that range from "slightly inattentive" to "grossly negligent". There is a belief that road casualties are the result of unfortunate accidents rather than the grave consequence of driving irresponsibly.

The Department for Transport's postal survey of magistrates, police officers, prosecutors, procurators fiscal and crown court judges suggests dissatisfaction with the current system of prosecution for serious driving crimes, yet those are very people who deal with such issues every day. A majority of respondents felt that sometimes drivers are charged with careless driving when they should be charged with dangerous driving. Many respondents believe that in cases of dangerous driving or causing death by dangerous driving, magistrates and juries can become swayed in favour of either defendants or victims. The respondents thought that such sympathy often resulted in not-guilty verdicts or careless driving convictions in cases that appeared to involve clear-cut dangerous driving violations.

In another survey conducted by the Department for Transport on drivers convicted of dangerous or careless driving, respondents were asked what they thought of driving offences and penalties. In cases when careless driving convictions were made, only 20 per cent. of victims and victims' families thought that justice had been served. I cannot stress too strongly that Gillian Curran's family falls into the same category as the overwhelming majority of victims' families who believe that justice has not been served in such cases.

Almost 50 per cent. of victims in cases in which the conviction was for careless driving believe that the gap in penalties between dangerous and careless driving is too great. The Transport Committee recommended that a new offence be adopted: causing death or injury by negligent driving. The scope and penalties of that new offence would fall between the existing offences of driving without due care and attention and dangerous driving.

We all seek to bridge the gap in penalties between careless driving and dangerous driving. Such a response would be welcomed by my constituents. In my view, the new offence or something close to it would better deter poor driving by asserting to the public that drivers will be held fully accountable for the outcome of their actions. I therefore welcome the opportunity to hear from my hon. Friend the Minister, who I am sure will outline the Department's position. It is vital that drivers are left in no doubt about their responsibility. Put simply, they need to know that whatever they do or fail to do while driving can have a fatal impact on others.

Nothing I can say today will bring Gillian Curran back. But I owe it to Gillian, to her parents Patrick and Sandra and to Nicola to try to ensure that no other family should suffer in the way that they are still suffering. I can achieve that only if Parliament accepts the justice of the case that I have advanced for changing the law. I trust that Parliament will do so; it will go some way to recognising Gillian Curran—a beautiful life, tragically cut short.

I start by thanking my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) for securing the debate. It is a subject that he has been seeking to raise for a long time, and his powerful articulation of the victim's case has been an important way of giving a voice to the injustice that he described.

The issue of road traffic legislation and the penalties that it should provide has aroused much debate. It has the potential to affect most of us, as a victim or a driver, and, in victims, I include families who are bereaved by bad driving, because they are victimised by their experience in exactly the way that my right hon. Friend has described. I was very sorry to hear of the case of Gillian Curran. I send my sympathy to her family and friends, and I praise their tireless campaign to use this devastating experience so that we can learn from it in terms of our legislation. They have campaigned to have the law changed on careless driving to allow the consequences of such behaviour to be reflected in an appropriate charge and penalty.

The terrible loss suffered by the Curran family has been compounded by their feelings that the justice system has failed them. One aim of the criminal justice system must be to ensure that victims of crime see that justice is done, which is why we need to consider closely whether the law is adequate. What have we done so far? The Government are committed to tackling the issue of those who are killed on the roads, and we have already made substantial progress. We have made significant advances in recent years in reducing deaths and injuries arising from road traffic incidents, but nevertheless 10 road users are killed every day and 35,000 people are killed or injured as a result of bad driving every year. We are determined that road safety and further reductions in the numbers of collisions, injuries and deaths should remain a high priority.

The problem needs to be tackled on several fronts—through education, to ensure that drivers are adequately trained and to make the public aware of the risks; through engineering, to ensure that vehicles and roads are well designed and have adequate signage and warnings; and through enforcement, to ensure that penalties for breaches are adequate and that breaches themselves are detected and investigated. It is clear that, on top of that, the criminal law must play its part in improving the safety of our roads.

My right hon. Friend called for a long hard look at how the law works for road safety and how the criminal offences operate. In many ways, he has had that long hard look through the review of road traffic offences involving bad driving, which the Government have consulted on. During that consultation, I received many letters from people who have lost loved ones due to careless driving.

Dangerous driving is rightly considered a serious crime, and we have already increased the maximum penalty for causing death by dangerous driving or causing death by careless driving while under the influence of alcohol or drugs to 14 years' imprisonment. However, many people, including my right hon. Friend, have argued that where the standard of driving is not categorised as dangerous but is none the less careless and results in a death, the law is inadequate.

Careless driving is currently punishable by a maximum fine of £2,500 or, where the offence occurred on or after 4 April, a non-custodial penalty. That is because careless driving can apply to minor errors and there is no requirement for a driver to intend to harm, or even be reckless as to the harm that might result. However, even minor errors can have disastrous results.

Some say that the consequences of the behaviour are not relevant, as only the standard of driving must be assessed, not the tragic results. There is some truth in that. It is certainly true that the standard of driving must be the most important factor in judging culpability. However, that is not the whole truth. The Government are committed to ensuring that we strike a balance between the level of criminal fault on the part of the careless driver and the devastation that such behaviour can cause. Drivers have a responsibility to other road users, and we must consider that when striking the balance.

In 2003, the then Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) announced a review of the existing framework of criminal law, particularly when death or injury results from bad driving. The review was directed by a steering group, which included road safety organisations and Margaret Dekker, to whom my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill referred. The Scottish campaign against irresponsible drivers, which Margaret Dekker chaired, has been closely involved in the preparation of the proposals contained in the "Review of Road Traffic Offences involving Bad Driving" consultation paper.

The paper included a proposal that should help to address the concerns of Gillian's family and all those who have lost loved ones as a result of bad driving. The proposal was to create a new offence—exactly as my right hon. Friend called for—of causing death by careless driving, and we propose a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment for that offence. That would make available a custodial sentence where the circumstances of the case suggested that that was appropriate.

My right hon. Friend also mentioned speeding, which is a contributory factor in road traffic incidents. Speeding could be charged either as dangerous or careless driving depending on the facts of the case, and it would be an appropriate factor to take into account if someone were charged under the new offence.

There are other proposals in the consultation paper that the Government believe would help to create an effective framework of offences to deal with bad driving and create safer roads for everyone. They include a new offence of causing death by driving while disqualified or unlicensed, which was based on the argument that those who decide to take a car on the road illegally put road users at risk through their irresponsible and unlawful behaviour, regardless of their standard of driving. The Government believe that such drivers should be held culpable for the fatal consequences of their decision to drive illegally, and we invited views on that in the consultation.

My right hon. Friend also mentioned that the difference between dangerous and careless driving can be unclear. That is true to some extent because dangerous driving is defined in statute as driving that falls "far below" the standards expected of a competent and careful driver. It is widely accepted in case law that careless driving incorporates driving that falls "below", although not necessarily "far below", the standards expected, but that is not set out in statute. The consultation paper proposed that it should be, but it is true that the distinction between careless and dangerous driving is at times difficult to make. The issue was explored during the review and it was considered whether the offences of careless and dangerous driving should be replaced. It was concluded that they should not. I will not go into the full reasons here, but they are set out in the paper and copies are available in the Library.

I listened carefully to what my right hon. Friend had to say. His major concern was to ensure that actions have appropriate consequences, and the proposals put forward in the review do precisely that. The consultation period for the review ended on 6 May. We had a large number of responses from a wide variety of organisations and individuals from road safety organisations, the legal profession and the police to the families of those who have died as a result of road traffic incidents, local councils and organisations representing people with disabilities.

We have received several petitions, in addition to the one mentioned by my right hon. Friend and we are in the process of analysing the responses received. A summary of the consultation exercise and the next steps will be published in due course. I hope that they can be turned into legislation in a timely fashion, because I recognise that families such as the Currans feel that they cannot wait and that in order for justice to be done they need speedy action. I hope that we may make progress on the matter.

I am grateful for my hon. Friend's measured response, but I must push the point. Everyone I have spoken to who is involved in taking decisions on these matters feels that the current law is not adequate, so I plead with the Government to change it.

I agree with my right hon. Friend. The review should provide us with the basis for creating an offence of causing death by careless driving. How we deliver that offence is something we need to look at carefully. We need to consider what appropriate legislative vehicle might exist and to take properly into account all the responses to the review; it would be inappropriate not to do so.

I am not only the Minister who is responsible for criminal law; I am also the Minister responsible for victims such as the Curran family. In order to deliver justice to them, the Government need to ensure that the courts can take consequences into account when sentencing. That is the most important demand. We must ensure that victims and their families feel that justice has been served and that road users are aware that they have a duty of care to others and that the criminal law will be used to enforce those standards.

I know that nothing can bring Gillian back to her family, and that nothing will heal the pain that they feel, but I believe that if the review of offences involving bad driving leads to an appropriate sentence for people who cause death through careless driving it may go some way towards assuring families that, although the consequences of causing death through careless driving were not felt in this case, they will be felt by other careless drivers who cause death. I share that ambition with my right hon. Friend.

I spend a lot of time talking to victims groups. Many of them tell me that they do not want the anger, depression and loss that they feel to have been wholly wasted. They want what they have learned through their devastating experiences to be used to make the law more sensitive to their needs. I hope that we will be able to do that in future.

I know that some of the issues that I want to raise were discussed in the Chamber earlier this year in the debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson). Time has passed since, but questions still need to be answered. As a new Member in Norfolk, it has become apparent to me that Norfolk gets a bad deal under the Government's financial commitment to our old, worn out and disparate transport infrastructure.

I should like to address roads, public transportation and the Government's road pricing consultation. The following quotations describe the problems with rural transport in areas such as Norfolk. The Highways Agency has said:

"Rural residents travel, on average, over 40 per cent. further than urban residents each week . . . because facilities and services are likely to be further away."

The National Farmers Union said recently:

"Evidence from Citizens Advice shows that poor transport in the countryside in Britain makes it difficult for people to access job opportunities and meet other commitments".

It has been said:

"Life for young people in the countryside is characterised by a lack of public services and facilities close at hand".

The Government note:

"The remoteness of many rural communities means that transport is a vital issue for those living in the countryside. For those without a car good quality public transport is essential for access to everyday services—employment, education, healthcare. It is also important for the viability of rural businesses. The issues that affect individuals and families whether urban or rural are the same—education, jobs, transport, a home and secure future. But the challenges are different and so must be the solutions."

The Government speak of

"finding innovative ways to tackle the challenges of rural transport. It is supporting new and improved bus services, making grants available for local solutions to local transport problems and supporting the development of community and voluntary transport. Urban areas and market towns play a vital role in providing essential services and employment opportunities for rural communities."

They mention ensuring that

"transport in rural areas is responsive to people's real needs; flexible, well marketed, well integrated, stable and reliable."

The RAC Foundation, the well respected voice of the motorist, said recently that the whole A47, from Peterborough to Great Yarmouth,

"should be brought up to dual carriageway . . . with grade separated junctions",

reflecting its key status in linking the midlands and the north with East Anglia and its ports of Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft.

The Highways Agency announced in December 2004 that three important schemes to improve road access to Norfolk—the A47 Blofield to North Burlingham dualling, the A11 Attleborough bypass and the A11 Fiveways to Thetford dualling—were being downgraded from national importance to regional schemes. All three schemes were originally scheduled for completion by the end of 2008, but will now be

"progressed subject to regional priorities"

and considered by the regional transport board.

The A11 trunk road, which runs between Norwich and junction 9 of the M11, forms part of the core national route linking London, Cambridge and the northern part of East Anglia. The road carries a substantial volume of traffic throughout the year, particularly during the summer months, owing to traffic heading for the holiday areas of Norfolk.

At all times of the year the route carries a high proportion of commercial heavy goods vehicles. As has been said here before, Norwich is the only city in England and Wales that is not accessed by a dual carriageway. Following the downgrading of the schemes on 8 December last year, on 23 December the Government made a U-turn by announcing in a letter to the right hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke) that the A11 Attleborough scheme would be included in the programme for 2007. There was no mention of the other schemes.

Will the Minister explain how the dualling of the A1 section of the A11 can be a matter of national importance, whereas the dualling of another section of the same road is merely a matter to be decided subject to regional priorities? What can she say about the establishment and remit of the regional transport boards? Does she accept that there is a complete lack of strategic understanding of the importance of the road network in Norfolk? How does she expect the economy in Norfolk to prosper if it does not have adequate road links to the rest of the country? Will she explain how 72,600 homes can be built in Norfolk by 2021 if the necessary road infrastructure is not in place? Has she made any assessment of the numbers of lives lost and of the serious injuries that could be prevented by the improvements to the A11 and A47?

Before my hon. Friend leaves that point, may I briefly intervene and congratulate him on achieving this important debate? I wish to re-emphasise the importance of getting a decision about when the regional transport boards will be established. Large parts of the A47 go through my constituency and I am afraid to say that trust in the Highways Agency and in the Minister has been seriously undermined by what happened just before Christmas.

I concur with my hon. Friend that it is not just words but action—positive action is what we need in Norfolk.

In September 2003 the Countryside Agency, the Citizens Advice Bureaux and Transport 2000 published a report, "Rural Transport Futures", which found that

"public transport and opportunities for walking and cycling are largely poor and disjointed, with no one in overall control of how different transport threads come together in a particular area. People see little alternative to owning a car, but traffic congestion is rapidly becoming a problem."

The report found that in rural areas 74 per cent. of all journeys were made by cars, while only 4 per cent. were made by local bus or train. The report stated:

"Some people on low incomes are forced to run a car—and get into debt as a result."

The then shadow spokesman for transport, Tim Collins, said at the time that the report

"completely demolishes the supposed justification for Labour's repeated attacks on motorists, since it confirms that for millions of motorists there is no viable alternative at all."

Does the Minister recognise that for many people and for many of our constituents in Norfolk, especially the elderly or disabled in rural areas, the car is currently their only practical means of transport?

A number of bus companies in Norfolk are keen to expand and to provide better services but are being inhibited by a number of European directives, in particular the road transport directive and the 50 km rule. Does he agree that if the Government seriously want to expand services, they must look at the burdens that directives place on bus companies?

Unsurprisingly, I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. It is a big issue. There are rules and regulations, but precious little action. What we need is real action for real people. I ask the Minister what assessment she has made of the lack of transport provision and of the substantial areas of social deprivation that we have in Norfolk.

In July 1998 the Government published a White Paper setting out their plans for an integrated transport policy. The White Paper plan to increase bus usage criticised Conservative deregulation of bus services. In March 1999 the Government published "From Workhorse to Thoroughbred", with more detail on how people could be attracted to use buses rather than the car. The plan promised statutory backing for quality partnerships. The Government's 10-year plan was published in July 2000, promising an extension of the rural bus subsidy grant, covering more journeys serving market towns. A 2000 analysis of the grant, produced by the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England and Transport 2000, noted:

"Although services have improved overall, there remains considerable variation between authorities in the level of service provided."

In their 10-year transport plan, the Government pledged to revive at least an hourly bus service within a 10-minute walk for a third more rural households. In fact, bus passenger numbers are falling outside London and the Government will miss the target they set in 2000 to increase bus usage.

What progress have the Government made in Norfolk in increasing the number of rural households that have an hourly bus service within a 10-minute walk? What steps is the Minister taking to extend bus provision in rural areas, especially in South-West Norfolk? Does the Minister agree that the best way to extend bus provision is through a market-driven approach? Does she have any plans to allow parish councils to provide demand-responsive bus services that meet local need, such as the "Nippy bus" service currently operating in south Somerset? The Government made great play during the election of their pledge to provide free off-peak bus travel to all pensioners. Will the Minister please explain how that will benefit my constituents who live in remote villages without a bus service?

The railways are a problem for us in East Anglia. In November 2004, the Strategic Rail Authority released a strategy document, setting out its commitment to rural railways:

"Local rail lines are vitally important for the many towns and villages they serve. Forming the core of a good public transport network, they enable residents of rural areas to access local towns, encouraging vibrant economic hubs for employment, shopping and doing business. Connections to the national network also provide convenient access to regional and national centres, important to the development of the rural economy."

On 21 November 2004, the Secretary of State for Transport unveiled the Government's community rail development strategy, which aims to increase the number of passengers using rural rail lines. The document, produced by the SRA, provides a framework for developing local and rural railways and sets out

"ways to secure the future of such lines, by increasing usage whilst reducing costs".

The Secretary of State commented at that time:

"Rural railways are important to many parts of the country. We want more people to use rural railway lines and the development of community railways is a vital part of that. The future of rural lines depends on effective partnerships between local authorities, community groups and, of course, passengers. The SRA's Community Rail Development Strategy clearly sets out how this can be achieved and the Government is extremely keen to see it implemented."

Rail services between London and Norwich and other towns in Norfolk are provided by a franchise service in East Anglia that has recently been amalgamated into One. What discussions has the Minister had with representatives of One about extending services to the people who live in Norfolk? Will she give an assessment of how she feels that that new amalgamated East Anglia franchise is operating?

The last area of concern is the current consultation by the Secretary of State for Transport on road pricing. He has outlined plans for a new "pay as you drive" system for Britain's roads, and last weekend he suggested that the scheme could be introduced within the next decade, leading to some estimates that that could mean people being charged as much as £1.30 a mile to use the busiest roads at peak times.

The Government's record on transport over the past eight years hardly inspires confidence that the scheme will be a success, or that it will not be used as yet another stealth tax. In 1997, the Deputy Prime Minister said:

"I will have failed . . . if in five years there are not many more people using public transport and far fewer journeys by car. It is a tall order but I want you to hold me to it".

Since then, car usage has increased and congestion has soared. The Government's flagship pledge in their 2000 10-year transport plan was to reduce congestion by 5 per cent. by 2010, but the 2002 review of the plan showed that congestion will actually grow thanks to their botched efforts to control it. In a 2004 review of the 10-year plan, the Government announced that they were scrapping their previous targets for congestion, admitting that they could not be met. The Secretary of State for Transport said that they would develop "better indicators" of congestion in 2005.

Petrol prices in the United Kingdom are the second highest in Europe, although the pre-tax price of fuel is among the cheapest in the European Union. Currently, 77 per cent. of the pump price of petrol is taxation. In 1996–97, the Government took £21.4 billion off motorists in vehicle excise duty and fuel duty. By 2004–05, the figure had risen to £28.3 billion—that figure comes from the Treasury Budget Red Book of 2003. Under the Government, petrol prices have risen from 59.4p per litre in 1997 to about 84p per litre today.

Of course, the Conservative party accepts the need to consider modern solutions to the problem of congestion on our roads, yet we believe that any road pricing scheme should be an alternative and fair way of raising revenue. It should not simply be a vehicle for imposing more stealth taxes on hard-working people.

Will the Minister say whether a price will be levied on every road? If not, how will we avoid rat runs through residential areas? Will local people have a say on local tariffs, and will the Government promise that there will be only one national scheme? Will higher cc cars pay higher charges? If not, how does one justify charging the same for a Mini as a Bentley? Will the Minister also give a cast-iron guarantee that the average motorist will not be worse off as a result of the measure? Will she undertake to abolish fuel excise duty once the scheme is fully operational?

Norfolk is fortunate to have a thriving tourist industry that attracts many visitors from overseas, and to have first-class Members of Parliament, who have turned up for the debate today. How will the new scheme deal with charging foreign motorists? Norfolk deserves a better deal. We need inward investment to the county to support our economic base. Without the right transport infrastructure, economic growth will be stifled, not only for large businesses but for ordinary people going about their daily lives. We pay enough tax; it is about time we got something in return.

Rural transport links are essential in Norfolk. I hope that today the Government will give the people of Norfolk a commitment that they will get a transport system that they well deserve.

I congratulate the hon. Member for South-West Norfolk (Mr. Fraser), on securing the debate, which gives us another opportunity, as he rightly said, to discuss several issues that were discussed not long ago. I hope to address all the issues that he raised, but I may need to respond to some of his questions after the debate.

The Government recognise the particular challenges that face isolated and dispersed rural communities, which the hon. Gentleman discussed at the start of his speech. The transport responses that we need for the urban environment are very different to those needed in areas represented by hon. Gentlemen who are here today.

Where I differ with the hon. Gentleman, however—he will not be surprised to hear me say this—is on the Government's response. The Government have made considerable investment and progress through several measures, which I will outline in the next few minutes, and will continue to work appropriately with regional and local authorities to find correct ways to respond to the issues.

The hon. Gentleman criticised what he called the lack of strategy. That is a genuinely hard argument to sustain, because the Government's introduction of local transport planning and the rolling five-year process of transport planning have provided an opportunity that simply was not there previously to make a co-ordinated and strategic response driven by a local authority's assessment of its needs. The authorities that are closest to the ground are best able to give a clear indication of particular patterns and the changing patterns of need for a service and some of the best ways of responding to that need.

I am pleased to tell the hon. Gentleman, although he probably already knows, that Norfolk county council is one of the best performing local transport authorities in the country and the best in the east of England. It was graded well above average for its progress in delivering its local transport plan last year, and has been granted centre of excellence status for its record of delivering transport schemes and projects.

The hon. Gentleman may be surprised to hear that I fundamentally disagree with his belief that Norfolk got a bad deal in transport funding. In the past five years, the Government have given Norfolk more than £54 million for its local transport budget, and the county council has used that and its own resources to develop several innovative schemes to make rural public transport more accessible.

The county council has also increased its spending on community transport in the past three years, and has developed 14 demand-responsive transport schemes, which allow rural residents to book a bus to take them to local services such as doctors' surgeries, schools and leisure centres. More than 170,000 passengers were carried under such schemes in Norfolk in 2004–05. That form of transport continues to expand not only in Norfolk but in other rural areas, and we believe that it should be developed extensively because it provides accessibility for the isolated rural communities that the hon. Gentleman describes.

Norfolk also has six community bus or car schemes, which carried more than 40,000 passengers in 2004–05. It is important that the hon. Gentleman recognises that, when we talk about bus services—which I am about to come to—such personalised community services are often an important complement and sometimes even an alternative to traditionally provided bus services.

I was pleased to hear the hon. Gentleman note that the Campaign to Protect Rural England describes services as having improved overall, although he went on to make some criticisms. London is not the only urban authority and not the only area of the country in which bus services have improved. Bus service delivery has improved in many towns and cities. I do not have the Norfolk figures at my fingertips, but if he was making the point that it was a London-only phenomenon, I assure him that it is not and that there are models of excellent practice across the country on which we need to build. If they do not include Norfolk, discussions can be had about that.

In terms of direct support for bus services, Norfolk county council has received substantial extra resources under the Government's various rural bus funding initiatives. It has consistently received high levels of funding through the rural bus subsidy grant and, for the last financial year, it received the highest allocation in the country—more than £2.4million. That increased funding demonstrates our continuing commitment to providing improved public transport in rural areas.

The services supported by the grant play an increasing part in tackling rural social exclusion and improving transport choices in rural areas. The range of services on which the grant can be used has been broadened to give a further boost to new, flexible solutions to meet local transport needs. That has allowed a number of new services to be introduced and maintained, and we understand from Norfolk county council that those have included services that supply new links to training and work opportunities as well as those catering for a variety of needs such as shopping and health care through the day.

For many of the parishes in the constituency of the hon. Member for South-West Norfolk, there has been an improvement in bus service provision since the rural bus grants were first awarded five years ago. Parishes that are still below the county council's preferred level of service are a priority for action and the extension of the rural bus grant has enabled the number of parishes that are well served to increase.

In addition, in the past five years we have funded nine separate rural bus challenge schemes in Norfolk to the tune of £2.95 million, ranging from, for example, a very small £30,000 scheme to take people to farmers' markets in Diss, to a much larger £400,000 scheme to develop with Cambridgeshire county council a new cross-boundary route and rural interchange to give Norfolk residents—some of whom live in the hon. Gentleman's constituency—access to services in Cambridgeshire as well as in Norfolk market towns.

I do not know whether the Minister is aware, but her predecessor agreed to meet me and a delegation from Norfolk bus companies to discuss some of those bus company issues. Is she prepared to meet me and perhaps my colleagues to discuss regulation issues in the future?

My door is always open to the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues. I would be delighted to meet him and any hon. Members who wished to discuss that topic.

In addition to the two bus grants that I have described, we have recently launched a programme called Kickstart, of which the hon. Member for South-West Norfolk may be aware. It involves bus service improvements that will offer real prospects for growing bus patronage. Kickstart funding will pump-prime new services—that was an important point that the hon. Gentleman raised—or service improvements, and we have provisionally set aside a total of £20 million over the next three years for that scheme. Local authorities have been asked to bid for support for Kickstart projects this summer, and the closing date is in the next two weeks.

Will the Minister, either now or in writing, give me a breakdown of the figures for the £20 million investment that she just referred to? As far as I can tell, arbitrary figures are being bandied about and they do not necessarily relate to local need.

I assure the hon. Gentleman that I do not make figures up, but I understand his point and will aim to give him a breakdown of that information.

As time is pressing, I shall make a couple of points about the rural rail service. The hon. Gentleman is correct to say that not only buses are important in the rural areas of Norfolk. The Strategic Rail Authority last year published the community rail development strategy, which focuses on improving the financial performance, value for money and social value of local and rural railways, to ensure their long-term future.

Norfolk has two existing community rail partnerships which will benefit. The first is the Bittern line, which runs for 30 miles, connecting Norwich with the north coastal towns of Sheringham and Cromer via the Norfolk broads. The second is known as the Wherry line and comprises a number of routes linking Norwich via Acle to Great Yarmouth or Lowestoft—which I acknowledge is in Suffolk—on the east coast. Both lines can look forward to a more secure future as the strategy sets out ways in which income can grow and costs can be reduced so that subsidy can be reduced to a more affordable level. That does not mean abandoning the lines or letting them deteriorate, but it means, for example, that more appropriate maintenance regimes and standards can be applied to them where the general level of rolling stock is less damaging to the lines. Also it will enable the local communities to be much more involved in determining which services they want. We believe that the strategy is the antithesis of the policies that led to the closure of many branch and rural lines 40 years ago and that it will lead to the preservation of lines for the future.

The hon. Member for South-West Norfolk asked several questions about road links and I shall have to return to him later on a couple of those. As he said, the Highways Agency has recently dualled the stretch of the A11 between Roudham Heath and Attleborough; the work was completed in March 2003. Work is also due to start in 2006 on the Attleborough bypass.

I think that the hon. Gentleman acknowledged that the improvement scheme between Fiveways and Thetford entered the targeted programme of improvements in March 2000. We are now considering proposals to involve regional bodies, local authorities and other local stakeholders in shaping the programme of future transport improvements in the area. That emphatically does not mean that the scheme has been cancelled. However, as with all other areas of the country, we want to ensure that a proper regionally based prioritisation programme exists to make determinations. Funds will never be infinite, and changes are taking place in all relevant areas, including the growth that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. We need to ensure that our use of resources gives the best value and that we proceed with the schemes that provide the best value for money and most appropriate level of service.

The hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) raised the question of road safety statistics, and I shall provide him with such information as we have. It may be that the question that he asked cannot be answered in the form in which he put it, but I shall return to him on that point and on the other schemes.

I want quickly to respond to the points about road pricing that the hon. Member for South-West Norfolk raised. In line with manifesto commitments, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has launched a debate on the potential for moving away from the current balance of motoring taxation towards a national system of road pricing. The feasibility study on road pricing in the UK, which was published by the Department for Transport in July 2004, concluded that a scheme could reduce congestion by up to 40 per cent. and achieve benefits of up to £12 billion a year in time savings and increased reliability.

However, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that the study recognised—this is the most important point at the outset—a range of variants of prices and the interrelationship between road pricing and other forms of taxation. It is far too early to be specific about the details of implementation of such a scheme. It will need to be part of a debate about how to tackle road congestion.

Car use has, as the hon. Gentleman recognised, risen on the back of rising prosperity. That is true in most, probably all, developed societies. It is up to the Government to develop a long-term response to the pressures. We shall learn from, but not replicate, existing schemes such as the London congestion charge. We need to design a system that works well for road users as well as the country as a whole. Key considerations will include the need to safeguard our environmental objectives and respect privacy and the setting of prices. More detailed work is now being done.

I welcome the debate and the opportunity to reassure the hon. Member for South-West Norfolk that we intend to continue to support rural transport in his constituency, his county and, indeed, the country as a whole.

Thank you, Mr. Hood, for giving me the opportunity to raise such an important subject in this Chamber.

Those hon. Members who sat in the last Parliament will remember that, as chairman of the all-party men's health group, I hosted two events dealing with screening older men for abdominal aortic aneurysms, also known as AAAs. At our first meeting, organised for the group by the Men's Health Forum, we were briefed by a vascular surgeon who has been running a highly successful screening programme in Gloucestershire for nearly 15 years. We were also briefed by representatives of a company that provides scanning services, and by a survivor of a ruptured AAA.

At the second of those meetings, in March, men of both Houses could have a scan for an AAA, to find out for themselves how quick and simple the test is. Those at most risk of an aneurysm are older men, especially those who smoke, and those with high blood pressure or who have conditions such as angina. AAAs are rare in women and younger men.

An AAA is a bubble-type swelling in the wall of the body's main blood vessel as it passes through the abdomen. Burst AAAs kill about 6,000 men a year in the UK, mostly men aged 65 or over. AAAs are usually symptomless until they burst. In most cases, people die without knowing what happened. In a few cases, people can be lucky enough to wake up some time later in an intensive care bed.

AAAs are about four times as common in men as in women, so it is not thought cost-effective to screen women for the condition. An AAA will generally cause no pain or discomfort, and those that are picked up are usually found by happenstance in the course of treatment for other conditions—unless you happen to live in Gloucestershire.

The test for an aortic aneurysm is a simple ultrasound scan, exactly the same as is used to examine pregnant women. It is also quick; 10 people an hour can be scanned by a single professional with a portable scanner. If an aneurysm is detected before it bursts, the operation to repair the aorta has a 94 per cent. success rate. If it bursts, only 20 per cent. survive. The few who survive the major emergency operation that follows a burst aneurysm will spend a long period in a hospital intensive care unit.

The national screening committee has been looking at the case for introducing screening for AAAs. It has been considering the issue for a considerable time, and last autumn it created a new working group on the matter. I am told that it could be some time before it makes a recommendation, but thousands of men throughout the country may not have that much time.

On 15 May, Bob Carson, a youthful 63-year-old, died of an AAA. Bob was a stalwart and utterly indefatigable member of Dartford Labour party, who had delivered hundreds of thousands of leaflets for the party over the years, in all weathers and all conditions. Although others might shrink at having to deliver 2,000 leaflets on an icy January evening with snow in the air, Bob approached it with characteristic gusto and enthusiasm, and invariably came back for more when he was done. Indeed, he would be disappointed if there was nothing left for him to do and would ask why we had not had the foresight to print more.

Individuals such as Bob Carson, who work tirelessly and without complaint year in, year out for their local parties, are the lifeblood of politics in this country. Without their efforts, political parties would simply cease to exist and the political process would grind to a halt. Ironically, Bob knew all about AAAs; he knew about my work on the issue with the all-party men's health group, as he had delivered leaflets referring to my work on the subject. However, he would not have known what killed him. Probably the only sign that anything was wrong would have been what felt like a backache and possibly dizziness in the moments before he lost consciousness.

In most cases, the few men who survive a burst aneurysm have never heard of an abdominal aortic aneurysm. They have probably heard of testicular cancer, and may have read some of the press coverage about the test for prostate cancer, but it is unlikely that they will have come across anything in the media referring to AAAs. However, although testicular cancer kills about 100 men a year, AAAs kill about 6,000 a year. Indeed, some argue that the number is much higher, because many deaths caused by burst AAAs are recorded as the result of heart attacks or other conditions. Moreover, although the prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, test for prostate cancer is widely considered to be unreliable—studies show that it produces false positive and false negative results—the 14 years of screening in Gloucestershire, as reported in the British Medical Journal and The Lancet, has shown that screening for AAAs not only works but is extremely cost-effective. Testicular and prostate cancers are terrible conditions that together kill many thousands, but when compared to the scale of the problem and the effectiveness of the test, I am at a loss to explain the low profile of abdominal aortic aneurysms in the media, and even among health professionals.

Two projects in this country show that a national screening programme for AAAs would work. I have already mentioned Gloucestershire, where a screening programme has been running since 1990. The second project is the multicentre aneurysm screening study—MASS. Reported in The Lancet, it studied nearly 68,000 men aged 65 to 74 years. MASS gives the only internationally accepted scientific information on both the benefit and the cost of screening for AAA. The study showed a reduction in AAA deaths of 53 per cent. in those who attended screening. The figures also highlighted the difference between elective surgery, which is an operation to repair an aneurysm before it bursts, and emergency surgery, after the aneurysm has burst. A month after elective surgery, 6 per cent. of patients had died; a month after emergency surgery, 37 per cent. had died. Most whose aneurysms burst do not even make it as far as surgery.

The team behind the study concluded that there was clear evidence of a benefit from screening for abdominal aortic aneurysm. The MASS team has estimated that screening should save 2,500 lives a year. They have also considered the cost-effectiveness of screening and have calculated that the cost per life year saved would be £8,000 by year 10 after screening and under £1,000 by year 30. In comparison, the NHS acceptable figure for cost-effectiveness is given at £36,000 per life year saved.

The team at the Gloucestershire Royal hospital has been running the screening programme since 1990 and it, too, is convinced of the merits of screening. Each year, they work with 85 GP practices and screen more than 3,000 men as they turn 65. A nurse co-ordinates a team of sonographers—the professionals who carry out the ultrasound scans—who run three or four sessions at practices each week. The process is quick, and they can check 10 men an hour. After the purchase of a computer and portable ultrasound machine, running costs are only £43,000 a year.

Jonathan Earnshaw, a vascular consultant in Gloucester, told the all-party group on men's health that 95 per cent. of men screened would be clear for life—they would not need to be checked again. A single screening test is sufficient to clear those men for life. Those with a slightly enlarged aorta are recalled annually. In more serious cases, they see a consultant every six months. About one in 100 will have an aneurysm that needs an operation to repair it.

The Gloucestershire team reported in the British Medical Journal that our family doctor system puts us in an ideal position to start screening nationally. Such a programme, they say, could save several thousand lives at a reasonable cost. Their figures suggest that a UK-wide programme could be operated for about £6 million a year.

The scanning session that the Men's Health Forum and the diagnosis company InHealth organised for the all-party group on men's health showed hon. Members how simple the ultrasound scan is. I am pleased to say that none of those who attended for screening showed enlarged aortas, although with reports that one in 10 men over 65 could have some degree of enlargement, we expected to send at least one or two hon. Members to visit their GP.

The Gloucestershire screening programme works within the NHS. In Dorset, the InHealth company has recently started to provide a scanning service for the strategic health authority. Although not yet a full screening programme, it checks people for vascular problems. It uses a mobile unit to visit five locations a day, taking scanners to places that are convenient for people. That model of delivery is in line with other Government initiatives that have expanded NHS provision and ensured that scanning and diagnostic capacity is improved. The InHealth group estimates that a national programme would cost between £7.5 million and £10 million. I understand that the Gloucester team's costings and those from InHealth are based on different assumptions, but they still give us an idea of the costs involved. The Gloucestershire experience shows that a full screening programme becomes viable when screening men at 65. Below that age, there are not enough cases to make general screening worth while.

Mr. Earnshaw told the all-party group on men's health that about 15 per cent. of men invited for screening did not turn up and that that group included a higher-than-average proportion of men with aneurysms. The experience of the Men's Health Forum in working with the hardest-to-reach men—who are often also the men with the highest intake of alcohol, the heaviest smokers and those who have a poor diet and take little exercise—suggests that in the longer term it may be necessary to consider how to screen men outside conventional health care settings. That could involve taking services to workplaces, including building sites and ports, to pubs and to sports venues. Services already provided in those settings have reached men who, as a GP, I rarely see. Those men can also be missed by the new walk-in centres aimed at commuters. Interestingly, the scanners are usually portable and can easily be transported, cost-effectively, to any venue chosen.

AAAs are more common in men who take little exercise and who have high cholesterol levels. Those problems were highlighted last week, during national men's health week, which I, along with the rest of the all-party group on men's health, supported. This year's men's health week focused on the key public health issue of weight and obesity, and drew attention to the need for men to take more exercise and eat more healthily, steps that would undoubtedly reduce the incidence of AAAs.

As in previous years, national men's health week run by the Men's Health Forum helps health professionals to work more effectively with men in general and particularly with less well-off men who are more likely to suffer from a range of conditions that contribute to their low life expectancy. I remind hon. Members that the difference in life expectancy in England between the highest, in east Dorset, and the lowest, in Manchester, is more than eight years. The difference in male life expectancy in the UK between east Dorset and the lowest—Glasgow—is 11 years.

However, it is not just the deprived and socially excluded who have lifestyles that can lead to being overweight and all the conditions that are linked to that. I have said before, in this very Room, that there is no obesity time bomb; it has already gone off. Already, two thirds of men are overweight or obese. If present trends continue unchecked, three quarters of the male population will be overweight by 2010.

Excess weight causes or exacerbates numerous health problems, some of which are of the greatest severity. It is clear that the current approaches are failing too many men. Men have different attitudes and behaviour from women in relation to weight; the solution to the problem must therefore lie in "male-sensitive" policies and services. For example, men are less likely to be concerned about becoming overweight than women, are more likely to fail to notice that they have gained weight, and are more likely to deny that they have a problem once they are overweight.

Two new documents from the Men's Health Forum highlight the scale of the problem and suggest solutions. The first is entitled "Hazardous Waist? Tackling the epidemic of excess weight in men." It calls for changes in underlying attitudes, investment in primary care services and a male-sensitive national strategy. It has been given greater impetus by the consensus statement on men and weight. That document was endorsed and supported by 28 major public, charitable and commercial organisations including Royal Mail, BT, the Football Association, Sport England, Age Concern, Beating Bowel Cancer, the Stroke Association and all the major national charities acting directly to address the issue of being overweight and obesity. Those 28 organisations share a desire and a commitment to halt the rise in overweight males before it is too late.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister agrees that action on men and weight will have a positive knock-on effect on the incidence of conditions such as heart disease and cancers. I also hope that she will look at the recommendations made in "Hazardous Waist? Tackling the epidemic of excess weight in men" and will take the action suggested in the consensus statement on men and weight.

The Men's Health Forum has also just published the latest in its health manuals for men, produced in the style of a car manual by Haynes, the manual publisher. This book on men and weight, called the "HGV Man Manual" is written in a way that is more male-friendly, or blokier. It will be on sale, I am told, in Halfords, but will also be distributed in some areas by charities and NHS organisations.

I am pleased that two big employers of men will be working with the Men's Health Forum. Both BT and Royal Mail have recognised how important a role weight plays in conditions such as heart disease and cancer. Action to reduce excess weight would almost certainly also reduce the risk of aneurysms.

Other professions are also known for lifestyles that could be high risk for aneurysms. In Sefton, the health promotion team has been working at Liverpool docks with lorry drivers who have a sedentary yet stressful work pattern, who have poor access to fruit and vegetables and who are often smokers. That combination of factors could lead many drivers to suffer aneurysms. Like many others, the health promotion team in Sefton took part in national men's health week this year. Its commitment to taking health improvement out into the community—one of the team won a national award for that—is an example of how more people can be helped into healthier lifestyles and reduce their chances of suffering an AAA.

Smoking is another major factor in AAAs; in fact, it is probably the single biggest risk factor. Older men are more likely than average to smoke and more likely to smoke heavily. To quit smoking is the most significant thing a person can do to avoid an aneurysm. I am pleased that we will soon have the chance to ban smoking in public places serving food. That will be a major step forward. However, I would also like to see that policy expanded to include pubs where food is not served. Those pubs are most likely to be in less well-off areas—the same areas where more people, especially older men, will be smokers.

AAA survivor Bernard Bush, who spoke to the all-party men's health group in November, was a prime candidate for an AAA. He smoked, suffered from stress and was overweight. On Boxing day 2003, he was at home with his family. He remembers being in his kitchen when a back ache came on. He woke up in hospital, where he spent the next several weeks, and found out how lucky he was. Although we do not like to think about such things at Christmas time, the quiet Christmas roads made a vital difference. His ambulance got him to hospital faster than it could have otherwise. He says that that small time saving was a crucial factor, as was the expertise at Addenbrooke's hospital.

Even men who are too young for screening could benefit. There would be an increase in awareness that could prompt a few more to quit smoking and perhaps enable men in their 50s and early 60s to recognise the symptoms if they are among the few who experience them before it is too late.

The science shows that screening men for abdominal aortic aneurysms will work. The experience in Gloucestershire and that of independent providers of screening for other conditions show how it will work. Thousands of lives could be saved each year through a straightforward procedure provided at relatively little cost. I urge the Minister to introduce a national NHS screening scheme at the earliest opportunity.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Dr. Stoate) on raising this important issue, and welcome him back to the House of Commons. I hope that his campaign on the play park in his constituency continues. I was happy to visit his constituency during the general election campaign and know that he is fighting to keep a play park open. We believe that open spaces are important for families, both because of our fitness agenda, and because of the need to ensure that children have access to exercise.

I take this opportunity to send my condolences to Bob Carson's family and to say how much I value and recognise the support of our foot soldiers who work tirelessly for the return of Labour MPs and Labour councils for the good of society. It is a credit to Mr. Carson that my hon. Friend mentioned him today, albeit in sad circumstances.

I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his important work as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on men's health. It is right that we should discuss this matter just after men's health week. I look forward to supporting the launch of the "Haynes HGV Man Manual" in a few weeks. I hope that I can, in my new job as a Minister with responsibility for public health, give support and attention to an important issue.

I have already looked at some of our campaigns on smoking, and have been considering the fact that the messages that we put across about such issues need to be different for women, men, girls and boys, as our research tells us that men and women respond differently to messages. Some messages are valued more by men and others more by women. It is important to approach people differently, particularly on the health and equality agenda, not just on gender but in terms of income and deprivation, so that there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to promoting public health.

The issue of abdominal aortic aneurysms is a serious one. I could not outline better than my hon. Friend did the condition and its impact on men. I understand the stress that families go through when they lose a loved one because an aneurysm erupts. I have not yet received the advice of the UK national screening committee, but there are several officials here today who have a role in determining such issues or helping us to come to a point at which we can take decisions. I will carefully consider their advice and my hon. Friend's points, to which I have listened carefully. We hope to be in a position to take a decision based on all the evidence by the end of the year.

The UK National Screening Committee advises Ministers on all aspects of screening policy. It assesses proposed new programmes against a set of internationally recognised criteria, which cover the condition, the test, treatment options and the effectiveness and acceptability of the screening programme. As my hon. Friend said, the multicentre aneurysm screening study, known as MASS, demonstrated that screening men aged 65 and over to detect asymptomatic aneurysms of the abdominal aorta reduced mortality from ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysms in that population group.

The NSC is currently considering whether a screening programme for AAA based on these findings should be introduced. It will also consider the results of the endovascular aneurysm repair, or EVAR, trial, which has just been published, at its meeting on 29 June. I reassure my hon. Friend that this issue is under active consideration, and that any new evidence is being actively considered. I expect to receive advice from the national screening committee by the end of this year.

My hon. Friend is aware that there is always a great deal of work to do to ensure that research proposals can be replicated across the country. We need to check that we screen the right people in the right way, that we have the services in place to deal with new cases, that we balance risks against benefits, and that the programme does more good than harm, because a second-class service just will not do. We are about to introduce a high-quality bowel cancer screening programme, which took a considerable time to arrive at. The results will be better survival rates, longer lives, and a better quality of life.

If we introduce a screening programme for AAA, the aim will be to reduce the numbers of deaths from ruptured aneurysms. As my hon. Friend said, about half the total number of deaths take place before the patient reaches hospital. Of those who do reach hospital, the mortality rate for emergency treatment is between 30 and 70 per cent. However, there would still be a risk of death with elective surgery following screening, although the mortality rate would be much lower—in the region of 4 per cent. Operations would be shorter, length of hospital stays would be reduced and less blood would be needed during surgery. At the same time, we must consider the message to the patient, which is quite difficult. My hon. Friend knows only too well the challenge of explaining uncertainties to patients in a busy GP practice.

If an aneurysm is found to have reached a certain size, the risk of rupture is such that the patient may be advised to have an elective operation. Treatment is associated with significant risk for operative death and complications. If such risks are explained thoroughly and straightforwardly, they may be acceptable to men, who are most prone to suffer ruptures. That is not an easy scenario to present to an anxious patient, but the National Screening Committee is working on proposals to recommend the best way to communicate such risks to patients who are part of the screening programme.

I should also like to thank Bernard Bush for his work with the National Screening Committee and the Men's Health Forum in this area. I have looked at the forum's website, where Bernard's experience is plainly and accessibly explained. Protocols must be established for following up detected aneurysms. Options are likely to include taking no action but remaining in the screening programme, returning at agreed intervals for further scans, or urgent referral. The options will depend on the size of the aneurysm. The national screening committee is working with vascular surgeons and other NHS colleagues to discuss how a new screening service would impact on their workload. Surgical networks need to be the right size to maximise safety and minimise adverse effects.

The resource implications for radiology and hospital services other than vascular surgery must also be studied. Overall, the service must be cost-effective. My hon. Friend made a number of pertinent points about cost, based on experience of services already being provided, and I am sure that all such evidence and information is being considered by the national screening committee.

My hon. Friend rightly mentioned public health. Stopping smoking is of particular importance in reducing death from AAA, because smoking is linked with a three to fivefold increase in the prevalence of AAA. Tackling high blood pressure, high cholesterol and obesity will help in preventing coronary heart disease, which is another risk factor. It will also help to reduce the risks of surgery. That is where the Men's Health Forum has been so helpful. I hope that my hon. Friend will reassure me that the Department works closely with the forum, which is the leading organisation in the field of men's health. The forum specialises in getting health messages across to men in a form and settings that are men-friendly. I was interested, when looking recently at some of the information on obesity, in the difference between men and women. Many women worry about being overweight when they are not, whereas many men do not worry enough about their weight. That goes back to what I said earlier about the need to understand people, where they are coming from, and how they receive different messages.

My hon. Friend may not be aware, but at least one week—maybe more—into my new job, I was asked to launch a partnership guide between the Department of Health, primary care trusts, the Football Association, the Football Foundation and others. It looked at how we could engage football and other sports in promoting public health and the options available for PCTs to work in partnership to promote good health either by getting access to space at football stadiums or other sports grounds or, more radically, by relocating certain services to some of those locations.

Listening to my hon. Friend's contribution today, I believe that there is a lot of mileage in such ideas, not exclusively with football, because football is not exclusively for men, for reaching different groups of people. I understand that there will be a number of regional roadshows to promote the partnership guide, and I am happy to give my hon. Friend some information about it, which he might find useful.

Let me conclude by making one simple point. I have a completely open mind, having arrived only recently at the Department of Health, but I want to ensure that we get the screening decision right. I expect all the necessary work to be done before I get a formal proposal, because that is important in both reaching a decision and getting on with the work if the decision is a positive one.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I look forward to receiving the advice of the National Screening Committee. I hope that, while I am in this post, we will continue to have a productive relationship in discussing these important issues and how they affect men's health.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at four minutes to Two o'clock.