I am grateful to have the opportunity to talk about the future of the probation service. I am not only a strong supporter but a big admirer of it for the difficult work that it does. It has a key role in what the Government describe as the fight against crime, and in building a better society, by working to redeem offenders, to support them so that they do not slip back into the habit offending, and working to sustain former prisoners and offenders as they adjust to society. It is only that adjustment that will stop them reoffending.

The probation service is overstretched, and in my view the staff are underpaid. There are probably 200,000 offenders, a total that is increasing, but the service is ever more successful and effective in dealing with that number. Indeed, over the last few years it has coped with the many new duties that have been thrust upon it—custody plus for instance, introduced by the Criminal Justice Act 2003—all of which has produced what the Home Office estimates will be a 70,000 increase in its case load.

Last year, the probation service supervised 12,600 high-risk offenders. Only 79 of them—0.6 per cent.—had reoffended by the end of that supervision. Its breach targets have been achieved in 92 per cent. of cases, and eight out of 10 supervisory periods have been sustained for six months or more. In other words, it is doing a very good job. It was helped by the reorganisation of 2001, which created a national service. That good reform is working well, and I ask the Minister to tell us why it is now being scrapped. What evaluation has been done of that successful reform? The probation service has adjusted to it, and is working successfully, yet it now has to face another change.

I am sorry to say that I shall not be able to speak in the debate, nor stay until the end.

I pick up on the point that my hon. Friend put to the Minister and suggest that the answer may not be all that helpful. It is not at all obvious whether the 2001 reorganisation has been monitored or evaluated, but it was said that it would deal with fragmentation and limited accountability, both locally and nationally. It has been successful, but here we are introducing more fragmentation, locally and nationally, which will weaken accountability even further. What is the rationale for that?

I wish I knew. I am no expert in that form of psychology, but my hon. Friend makes a telling point. Nor am I am expert on the reasons for this process of restless change. As soon as something settles in, it is changed without evaluation. That is why I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to tell us what evaluation has been done. Just how bad is the service? He must tell us when winding up. We need to know before we can comment on the new framework. Will it improve matters or not?

It is a process of restless change. Unfortunately, it is not untypical of the Government. We have the blue skies thinker, Lord Birt, in the stratosphere; and we have the grey walls thinker, Lord Carter, who is incarcerated behind the grey walls of the House of Lords. They come up with bright new schemes for changing everything.

We face another bout of change, but is it necessary? It will effectively abolish the national probation service. Indeed, there are indications that the national probation directorate is already being run down. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will deal with that. It will be changed under the proposals set out in the consultation paper "Restructuring Probation to Reduce Re-offending"; I have at least touched it, if not read it in detail. It is another product of the restless process of change. That, too, is typical of the process. Again, none of the views on which the paper is based has been thought through or researched. They are assertions, not demonstrable proof of an ability to remedy failings in the existing system. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is a maxim I believe in politics. I think that the Labour party is a more conservative party and that should be our maxim. Why, then, is there this restless change?

The paper argues that contestability is better than local co-operation based on the existing structure; co-operation with the police, the magistrates and the community. On the argument that contestability is vital, a unified service will be replaced by fragmentation into business units, and local co-operation will be replaced by contestability. Contestability must mean value for money and the introduction of the profit motive into this judicial service.

Is not this whole concept of contestability predicated on something that simply is not the case? It assumes that a throng of private businesses eager to manage Britain's offending population can see the market potential of the addicted alcoholic or deviant, mentally confused and otherwise dysfunctional offenders, like the angel imprisoned in a block of marble. They are not my words, but those of Richard Heller, who is not necessarily a friend of the Government but is absolutely hostile to these proposals.

I am grateful for my hon. Friend's intervention, as I too received a letter from Richard Heller, which sets out his views and the experience of his wife, who was in the probation service and who sadly died a few weeks ago. It was a powerful and moving letter, which sums up this case. The ethos must be co-operation and service to the offender, not the profit motive and value for money. Value to society is the ethos, not value for money; the two are not the same. Yet on the basis of that untested, unproven assertion, the 42 local area boards will be abolished. Quite apart from the fact that they will shortly abolish themselves as areas, because of the reorganisation of the police service, which will be completed, one hopes, in two years—another restless change process—new areas will be required for those that presently work for probation.

The area boards will be abolished and replaced by regional business managers, who will invite bids to provide the service from new bodies and contributors; outside organisations. They could be anything; prison companies, charities or cattle prod manufacturers, which also produce tagging devices. The very slogan, "Correction companies" brings to mind sadomasochism of all kinds. One does not know what the organisations will be. Yet, untried organisations will be brought in to replace what is now an effective, well functioning service. They will all be able to bid for contracts to run the service for profit, in local units.

What is wrong with that can be fairly readily summed up; it is an attempt to create an artificial market in probation services, which should not be a market at all. This is a judicial function, a service for the courts and offenders, not a means of profit. What is wrong with the proposal? Probation is part of the judicial system. It is an agency of justice, not an agency of commerce. To make it an agency of commerce must undermine trust and undermine its integrity. Judge Judge—"Here come da judge, judge"—has pointed out the unsuitability of bringing commerce into this function. It will not only undermine trust but produce obvious conflicts of interest.

One pictures the scene. A probation officer appears in court to make his recommendations. He recommends that the offender be committed to lag's hall, which is run by his group, group 69, to provide correctional services, and he offers the court a DVD presentation of its charms and attractions. It will be exciting stuff; visual displays of the sort of place to which the offender will be sent.

Perhaps the probation officer could recommend tagging; his company McTag-it, which is based in Scotland and can produce red tags that are approved by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, can be worn with any clothing, and will keep the offender under effective supervision.

Perhaps, on the other hand, the probation officer could recommend community service and say that, just by coincidence, his company, Charitable Drains R Us, provides useful work digging drains for churches, public toilets and other places in which offenders can usefully be employed.

I am not sure that I can intervene effectively at this point, but surely they have tartan tags north of the border. My hon. Friend makes these places sound as attractive as Grimsby without street lights. Does he agree that there is a market to tag, to survey and to incarcerate offenders, but that there is no business to reform them, which is the problem? The performance indicators for reform will not respond to the conventional levers of the usual market.

Again, apart from his point about Grimsby, my hon. Friend hits the nail on the head, and I am grateful to him for hitting all the nails that I have left standing in my harangue.

The scrapping of the reorganisation of the service is an invitation to create conflicts of interest, as I said. It is also an end to community co-operation, because the boards in effect manage community co-operation. Will a commercial organisation do that? I doubt it. The Home Office says that it will create a vibrant mixed economy in probation services locally. That is the sort of nonsense that Ministers talk when they have nothing to say.

The probation trusts will be run by businessmen who will not be able to secure local co-operation, and will not include magistrates, as the current bodies do. They will not have the same roots in the community. Their roots will be in profit and value for money. That is a deeply unattractive picture, because there will be fear, uncertainty, and a feeling of betrayal in the probation service, whose work the Government should be praising and encouraging. They should be inspecting it, too, but they should praise and encourage it because it has been so successful. Saying that it works well does not mean that it cannot be improved, but everyone agrees that it is improving. The proposal, however, is the reward that it is being given for making those efforts to improve.

The picture is so unattractive that I hope that the Minister has noticed that Scotland, the land of Rebus and substantial crime levels, has rejected the proposal in favour of community co-operation made statutory. We could and should do the same. I should add that the National Assembly for Wales does not want a bar of the proposal.

My hon. Friend the Minister has wide experience of custodial institutions; I understand that she went to Cheltenham ladies college, the potting shed of the English rose. She also has a history of violence. In exchanges about the shortening of the hours of Parliament, she threatened to break my arm. I have not told anyone that before apart from my wife, who was deeply hurt; she said that if anyone was going to break my arm for not voting for the proposals, it would be her, not the Minister. The Minister comes from that background, so why are we leaping in the dark? Surely it is not the ethos of Cheltenham ladies college to go leaping in the dark. That sounds very reprehensible.

Why are the Government opting for an untried, untested pot-pourri of confusing theories based on business efficiency? Why do they not build on the service's steady improvement instead of abandoning it? Why are they going for an untested, untried model?

The regulatory impact assessment that was published on 1 November is a disgrace to any Government that is concerned with the efficiency of the service. It is required for public consultation, but no bank would lend money on the quantifiable aspects of it. It is the shabbiest regulatory impact assessment that I have ever seen. It asserts that there will be efficiency savings of between 3 per cent. and 8.5 per cent. Where? How? It says that it will cut costs and will save £625 million. Where? How? What is the proof? Where will that saving come from? Consider the history of the private sector in saving money for the Home Office. Morrisons took over the hostels that the probation service uses and the costs have gone up by 62 per cent., yet we are told that there will be a saving from this change. The private sector also took over the management of probation premises. Their costs are up 35 per cent.

The Home Office has no experience, no effectiveness and no skill in dealing with the private sector; consider the inordinate profits being made by the tagging companies out of a fairly minor and easy-to-run area of business. What investment will be made in training under the new system? Will the emphasis be purely on profits? One cannot calculate a rate of return on a community service that is dealing with redemption; as opposed to saving people's souls, it is saving their futures in a society in which there are successes and failures. Some things are tough to achieve, and it is impossible to calculate a return rate on that kind of service, but the Government propose to do exactly that.

Is it not the case that probation officers, understandably, feel that their role is changing from agents of justice to pawns of commerce? It is tragic that that is happening in the hundredth year of their profession. We should be celebrating their successes, not waving goodbye to them in such a calculated way.

Were it not so tragic, it would be laughable, particularly because it is proposed on an intellectual basis. One cannot build a structure on a foundation as shabby as the thinking in the regulatory impact assessment. No business case has been made, so far as I can see. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will tell us. Is there a business case for this, or is it all seat of the pants stuff? Admittedly, the seat of the Home Secretary's pants is a capacious area, but if we are flying by it there has to be demonstrable support, and we need demonstrable figures to give us faith in what has been decided. All that we have is the assertion that it will cut the rate of offending by 5 per cent. That is ridiculous. Will it do so? I very much doubt it. What careful research has gone into the assessment? I hope that the Minister will try to justify it.

In conclusion, I urge the Minister not to undermine a service that is doing wonderful work. It is much improved and has adjusted successfully to the reforms imposed on it only four years ago. Its officers are servants of society and of the judicial system; they are working well with the police, the magistrates and the community. She must not put all that at risk by implementing untried, untested theories about commercial motivation, so I urge her to put redemption at the centre, not profit.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) on securing the debate. I have lost count of how many times we have debated this issue; it could be the fourth or fifth—

The sixth.

My hon. Friend says that this is the sixth occasion.

A number of years ago, we had a rational debate about how to reform the probation and prison services, integrated sentences, assessments and whatever support was required to ensure that offenders never reoffended. We also discussed how those things could be linked holistically with local authorities, social services departments and, in many instances, local primary care trusts to see what health care and other support was provided to offenders and their families.

That rational debate was led by the professionals in the field, including judges, magistrates and others in the judicial system. We also engaged with the police, prison officers and the probation service. Leading up to 2001, we were perhaps engaged in one of the most productive, rational debates on the issue for decades. It was a cross-party discussion, and a range of views were expressed about the service's performance up to that point and how we could improve it. That evidence-based discussion reflected the long experience of those in the service—as has been mentioned, the 100th anniversary is coming up—but it was also based on unemotional but committed discussion of how we served our community.

That is how the last reorganisation came about in 2001. We put together the national probation service and set up the national probation directorate. We were all committed to a multi-agency approach to tackling the problem of reoffending and to ensuring that the service was adequately resourced and based on professional, well-trained staff who were secure in the knowledge that they had the Government's support in the difficult task that they had to undertake.

That was the rational debate. What we have had since then would be farcical if, as my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby rightly said, the issue were not so serious. The Government have introduced half-baked proposals that have not been thought through and have launched new services almost monthly. I do not know how many times we have had press releases and press events to announce the launch of the National Offender Management Service. Staff have been appointed on fairly high salaries before legislation has even been passed to enable the service to be brought into operation. Services have been distributed around the country and given bizarre titles, from NOMS to ROMS to whatever.

For some reason, the process in which we engaged from 1997 to 2001 was abandoned and we went into a headlong rush, but towards what? Let us call it what it is: it is not contestability or best value that the Government have in mind, but straightforward privatisation. Probation officers and prison officers know what is coming at the end of the day. No matter how the Government dress things up and no matter what reasons they give regarding improvements to the service, we have not, as my hon. Friend said, seen any detailed analysis of the system as it now operates. We have seen no detailed research that has been accepted by the professionals in the field or by independent observers of how the system established in 2001 has operated. That is what is so disappointing about the Government's performance, and it is becoming an increasing source of anger and anguish among professionals who see the Government's proposals undermining their service.

I welcome the Home Secretary's recent publication—provided that the consultation is genuine. If it is, and we listen to the professionals in the field, we will return to a proposal based on co-operation and, as my hon. Friend said, largely on the Welsh or the Scottish model. That is a multi-agency approach that embodies local accountability and involves the people who deliver at the sharp end.

Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that despite nearly 100 years of splendid service to our local communities the probation service is too often seen as the ugly sister in the criminal justice system? It has been hugely overlooked, and the present uncertainty and confusion can only add to the demoralisation of probation officers who are doing their best in difficult circumstances.

I know that it is nearing Christmas, but I was trying to avoid as many pantomime references as I could. They are tempting, I know. I thought that the 2001 restructuring was the first step in acknowledging the significance of the role of the probation services. That is why I welcomed it. I agree that there is concern that for too long the role of the probation service has not been acknowledged and in some instances funding has not been allocated in a way that recognises the significance of that role. The 2001 restructuring addressed that to a certain extent.

In London, in particular, we went through a number of budgetary crises on an annual basis, almost like a hardy perennial, but that is now being addressed as a result of the recognition of the importance of the service. That is why we are disconcerted that that rational approach, which recognised the importance of the service, examined the need for additional resources and gained them, and recognised that we should be listening to the professionals on the front line, seems to have gone out of the window as a result of the Government's obsession with competition and their dogmatic approach that the best way to improve services is through competition and the best way to achieve competition through privatisation.

My hon. Friend referred to pantomimes. In a similar context, is this not an extreme example of the Alice in Wonderland idea of verdict first and trial later? We have had discussions about the probation service and NOMS in which the dialogue between those who are concerned about the lack of a business plan and the sundry Ministers could have been scripted by Samuel Beckett. We were always waiting for a marvellous business plan, until one one day appeared as some under-nourished, pathetic and ill-argued screen on the Home Office website. That is not the sort of business plan that we had in mind, and is that not at the heart of the problems we face?

The number of our debates reflects the lack of available information and evidence provided to Members and therefore the number of times that Members have had to call for such debates to try to extract some information from Government on the rationale for their approach. Every time we have had the debate we have exposed the fact that there is no rationale except the privatisation of the service.

I have considered the evidence provided to the Select Committee via the various professional groups that provide the service on the ground. I speak as secretary of the justice unions group. We have been meeting on a cross-party basis for nearly two years and meeting the professional providers of the service from the probation service, the Prison Officers Association and the voluntary sector to discuss the issues that they face on the ground and the reforms that they require. None supports the approach that is being taken. It is interesting what a bashing the Select Committee's evidence gives the Government's overall approach. At the same time, it is interesting that the Government are still doggedly pursuing privatisation.

If our approach were rational, we would assess the performance of the probation service. I note from evidence provided to the Select Committee that it is performing better than ever in its history. Figures for November show that breach targets were achieved in 80 per cent. of cases, orders completed in 70 per cent. of cases and offender behaviour programmes completed by 91 per cent. of targeted cases. In addition, eight out of 10 supervisees were still in contact with their probation officer after six months' supervision, and 93 per cent. of victims were contacted within the required period. That is not a system that is imploding or failing. It is a system that, as a result of Government restructuring in 2001, additional resources and professional direction is succeeding exceptionally well. I pay tribute to the service providers themselves, the probation and prison officers who are working so hard.

The Government's proposal is about privatisation. What is that motivated by? Profit-making, of course. How do people make profits in a public service or in any service, but particularly in a privatisation? They sweat the assets. How do they do that? The first asset is the work force, so pay and conditions are reduced. Where privatisation has occurred within the prison service, salary levels have been reduced. The average pay rates for prison officers are 51 per cent. greater than for their private sector counterparts. We see a reduction in pay rates overall. When one adds the value of pensions and holiday benefits to that, there can be a difference in rates of up to 70 per cent.

The difference in pay rates between private and public prisons leads to a far greater turnover in the staff at the privatised prisons. That must be bad for the service. If that develops in the probation service, it will be even worse for offenders.

My hon. Friend is right. Turnover rates are sometimes 10 times greater in private prisons than in public prisons. At the moment, a probation officer is trained for two years, in service and in various correspondence courses and additional course support. With those turnover rates, we would be left with a de-professionalised probation service. We would be left with a large number of staff who were untrained or undergoing training and never completing it. We would de-professionalise the service. There is no commitment from the private sector to stay the course over a two-year training programme to ensure that staff are adequately trained. I fear that the private sector will cream off the profits, and it will be left to the public service to invest in training to ensure that we have at least a core of trained staff providing the service itself.

My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby also mentioned how costs have increased dramatically where elements of the probation service have been privatised. Under the Morrisons contract, costs rose by 62 per cent. That is not making profits, but profiteering at the expense of the public sector. When we had this debate more than a year ago, it was not just about the increase in costs of 35 per cent., but about the lunacies and inadequacies of the management of premises. There were classic examples of how many private sector staff it took to change a light bulb in one of those establishments. Bizarrely, staff were sent more than 100 miles for a simple maintenance operation.

The other issue that has been mentioned—lack of independence in the privatised probation service—will undermine confidence in the service. When profit becomes the motive, independence of judgment is often driven out, as we have seen in other private sector operations and in other privatisations. No matter how good the probation officers are at their job, no matter how committed they are, they will come under private sector pressure to maintain and maximise profits rather than to fulfil the role that they would have had in the public sector.

The issue of local accountability is increasingly worrying. Local authorities will be inadequately represented on local trusts or boards. There will be no requirement for judges or even magistrates to be represented. That breaks a link between the provision of justice and local views and attitudes that we have had for nearly 500 years. The link between local magistrates and how offenders are dealt with in their local area will be broken.

The Government have prayed in aid the role of the voluntary sector. We have met with the voluntary sector throughout the process. It has the same fears as probation officers that they will be squeezed out of the system by the nature of the contracts that will be awarded to the private sector, that they will not have the resources to be able to compete and that they will come under pressure to provide services in a way that they do not feel appropriate, given their role to date. As much as probation officers themselves, the voluntary sector fears for the future of the service, and it is equally dedicated to maintaining the service in the public sector.

I urge the Government to think again even at this late stage. Let us consult our colleagues in Scotland and Wales on how the multi-agency approach is bedding down and operating there. Let us have further consultation with the staff through their trade unions to ensure that we establish a service based on what the professionals tell us about what is needed, including the necessary investment and how the service best operates in the public sector, co-operating with the voluntary sector, to achieve the best results.

I fear for the future of the service. I feel that we are throwing out a 100-year tradition that has served this country well. Of course there have been mistakes in the past, but there have been mistakes in all services. I warn the House that if we privatise this service, we will not have seen anything yet. There will be a backlash against the proposals if they are implemented in our communities, given that the private sector fails those communities when it comes to securing justice, peace, security and the end of reoffending. I shall encourage as many hon. Members as possible to vote against proposals if legislation is ever introduced in the House. I also give this commitment: if these iniquitous proposals provoke industrial action among probation officers or prison officers, I will join them on the picket lines to oppose them.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) for introducing the debate. In the light of the consultation paper that came out recently, it is important that we have this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) says that we have had six debates on the National Offender Management Service. We have certainly had five or six, but one thing that has been true of all the debates is that they have taken place in Westminster Hall. What we have not had, and what we should have had, on the proposed major restructuring of the service is a debate in the main Chamber of the House of Commons.

I suspect that one consequence of having the debates as Adjournment debates in Westminster Hall is that quite a number of hon. Members are not fully aware of what is happening and what is proposed. When they do find out, the Government will find that there is considerable opposition to what is happening. Previously, when a major rally was held in Central Hall Westminster by the probation officers' union—the National Association of Probation Officers—many hon. Members were contacted by their local probation services and they then gave clear support to those services in what they were saying. Exactly the same thing will happen if a Bill is introduced in the new year and we have a debate in the main Chamber of the House of Commons.

As has been said, it is difficult to understand the rationale for what is happening. We are dealing with a service that was reorganised only in 2001. Among the major reasons that the Government gave at that time for the reorganisation and the creation of the national probation service was that the existing structures were fragmented and unaccountable. That was the argument for creating the present structure. The consultation paper issued before the 2001 reorganisation talked about having too many autonomous units free to deploy resources from central Government, limited accountability and a lack of democratic accountability at local level. It was also argued that fragmentation inhibited efficiency and did not provide value for money.

Having said all that in 2001 and created the national service, the Government now seem to be going in exactly the opposite direction. One would assume that if a service had been restructured in 2001 and it was thought necessary four years later to come back and do something else, there would be shoals of evidence for the failure of the 2001 restructuring, and of the service not having performed or delivered. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington pointed out, all the statistics say that the probation service is performing better than it has for many years. If that is happening, what is the rationale behind tearing up the structure that has been in existence for only four years?

During those four years, many other changes have happened, which have had to be coped with. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 changed sentencing, with community sentences and the new custodial sentences, and that has added a considerable amount to the probation case load. Even so, there is no evidence that the probation service has not met all its targets. In the most recently published report, the national probation directorate said that the results were better than at any stage since the national probation service was created, and they were expected to get better still.

Nobody is suggesting that everything that needs to be done to deal with offenders has to be done by the probation service. There is already co-operative work going on, involving the voluntary, not-for-profit sector. Many of the current drugs rehabilitation projects are run through voluntary sector organisations. However, if we go down the road of contestability, it will be a problem not only for the probation service, but for the voluntary, not-for-profit sector, which will be in the same business of facing risks, and needing spare capacity to make bids. Some smaller voluntary sector organisations have told us that they are concerned that, after the changes that are now envisaged, they will be squeezed out of work that they can currently do with local probation wards and services.

Nobody is arguing that there should not be a multi-agency approach; nobody has a problem with the idea of partnership between a range of statutory and voluntary organisations. Nobody has any difficulties with that. However, the issue of contestability destroys that co-operative working, and some of the arguments that have been advanced about the need to bring in privatisation—because that is what it is—have cited what has happened in the Prison Service, and have argued that the effect of privatisation in the Prison Service has been to drive up standards. If one looks at where privatisation has happened in prison administration in the last 10 to 15 years, the private sector has only ever had brand new prisons to manage. It has never had to face dealing with Victorian prisons with serious overcrowding, or with the prisons that have had the biggest problems. It is the public sector that has raised the standards in prisons with the most serious problems, not the private sector. By and large, the private sector has had the easy bits of the Prison Service to deal with.

There are now examples of the private sector confronting a problem that it is unable to deal with, and then bringing in the public sector to handle it. I give the example in my constituency of Harmondsworth detention centre, where there was a major riot with an associated fire. It was the private sector that withdrew, and public sector workers—Prison Officers Association members—then had to deal with the problem.

That is a common pattern. Public sector services are being privatised and when things go wrong, it is almost always in the end the public sector that ends up picking up the tab and dealing with the problem. I shall say a word or two about the latest consultation paper—the paper that was issued recently, entitled "Restructuring Probation to Reduce Reoffending." The use of that title makes the assertion and assumption that restructuring probation is necessary to reduce reoffending. A number of issues arise from that consultation paper. I am sure that other hon. Members will have seen the response to the consultation made by the Probation Boards Association, the national body that represents the local probation boards, which are currently the employers of probation staff. Incidentally, that raises another issue: if we go down the road of contestability, who will be the employers of the current probation staff?

>The probation boards welcomed quite a bit of what the Government said earlier: they welcomed the idea of putting the prevention of reoffending at the centre of what they do and the idea of packages of support and intervention for every offender. No one has issues with such aims and objectives. However, they point out that although the consultation paper has been issued, the Cabinet Office code of practice is not being followed. That is acknowledged in the introduction to the consultation paper—the argument made for not following the code is that the 12-week consultation period is not needed because

"we have conducted previous consultation exercises on the National Offender Management Service and are now hoping to introduce the legislation needed to give effect to these proposals as soon as possible."

However, as the Probation Boards Association points out, a significant change is being proposed, and the document returns to some issues that we thought had gone away.

It was only in July last year that the then Minister for Prisons and Probation concluded that we should keep the existing probation boards, at least for the foreseeable future. We all thought at the time that that meant that the probation boards would stay for some time but, a year and a bit later, we are back again discussing the suggestion that the 42 probation boards will be abolished. As we have all been saying in this debate, the overriding test that should be applied is: how will these changes have a positive impact on the degree of reoffending and why, and what is the evidence that they will do so?

If we dismantle the probation boards as suggested, that will remove the local links that exist—it will disengage local communities, the local judiciary and police forces from those links. In the present structure there is coterminosity of services and, particularly since the restructuring of some police services is under discussion, one would have thought that this matter might be better left alone until some of those decisions have been made.

It seems to me that the proposals threaten an end to publicly provided probation services in the form in which we have known them. I think that if the Government introduce legislation to abolish the probation boards and to restructure the probation services, they will find that many more hon. Members will be interested and concerned about that issue than are present this morning. That is what happened the last time that this issue was raised at a national level.

I hope that before we go too far down this road we will stop and think again and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington said, listen to what the professionals—the people who work in the service, who deliver the service on the ground and who run the service through the probation boards—are actually saying, because none of those people supports the proposals. I urge Ministers to think again about the route that they are taking.

I am delighted to be able to make a brief contribution. I am moved to do so by two things: by the tour de force of my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), and by the fact that I have always had a high regard for the Minister, about whose educational background I know more, thanks to my hon. Friend, than I did at the start of the debate.

The Home Office has form on this issue: the Government have suggested in recent times that forensic science and young offenders' institutions should be opened up to market contestability. But it stepped back slightly on those fields of endeavour, and I hope they will do so in respect of the probation service.

I repeat the question that I asked my hon. Friend the Minister last week at Home Office questions, which she may remember: do the Government think that any part of the management and apprehension of offenders has such a strong public service element that it should not be open to contestability and marketisation? I paraphrase my hon. Friend's reply, which was that as long as there was a public service element in the provision, she was indifferent about who was the provider.

There must come a point at which the public service element of something is so strong that all parties recoil from its being provided by a private company. I hope the Home Office would rule out plans for market contestability in the case of a magistrates clerk, a judge or a police officer, and the probation service is not very far from those core elements of our judicial system that have such a strong public service element. That there is not a well developed market and a rush of private providers coming forward to manage offenders suggests that there are some things in which the public service element is so strong that that is where the line should be drawn.

Across Government, the only model being provided is of the public sector being a commissioner and being indifferent to who the provider is, but time and again Ministers have to step back because of opposition, as they have had to do as a result of the situation in primary care trusts in the health service. I hope that my hon. Friend will do the same in respect of the probation service.

I want to add a little more force to some of the points made by other hon. Members. It could be said that the broad issue has been subject to consultation before, and the Government's defence is that a 12-week consultation period is therefore unnecessary, but these proposals are so radically different from anything that has been consulted on before that it would have shown a measure of good faith to have had a full, 12-week consultation.

In north Yorkshire, it is feared that there will no longer be a locally commissioned service and that what we have will be decided by regional or national bureaucrats. People are worried that there will be no local community or judicial input in the remaining local boards and trusts and that input will come mainly from business.

I shall be fascinated to hear what the two Opposition parties say about the politics of the proposal. If they announced that they would oppose the marketisation and privatisation of the probation service, they would kill the proposal and provide a great public service.

From my humble position on the Back Benches, which is likely to be permanent, I say to my hon. Friend that there are two ways to be a junior Minister: you can either keep your head down, carry out the brief and take instructions from whichever bright young thing happens to be in No. 10 Downing street, or you can exercise some political judgment. That is what I hope the Home Office has done in respect of the forensic science service, although I am not quite sure; I trust that it is pausing for reflection.

I have enough regard for the Minister to believe that she will not get into a political situation in which the Labour Government carry large numbers of measures only with support from the majority Opposition party, but that is her only hope of getting measures on this matter through the House. I hope that such is the descriptive potential of the proposal, and such is the feeling that a line must be drawn somewhere between the public and the private sector, that the Opposition parties will say today that they oppose it. I also hope that my hon. Friend will stage a stylish and managed retreat.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) on securing the debate. His instinct for the ethos of girls' public schools is surprisingly spot-on. Cheltenham ladies college is, of course, in my constituency, and I can tell him that the researcher, Elizabeth Poston, who prepared me for this debate, was recently at that college and is just as alarmed as he is by some of the proposals. Perhaps the Minister is out of kilter on this issue.

I do not doubt the Government's sincerity in wanting to reduce reoffending and crime, which are critical issues, but that makes it even more important and critical that we get this right. The Government's proposals run the risk of making some of the classic errors of new Labour projects, such as seeking solutions in restructuring rather than in quality of work. Other examples include their short-termism, their naivety about business—I say that as someone who has a background in both business and the voluntary sector—and their instinct for centralisation or, at the very least, delocalisation.

I shall take those issues one by one. First, I shall address the practice of seeking solutions in reorganisation. I made this point in a surprisingly similar debate on police restructuring. Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary was supposedly there to improve the performance of constabularies, yet the solution appeared instead to be in restructuring. Similarly, the probation service has Her Majesty's inspectorate of probation, the purpose of which—in case the Minister has forgotten—includes contributing to improved performance in the NPS, NOMS and youth offending teams, and contributing to sound policy and effective service delivery by providing advice. Perhaps the Minister can tell us: has HMIP so failed in that duty that we have to abolish the existing probation service, or has it recommended the change? I know that the Carter report suggested it, but has there been any recommendation from the inspectorate that these changes should take place? I trawled its website this morning and found no such recommendation.

There are better ways to try to improve reoffending rates, such as the better enforcement of licences, making sure that breaches in community service orders are more rigorously pursued and better education. The National Audit Office recently delved into the area of reoffending, and it, too, failed to recommend any kind of restructuring on this scale, but recommended considering education. It said that it is clear that overcrowding in prisons is disrupting attempts at reducing reoffending through education, and recommended shorter modular education courses that can be standardised across establishments to minimise disruption. It also suggested arranging for relevant education records to be transferred when a prisoner is moved, or introducing evening or weekend courses in local prisons to increase learning opportunities for prisoners. We know that the high level of functional illiteracy and lack of numeracy among prisoners contributes to reoffending. The NAO accepts that link, yet we are not giving time for its recommendations to be accepted and acted on. Therefore, we are rushing into a restructuring solution.

The social exclusion unit—another Government body—has identified housing stability as an important issue in patterns of reoffending. There is the possibility of looking at more joined-up operations without this kind of restructuring between youth offending teams, the police, the National Offender Management Service, local authorities, and voluntary sector services such as drug rehabilitation services. There are even simple solutions such as the branding and presentation of information and the way in which services are presented, and the recent example of community service teams being rebranded as community payback teams, which is welcome, I suppose, if it is about trying to emphasise the importance of the victim's role in community rehabilitation and community service provision. There are lots of things that the Government could consider, but they have opted instead for a structural solution, as they are doing with the police. There is an equal chance that that may go wrong.

The second issue that I shall address is short-termism. Many hon. Members have mentioned that the probation service in its current form was put in place as recently as 2001; indeed, NOMS was set up only last year. We have the model of the health service in which primary care groups were set up and were, in theory, being piloted, but were abolished before they had even finished their pilots. We then had the primary care trusts, which were established only in 2001, but they are now being abolished and restructured on a grand scale. The Countryside Agency was set up and abolished by the same Government. We have the repeated terrorist legislation—every time there is a major atrocity we seem to produce fresh anti-terrorism legislation urgently. The Government's knee-jerk reaction is to attempt to tackle each new alarming set of statistics or findings through restructuring or new legislation. Instead, they should allow the reforms that they have already introduced, and which we may support in many respects, the time to bed in. They should wait to see whether those reforms are working and then evaluate them properly. Several hon. Members have mentioned lack of evaluation.

I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) and to other hon. Members for missing the early part of the debate.

The regulatory impact assessment, which I am sure the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) has read, says that the restructuring of the probation service is a positive move. Does he agree that, when one picks away at it, the regulatory impact assessment does not say clearly why it is a positive move and why there will be cost savings?

The hon. Gentleman makes a valuable point. The lack of thorough evaluation is a major factor.

My third point concerns new Labour's naivety in business. It has a breathless enthusiasm for business terminology. We have heard the Home Secretary's comment about the "vibrant mixed economy", as if that were appropriate for a probation service. There is a statement in "Restructuring Probation to Reduce Re-offending" about winning business from the Secretary of State. One can almost sense his enthusiasm for playing big business.

I have a business background, and markets operate well where clear consumer pressure operates. Consumer markets operate on several different levels. They operate not only on price, but on people's experience of the product, on their perceptions of quality, on brand loyalty and, these days, on the ethics of the product. Without those consumer pressures, markets are reduced to being about contracts for price. Cost becomes the only significant factor.

Similarly, pseudo-markets in the NHS or the railways have not really operated as the Government expected them to because an individual passenger or patient cannot choose a particular rail company at a particular moment. They must take the train to London that turns up on the platform, just as they must be treated in the accident and emergency department to which they are sent. They do not have consumer choice in that sense. Likewise, offenders and victims will not be able to choose another probation service provider when they come to use the service or attempt to influence it.

This is a pseudo-market; it is not a market in the true sense. The market will not operate in the way in which the Government expect it to. I am not ideologically committed to state provision, but the business approach is not always right. Each case needs careful evaluation and thought.

As the hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) pointed out, even in business some core competencies are not outsourced. One must ask what the Government's core competencies are. The probation service would seem to me to be pretty close to being a core competency. Moreover, a new business approach would not be launched without a robust business plan and without plenty of evaluation having been undertaken. I have known plenty of large companies that would spend 10 years evaluating a new product or approach before launching it on the market. The Government could learn something from such an approach.

Finally, on centralisation, which I would call "de-localisation", my constituency is facing less-local hospital children's services and planning powers and a less-local ambulance trust, fire control centre, police force and primary care trust. We even face a less-local strategic health authority, and the probation service is now to be added to that list. In the end, the provision of probation services in my constituency will depend on the whim of the Secretary of State. Either it is a huge coincidence that all the evidence about all those different services happens to point in the same direction or some other underlying reason is behind the Government's rush to de-localise services. That reason may be more about saving money.

Hon. Members and the National Association of Probation Officers have listed many practical problems. A conflict of interest arises when private companies advise courts on sentences and parole decisions, because those companies must weigh up their commercial interest and a duty to their shareholders against the public interest. There is the problem of sensitive personal data on offenders and victims being handed to multiple data processors. There is an impact on youth offending teams, on police and on local social services, which may need to deal with multiple providers of probation services in their area. We must also consider the impact of the different cultures of the police and probation service within the National Offender Management Service, which has not yet had time to bed in.

There is an overall recurring theme of restructuring, rather than examination of the underlying problems and attempts to improve the quality of work. There is short-termism in restructuring before proper evaluation. There is naivety about business provision and business terminology, and there is delocalisation.

In Scotland, in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, Labour has had to find a different approach. After much careful thought, a different route has been taken. I suggest to the Minister that, instead of risking more crime and, possibly, more lost lives, she and her Government should, for once, think again, take time, take advice and take the right decision.

It is a great pleasure to congratulate the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) on securing this debate. He said what a good job the probation service had done, and he provided evidence to support that. That has been a consistent theme this morning; my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone) agreed with him, and so do I. The hon. Member for Great Grimsby remarked on the process of relentless change based on assertions without evidence, which seems to be the underlying motor of the changes that are proposed to the probation service. I was amused by his flights of fancy on the meaning of correctional services. I should report, for the record, that the hon. Gentleman is wearing red socks, if not a red tag.

I shall not take too much time because there is a history of Ministers not fully addressing the issues in answer to hon. Members who speak. The hon. Member for Crosby (Mrs. Curtis-Thomas) remarked on 6 April that, during an earlier debate secured by the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor), concerns were not adequately addressed by the Minister. My hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) remarked that a letter dated 24 March 2005 did not fully answer all the questions raised in a debate on 16 March. Those are two examples; one in which a Minister had not been able to answer during the debate, and another in which a Minister was not able to answer in writing after the debate.

It is worth noting that, in the previous debate that took place on this matter, the Minister spoke for seven columns in Hansard, and only in the fifth column did he begin to address the points made by the hon. Member for Crosby. I cannot say whether this applies to the Under-Secretary, but some Ministers seem to take up too much time with bland and uncontroversial reiteration and never get on to the meat of the matter. That is why I do not propose to spend too much time on my remarks.

There are a number of issues to address, the most consistent of which, in previous debates, has been the disfranchisement of those who work for the probation service and the failure to adequately consult before implementing changes proposed by the Government. I shall not repeat those details, which were adequately set out on 6 April. However, despite ministerial promises of flexibility, the results of consultation always seem to end up much as they start.

I conclude that, regardless of responses from Ministers—among them the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), who said that integration was best achieved at regional and local level—not all Ministers have enough clout to dissuade the national offender management system or civil servants from following a course that has been predetermined, presumably, somewhere further up the line. The hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan) suggested that bright young things in No. 10 may be responsible for that. There will be brighter young things in No. 10 in the very near future, but I am sure that they will take much more account of the requirements and wishes of those who work in or are served by the public service.

Something about the consultation that surprised me was a letter of 7 November from the director of probation at the national probation service to NPS chief officers and chairs and national probation directorate regional managers, which told them:

"I am writing to you formally to remind you of your responsibilities in your roles as statutory office holders".

The letter continued:

"You should not engage in lobbying activity, you must not promulgate misinformation (e.g. contestability is privatisation) and you should avoid any action that might suggest that you are encouraging staff to lobby against government policy."

Thos instructions are being given to those who know most about the operation of the probation service. The Minister has some explaining to do about why it is unacceptable for those who know most to criticise the Government's policy on restructuring the probation service, when the Home Secretary invited those who know most to criticise the Opposition's policy on sentencing.

Promises have been sought in the past, and many either have not been given or have been given in such a form that they are not reliable. One of the most significant is the one about commissioning at local, not regional, level. Baroness Scotland recently put out a press release announcing that the measures outlined today would transfer the duty to provide probation services to the Home Secretary. He would then assign to national and regional offender managers, acting on his behalf, the task of contracting with a range of providers—public, private or voluntary and community—for the supply of probation services. There seems to be complete confusion between the expectations that Ministers—not least a former Home Secretary—have repeated time and again, that the service will be a local one, and statements now coming from the Home Office that it will be regional and national. Unless we get clarity over the way in which the service will be provided, no one will trust it.

A second area on which more information is needed is the timetable for the remaining contestability. Of course we need some of the changes, because prisons do not plug in with probation services, because people are released from prison half way through courses and because there is churning of prisoners, who are moved from one prison to another regardless. I was on the Education Committee and I saw exactly the same kind of things as those for which the National Audit Office has provided evidence. However, although I incline to favour contestability in privatisation, the Minister must concede that the explanations of why it is the right solution in the present case are unconvincing.

Finally, I should like the Minister to say more about evaluation. It is evident that inadequate evaluation has been carried out. Indeed, the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) cited the restructuring that took place in 2001. He said that it was designed to prevent fragmentation and to promote localism, yet there has been no evaluation of that restructuring to say "Yes, it works" or "No, it doesn't work". Instead, as the hon. Member for Great Grimsby said, someone behind the grey walls of another place seems to be committed to a national structure.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) said, we will support the Government when they are doing what is right. If and when we get the opportunity—I should still like to know when that will be—we would have no concern about voting for a well-worked out Bill that proposed a sensible solution. As I said, market testing can be effective, and contestability can drive standards up as well as, or instead of, driving costs down. However, there is no evidence for the cost savings that are said to be the consequence of the proposal.

The Government do not seem to have settled on their arguments. Even when they are doing what is right, we cannot support them if they are doing it in such a ham-fisted way. That is not to say that the situation is irretrievable. It is retrievable if the Minister listens to what is being said by hon. Members on both sides. I hope that she will listen and, more important, I hope that she will answer.

I have written on my notes, "I would like to congratulate my hon. Friend", meaning the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell). I sometimes wonder whether I really want to congratulate that person. I do now, because I am glad that we have been able to discuss such an important issue. However, do I thank that person for giving hon. Members on both sides the opportunity to patronise me, especially about where I went to school? No, not particularly. However, we have had a real insight into the views of the different political parties on the fundamental role of the probation service, which is to protect the public and to reduce reoffending.

My hon. Friends seem concerned that we should build on, maintain and preserve the progress that the probation service has made to date. The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) muddled me; he seemed keen to praise such initiatives as community payback but then railed against the Government for delocalising services. Nevertheless, every contribution to the debate has rightly emphasised the importance of the reform of probation in 2001, which led to a national probation service and drove up standards.

I join in the congratulations that many hon. Members have expressed on the service's progress in enforcement. Some 43 per cent. of sentences were enforced in 2001; the figure is now than 92 per cent. Such progress is important, although where we started from was in some ways depressing.

The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner), who represents the official Opposition, gave us an insight into how they plan to deal with their policy vacuum; they will not say what they think but instead will try to stir it to see whether that helps. They are doing so by discussing the role of Ministers rather than their policies. It was entertaining, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but I would prefer to deal with the issues raised by my hon. Friends; what are we trying to do, why are we not building on the achievements made to date, and will it break the system?

We set out clearly what we wanted to achieve in the Carter report. The objective of reducing reoffending is not particularly controversial. We want to achieve it by giving an offender manager the clear role of managing the sentence of an offender; and that should be backed up by intervention.

It is striking that we have invested to deliver that. The improvements that hon. Members referred to were achieved because we made resources available. In 1997, the probation budget was £439 million. At that time, the enforcement target was met in less than half the number of cases. The budget for the current year is £874 million, a real-terms increase of 55 per cent, and the number of staff has increased from 14,000 to 20,000. I give those figures because, among other things, I want to make it clear to my hon. Friends that we do not intend to chuck the service out with the bath water, as they imply. Nor do we seek to make massive savings. Our concern is to ensure that the improvements that have been made are built on.

We must also ensure that we make real progress in reducing reoffending. We have made some progress, but not enough. Our target is to reduce reoffending by 10 per cent., but at the current rate of progress, there is a real risk that we will not achieve that. There is a sense among my colleagues that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I would not say that our probation services are "broke", but I would say that the improvement made to date is not the most that we can achieve.

There is a real opportunity for us to make greater improvements if we manage to separate offender management from interventions and identify more clearly the outcomes that we want so that we can make another change rather like the one that we made in 2001. The driver for change should not be the way in which we have always done things around here; it should be the ambition to do things much better.

The Minister says that this is not about sticking to the way in which we have always done things. We have, however, been doing things this way only since 2001. Is she not worried that one of the contributors to the success that she claims could be the presence in the current structure of local probation boards, which, as her proposals make clear, will cease to exist in their current form?

The hon. Gentleman has no evidence that local probation boards are the most important, or even a substantial, contributor, although they have certainly played a very important role. Let us be clear; local probation boards make a contribution partly because of their coterminosity with the police, a function that my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) mentioned, which has been very useful.

Another reason why we have been able to improve some of these services is that the local criminal justice boards have worked in partnership with probation officers, with the police, with the judiciary and others to improve offender management.

As the hon. Member for Cheltenham knows, we are also considering the future structure of the police force. As my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow rightly said, that is one of the challenges that we face. People have urged me to listen, and I agree that we must get that structure right.

There is no doubt of the benefits derived from police forces and probation services being able to work in partnership. One has only to consider community sentences and prolific offenders. There is already collaboration between police officers in basic command units and people who work in probation, and that collaboration extends to some voluntary sector partners. I know, for instance, of voluntary sector initiatives in my constituency that work with offenders and are making a contribution. We also need to get that sort of very local partnership right, and we are open to suggestions about how to do that.

Very briefly, is the Minister assuring us that any changes to the probation service will be timed to be made exactly when changes to the police borders are made?

My hon. Friend knows that I cannot give that precise assurance, but I hope I have convinced him that I strongly believe that we want to move these things forward in a parallel way so that we can reap some of the real benefits of coterminosity and working in partnership, which have not been emphasised sufficiently in the debate.

The patience taught at Cheltenham ladies college is commendable and essential for this debate. My hon. Friend does not seem to have grasped our point. We all want the improvement that has taken place with the creation of a national service to continue, but we are arguing about the best way of advancing that. The improvement has been achieved on the basis of the local running of the service, of co-operation and of a community service serving the courts. The Minister asserts that the service can be improved further by bringing in commercial briefs and contestability. Can she prove that?

Until some of it has happened it is difficult to prove precisely how any initiative will operate. At present some 20 probation hostels and other similar provisions are provided, not by the probation service but by voluntary sector providers. Those play a critical role in public protection. In addition, there is provision in the prison service. Hon. Members have referred to that and pointed out how the privately run prisons are largely modern prisons. That is true. Nevertheless the advantages that they have introduced in the way we run our prisons, in terms not just of the physical space of prisons but of the relationship between prison staff and inmates, have significantly improved the decency agenda in our prisons.

That is not something that everyone predicted would happen as a result of introducing the private sector in prisons, but it has been an important result which has had an impact on the culture of the public as well as the private prison service. It has helped to make our prisons more effective. We believe that the best way for the public interest to be served is to identify what needs to be done, the functions that we expect the probation service to fulfil and the standards we expect. We then must look at the best way that that can be achieved. That might be to invite voluntary, private and charitable organisations to play a role. They already do to some extent. Their role has been kept quite small and frankly needs to be much bigger.

It might be achieved through the private sector which has introduced the more efficient use of technology in supervising offenders. That is not universally efficient and not every change has always been excellent in all respects. That is true of any major public sector reform. There is no doubt that some of the savings that we have been able to make by introducing, for example, tagging on bail have enabled us to run a safer service to protect the public at less public expense.

Why do I want to save that public money? It is not to reduce the spending on this facility but because I believe that we need to reinvest it in further initiatives to improve public protection. The best way to improve public protection is to reduce reoffending further. We have made progress on that, but it has been at a snail's pace. It is quite clear that community sentences—

Order. The next issue that requires our attention is the funding of children's hospices.

I am delighted to have secured the debate, because the hospice movement does a fantastic job of backing up the health service by providing vital palliative care and relieving the pressures on families and carers. Children's hospices are a crucial, albeit relatively new element of that care; as the Minister will know, the first children's hospice was opened only 22 years ago, in 1983, and there are now 38 throughout the country. Children's hospices play a vital role in providing respite care and palliative care for vulnerable and ill young children. None the less, there is a problem.

I pay tribute to the thousands of people throughout the country who devote their time and energies to raising money to run children's hospices. As the Minister and my hon. Friends will know, running a children's hospice is not a cheap business; the level, quality and cost of providing such care are immense, and people are fundraising day in, day out, through efforts small and large, to ensure that the good work that hospices do can continue.

In that respect, I pay tribute also to The Sun and its online campaign "Help sick kids". The Sun has linked up with Somerfield in helping to raise funding for children's hospices to the level of that for adult hospices. It is heartening to see that many people in public life have signed up to the campaign, including Sharon Osbourne, Dame Kelly Holmes, Gary Lineker and Barbara Windsor. That is a plus, because it will not only raise the profile of the children's hospice movement, but be a stimulus to raising money. At least 8,000 people have so far pledged their support for what is a relatively new campaign.

What, however, is the problem? Over the past 22 years, children's hospices have evolved significantly, and, as I said, we now have 38 of them. They provide a range of care and support services to meet families' needs. Equally importantly, they provide those services when families need them. In 2004, the Government published their 10-year national service framework for children, young people and maternity services to support the implementation of the every child matters programme. The key principles of that guidance are that care must follow the child; families need choice over where their children are cared for; and respite care is a crucial ingredient, which should be seen as part of general provision, rather than as a separate service, so that we have a holistic approach and an integrated service that meets the needs of carers and their families.

Children's hospices have a crucial role to play in advancing those aims, but the problem that faces them, even more than adult hospices, is funding. Whereas adult hospices receive just under 40 per cent. of their day-to-day funding from central Government, children's hospices, rather amazingly, receive just under 5 per cent. on average. As everyone will appreciate, that gap is significant. Equally importantly, it shows the mountain that voluntary fundraisers have to climb in raising the funding that children's hospices need to make ends meet and continue providing care.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) on having secured the debate.

I know from Cransley hospice in my constituency, which looks after adults, how difficult it is to raise enough money to provide all the care that is required, despite the fact that, as an adult hospice, it receives 40 per cent. of its funding. It must be nearly impossible for children's hospices, which get as little as 5 per cent., to meet the targets that they have set themselves.

I know that my hon. Friend has a close interest in the well-being of his local hospice, and does tremendous work in supporting it. He makes a valid point, and reflects the experiences of many hon. Members and their constituents. The situation is critical, and that is one of the reasons why I was so keen to seek this debate. I wanted to bring home to the Minister, if he is not already aware of them, the sheer pressures and problems facing children's hospices in particular—but it is not unique to them—in raising the money to make ends meet.

In my region, East Anglia—if we take that to include the northern part of Essex—there are three children's hospices: in Ipswich, Milton near Cambridge, and Quidenham in Norfolk. In south Essex, including my constituency, we are fortunate in having a fantastic children's hospice, Little Havens. It is close to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink), but it serves the area up to mid-Essex, including Chelmsford. Their problem is that they receive significantly less funding from state sources than the adult hospices, so they have tremendous difficulty in raising sufficient money to meet the inexorable increase in costs that they must meet if they are to survive.

I suspect that nobody in this Room would disagree that for those children who, sadly, have advanced progressive illnesses our objective must be to provide the highest possible quality health care services, tailored to individual needs. That is what the providers want to be able to offer, and what ill children and their families deserve to receive. However, hospices are, unfortunately, chronically underfunded by the state. The NHS has relied heavily on the good will and charitable funding of the hospice movement. That inequality needs to be addressed, and the taxpayers' contribution to hospice services increased—in the case of children's hospices, greatly increased.

While, thankfully, the number of children and young people diagnosed with life-limiting illnesses is relatively small, those who have terminal conditions are surviving for much longer than was the case in the past. However, the current provision of palliative care services in no way reflects that; it has not been able to adapt sufficiently to meet the challenge, as we all hoped that it would. Children's hospice provision is particularly underfunded compared with that for adults. That is why I plead with the Minister to listen carefully to the messages of this debate, and to seek to ensure that something is done to rectify what is seen by many as an incomprehensible situation.

In 2000, the Government made available through the big lottery fund some funds for children's palliative care. Why should lottery funds be used to fund children's hospices and palliative care? Surely, funding should come from central Government, at least to the same degree that it does for adult palliative care. Back in 1988, I proposed a ten-minute rule Bill that would have set up a national lottery, the proceeds of which would have gone to funding health care. That would have been additional money, not a means of allowing the Government to cut their contribution by the amount that the lottery raised. It is ironic that, root and branch, Labour Members and Labour shadow Ministers strongly opposed that concept at the time, saying that it was entirely wrong that a lottery should provide funding for the health service, because funding was the duty of the state through the tax system. They said that if that happened, Governments would be tempted to use the money that was raised from a lottery for the health service and to cut the amount that the Treasury would make available to it.

My hon. Friend makes a good point. It was very prescient of him to propose that legislation some years ago. Does he not agree that what has happened with funding of hospices breaches two of the major tenets of the lottery when it was set up in 1994? First, it breaches the tenet of additionality—that the lottery should not be a substitute for mainstream funding from the public purse, and secondly, it breaches the tenet that it should be at arm's length because, as my hon. Friend said, the Government closely influence the causes funded by the new lottery.

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. He is absolutely right. He has identified a sad contradiction between the rhetoric and the actions of the Government. Frequently the rhetoric sounds fine but, sadly, when it comes to implementation of that rhetoric through action, it can be a very different thing. My hon. Friend gives a powerful example of one case in which what the Government say is not what they do, which is to be deplored.

The money from the big lottery fund runs out in April 2006, and there are currently no plans to make any more cash available through that sourcing. Perhaps, as with the three-year announcement of public spending, that does not mean that the Government will not continue to provide funding from that source after April 2006. However, to the best of my knowledge, no categorical assurance has been given. Given that the Minister has been sitting in the debate shaking his head in a negative way, I hope that he will be able to reassure us that the Government will continue to provide that source of funding to the hospice movement. I am sure that he will do so because it would be good news and it is systematic of this Government that they are more than happy to announce and sometimes re-announce good news.

If there is to be a good-news announcement during the debate, which I will warmly welcome, will the Minister temper that good news with an explanation of why he thinks it is justified for the Government to rely on funding from a lottery source for that sort of financial aid to a crucial area of health care, rather than using that lottery funding as additional to the amount that the Government have given? It seems to most people that the Government are using the lottery to reduce the contribution: that they are making up the shortfall through the lottery rather than maintaining high levels of Government funding and then topping that up from the lottery as a bonus.

I hope that my own local children's hospice, which is also the hospice that serves the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess), who is equally involved and active on their behalf, will benefit from such continued funding. Whatever money the Little Havens children's hospice may have received in the past does not take away from the fact that it currently receives only 2 per cent. of its £1.6 million costs per annum from Government funding sources. The Minister will see from that that 98 per cent. of that £1.6 million must be raised from other sources to ensure that the hospice can continue to do the fantastic work that it does.

In that respect, I make another plea to the Minister regarding a problem that applies both to children's and adult hospices. They have to negotiate with their primary care trusts for funding. In principle, we support the philosophy behind PCTs—that 75 per cent. of health funding is given to a local organisation, staffed and manned by local people, which can identify local health needs and distribute the money to provide health care in the area.

The trouble is that many hospices, especially children's hospices, because there are fewer of them, have to deal with several PCTs, usually individually, to secure funding through that stream. That is time-wasting, cumbersome, bureaucratic and difficult. Without compromising the independent nature of PCTs, I urge the Minister to ascertain whether there is anything that he can do, through the Department of Health, to get PCTs in respect of adult and children's services to unite and provide one forum for negotiations for hospice funding, rather than hospices having to go through the burdensome procedure every year of approaching each PCT to secure funding.

It would also be of great benefit to children's hospices if the Government could announce a three-year rather than a year-by-year, programme of funding, as they have done in other areas of public spending such as general health and education. A three-year programme gives greater security and the ability to plan for the future. Like practitioners in the health and education services, I welcome that excellent system because of its clarity and transparency and because it gives those services greater ability to plan over a longer period. Under the old system, the services found out only a few months before the beginning of a financial year how much money they would get, which caused uncertainty and disruption until the money was announced.

I would like more to be done about the provision of palliative care in children's hospices and for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence further to develop standards in health and social care. I support the continued roll-out of the gold standards framework in palliative care, but the NHS desperately needs adequate and appropriate resources to deliver such standards. I estimate that the cost of delivering palliative care services is likely to be identified by NICE as requiring an additional £40 million funding a year for hospices and approximately £60 million for other palliative care services.

I want to see a more cohesive and community-based approach to palliative care and new initiatives to be engendered that provide care in a range of new and innovative settings. Partnerships should be encouraged between local NHS bodies, health and social care providers and the voluntary sector to harness the expertise of professionals to provide care-based quality standards. By allowing money to follow the patient, the patient should have the right to choose the place in which they, their families and their carers would most like to be placed.

Hospices have a vital role to play in palliative care—partly, but not exclusively, in relieving pressure on the NHS through the fantastic work that they do. Many patients at the end of their life require the specialised and continuous services that hospices can offer. Hospices must have the resources that they need to respond positively to the demands made on them and to provide the greatest care possible for some of the most vulnerable, sick and frail members of society, whether they are children or adults. That is why funding from the state to children's and adults' hospices must increase.

I know that the Minister is listening carefully to my hon. Friend and that he will do his best to help. Unfortunately, I am chairing a meeting at the same time as my hon. Friend's debate, so I am a bit stretched. He mentioned Little Havens, and I wonder whether he is aware that I was at a charity event on Saturday and that the lady who spoke to try to raise more funds said that if it were not for charitable giving continuing, by spring there would be no money left to continue the service. The situation is serious. Would my hon. Friend agree that the Minister should do everything that he can to underpin the funding so that there is some certainty in future arrangements?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend because he has hit the nail on the head with the hammer. There is a terrible strain on hospices year in and year out, particularly on children's hospices because of the disparity in state funding. The army of people who help to raise money for Little Havens cannot be praised enough for their fantastic work. However, the state has to help that army because 2 per cent. of funding from state sources for the hospice is, I think the Minister would agree, wrong and unfair.

As my hon. Friend knows, we fought a general election six months ago and the Conservative party was clear about what it believed should happen to the funding of children and adult hospices. We do not believe, and neither does the hospice movement, that the state should step in and pay more than a maximum of 49.9 per cent. of the funding. If the state were to pay more than that, it would start dictating terms because it would have the whip hand as the funding source. One of the strengths of the hospice movement is that it is charitable, relies on the voluntary sector and organises its own provision of care within strict guidelines for quality and standard.

The hospice movement does not want to be taken over by the state, and we do not want it to be taken over. However, we believe that that cannot be used as an excuse not to give a fair and reasonable amount of money to allow it to thrive. Every pound that the hospice movement raises to pay for the care of its client group is a pound less that the state has to pay. If only for that reason, the Government should be shamed into making more money available.

My hon. Friends and I fought the last election on the policy, as we did in 2001, that if we were returned to office we would increase funding for adult and children's hospices so that they got 40 per cent. of their funding for their day-to-day running costs from the state. That is a fair balance and would make a significant difference to the strains and pressures facing the hospice movement. That would give breathing space and extra money so that hospices would be able to run their services and provide care with less of a burden and worry about where the money was coming from. If that argument is valid, as I think it is, it is even more valid for children's hospices.

For a children's hospice to receive less than 5 per cent. of its funding from the state in this day and age is a travesty and a national disgrace. We are talking about young children and teenagers who, through no fault of their own, find themselves with life-limiting or serious illnesses and disabilities that place a tremendous strain on their families and carers. In some cases, without a hospice to step in and help, there would be no one else. Those families would be left on their own to fend for themselves with all the problems and pressures that causes. For the state to be content to provide less than 5 per cent., less than 5p in every pound spent on those vital and valuable services, is a national disgrace.

I urge the Minister to give serious consideration to the matter, because it has come up time and again in the House, and it will not go away by ignoring it or by flowery flannel, where Government spokesmen try to give the impression that the situation is infinitely better than it is. It is not good, and if the Minister does not believe that, and more importantly, if the Treasury does not believe that, let them go out into the country and visit children's hospices. Let them talk to that army of decent people who spend so much time working to raise money for hospices and find out from them exactly what is going on, the problems and difficulties that they are facing, and the possibilities of cuts in the services, of which we need more, not less.

First, I congratulate the hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) on securing the debate. I listened to him carefully and agreed with most of what he said. However, in some ways, I part company with him, because he talked about the Government's record and I do not remember his Government delivering any better when they ran the country. I do not want him to lecture this Government on what they should be doing.

The hon. Gentleman made an allegation about the previous Government's record. It is slightly facile to compare something with the situation that prevailed over eight years ago, but given that he is obviously an authority on the subject, can he tell the House what was the percentage of funding for adult hospices when the Conservative Government left office, and what is it now? If he cannot say, I will.

The purpose of the debate is to secure support for hospices. I remember the record of the hon. Gentleman's Government: year in, year out, there were cuts in budgets.

I suspect that the hon. Gentleman is not familiar with the health service. If the Minister is honest, he will admit that there was never a 1p cut in total funding for the national health service from the day that Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979 to the day that we left office in May 1997. In fact, there was a more than real-terms increase. As for hospice funding, when we left office, the state provided 33.5 per cent. of the day-to-day running of hospices to the hospice movement. At the moment, it is just under 32 per cent.

I am sure that the Minister will respond to the facts and figures, but my experience on Teesside is quite the opposite of what the hon. Gentleman is saying. This is an important debate, and I wish that he had not politicised it in the way that he has: it is tragic because the issue is important. If you want to battle on with figures, I am sure that the Minister will pull out the figures—

Order. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I do not want to battle on anything. Will he please address his remarks through the Chair to the hon. Member who is making the claims?

Thank you, Mr. Cook, for correcting me on the manner in which I should have addressed the hon. Gentleman.

I want to open up the debate in good faith, in trying to support much of what the hon. Member for West Chelmsford said. He mentioned the 38 children's hospices. One of them is in the north-east, and I am sure, Mr. Cook, that you are familiar with it, because it is on your patch, on the Stockton side, rather than the Tees valley on my side. I am sure that if you had not been chairing the debate you would have said something similar to what I am about to say.

I support much of what the hon. Gentleman said about concerns for hospices. I want the Minister to listen carefully to what I have to say; I am sure that he will. I speak as a friend and supporter of the Government in all that they have done in tackling problems of health and in all the support that they have given to the health service. I speak as a strong friend, not as a foe, as the hon. Gentleman has done. I shall focus on one issue, but first I want to praise the work of Butterwick house children's hospice in my area, because it provides and has provided a tremendous service for children in my area and in the north-east as a whole. I want to pick up on the issue of funding, which was addressed by the hon. Gentleman, because it is a concern for people in the north-east, including many of my constituents.

As I said, Butterwick house children's hospice provides a tremendous service, from which about 80 families in the north-east, many of whom are my constituents, benefit. It provides many useful services, such as complementary therapies, advice and pre- and post-death bereavement support and counselling. The hon. Gentleman referred to such services. The hospice provides a breathing space when things go wrong and support for families over 24 hours. It has had a tremendous impact on the quality of life of families and children in my area.

Butterwick house hospice and other hospices save the national health service a great deal of money. The resources and the bed space that a hospice provides facilitate tremendous support and ensure that people receive an excellent service, which should have been available in hospital. The mere fact that people are in a hospice saves the health service some money.

Butterwick house hospice enjoys tremendous support from my constituents and others throughout the Tees valley, but it feels that it is threatened by lack of funds. I have received a document from its chief executive, Mr. Graham Leggatt-Chidgey—no doubt he is familiar to you, Mr. Cook—about the funding concerns. He informs me that the hospice is in real difficulty because of funding problems. He tells me that the £145,000 annual grant that the hospice receives from the big lottery fund expires on 31 March 2006, and he is naturally very worried. The hospice is working exceptionally hard to secure funding from a range of sources, but the harsh reality is that it can only operate a service that can be financed. The hospice is worried and has asked me to raise the issue today, which is why I am here.

The £145,000 from the big lottery fund contributes 21 per cent. of the hospice's annual funding. Unless that funding is replaced, there is a real threat that Butterwick house's front-line services will have to be cut, which will have severe consequences for many families in my constituency and in the north-east as a whole. It will also have adverse effects on the NHS in the region, which will be forced to replace some of the specialist services provided by the hospice.

As the hon. Member for West Chelmsford said, many hospices have to deal with a large number of primary care trusts. Butterwick house has to negotiate with 15 PCTs for its funding, which presents huge complications and difficulties. I know that the Minister will tell me that the PCT reconfiguration will simplify some of these matters, but children's hospices face serious difficulty with rising PCT deficits and staff already in transitional mode, which has resulted in their not being willing to make any financial commitment for their successors. That is genuinely a serious worry, too.

I speak with great concern. I have never before raised the issue of hospices on the Floor of the House, but I raise it now because I am concerned. I know that the Minister really cares about these issues, so I am sure that he is taking serious account of what is being said. Local health authorities and social services have significant financial difficulties and restraints, and although they are willing to help children's hospices in most cases, they often find that their resources are scarce.

As the hon. Member for West Chelmsford said, children's hospices receive only 5 per cent. of funding from the Government. The consequence of that for Butterwick house was that in order to balance its books, it had to raise about £600,000 last year. All of us have been involved in various forms of fundraising, so we know that that is a lot of money for an organisation to raise, despite the fact that people in this country give generously. Given that adult hospices typically receive 35 per cent. of funding from the NHS, children with life-limiting and life-threatening illnesses seem to be getting a raw deal. I agreed with much of what the hon. Gentleman said, but I found the way in which he was saying it—against this Government—difficult to stomach. We must move away from the 5 per cent. figure: we must increase it. That cannot go on. It does not look very good. As someone who champions the Government and recognises the great contribution that they have made to tackling health problems, I speak as a strong friend to them. I urge the Minister to take note of this point: we must balance the level of funding to adult and children's hospices. I am not seeking more: parity would be enough. We are talking about a lot of money, but it can be seen as a challenge or target. We have to ensure that the funding that adult hospices receive will lead to further Government funding from here onwards. That is a goal that we should work towards.

We must ensure that hospices get support. People who work in them give their best because they believe in them and in the caring service. Butterwick house has made a tremendous contribution to our area. It will be a huge loss if the services there are cut, and there will be great concern in Teesside. I assure the Minister that as we approach the end of the financial year, Members from the Tees valley area will speak on this issue. No doubt you might speak on the issue, Mr. Cook, if there is a further need for debate. I want to make the Minister aware of this issue long before we get down that road, because it is of genuine concern.

The people at Butterwick hospice are not alarmist. I have never know them to express worry about dangers like this before. In all the years that I have been a Member—I have lived in Teesside for 21 years and know the area well—this is the first time that they have written to me in this spirit. Therefore, I ask the Minister to listen. We need some action to be taken. The hon. Member for West Chelmsford and I might have started on a wrong note, but his points were genuine. As someone who champions Butterwick hospice care, I passionately believe in the support that it gives our area in the north-east. I do not want the Minister suddenly to make an announcement; I know that he has to go away and think and put figures together, but I appeal to him. If he really wants to help, he should please consider the situation. If he is in a position to meet the people from Butterwick hospice, I am happy to bring them to the House with a delegation of right hon. and hon. Members from my area. I hope that you, Mr. Cook, can assist with this matter in future. We do not want the hospice to be threatened with service cuts toward the end of the financial year. I do not want the Minister to say, "Nobody made me aware of this," at that point. I seek his support on this and on the wider principle of increasing funding from 5 per cent. The Opposition suggested a figure of 49 per cent.

It was 40 per cent.

Well, I would be happy with 30 per cent. If we had equal parity with adult provision, I would be happy. I am not asking for the figure to be announced tomorrow. I want to see some movement from the Minister. Given the Government's excellent record it would be a credit to them and the Labour party if he shifted from the position that he holds today.

Perhaps I might act as a peacemaker between my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) and the hon. Member for Middlesbrough, South and East Cleveland (Dr. Kumar). I will attempt to pour oil on troubled waters. Before I do so, I apologise again to the House that I am not able to be present throughout the debate. There are conflicting interests and someone is chairing the meeting that I am supposed to be chairing at the moment. I mean the Minister no discourtesy.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford on securing this extremely important debate. It is timely because Dame Cecily Saunders died this year. She was the remarkable lady who said that people go to hospices not to die, but to live. Certainly in the years that I have been a Member of Parliament, I have been moved by those women and men who work in a voluntary capacity in our hospices throughout the country. All hon. Members support their local hospices. All hon. Members have friends and relatives who, sadly, are served by them. This is not a party political matter. I am not interested in what the last Government or the Government before that did. I am only interested in what good news, as we move towards Christmas, the Minister can announce this morning.

No one has done more than my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford to fight for resources for hospices in Essex. He is served locally by a splendid hospice but he will recall that when I represented Basildon, one of the two miracles that occurred in my area was that we built St Luke's hospice, which is a first-class hospice today, without any core funding. No millionaires lived locally, and if there had been any I would have been on their doorstep for obvious reasons.

As one of the original supporters of the national lottery, I felt that it should never be used, as it is today, for funding for education and health. I recognise that the Minister has no responsibility whatsoever for the way that lottery money is spent, but I believe it is a tragedy that more and more lottery money is spent on health and education. As we have the Olympics in 2012, there will be even less money from the lottery than at present. I hope that in his reply, the Minister will look specifically at the amount of money that the Government can give to the hospice movement.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford and I served together on the Health Committee. The Minister, if he has a spare moment, can look back on the report on palliative care that we produced two or three years ago under the chairmanship of Mr. David Hinchliffe. We took evidence from a wide range of witnesses, who all shared with the Committee their increasing concern about the way that funding seemed to be slipping from core funding to charitable giving.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford and I salute those who do voluntary work in Essex. We are both blessed to live in a county where people give so readily to charity. However, the fundraisers at Little Havens tell us very firmly that because of competing interests, there is less and less of an audience to which they can turn, and they are struggling to raise money from charitable giving. That is why I was delighted to be in Leigh-on-Sea's Salvation Army Christmas concert on Saturday, which raised a huge amount of money—as we know, the Salvation Army leads the way in such matters. The lady who addressed us said that it is becoming increasingly difficult, in terms of charitable money raising, to keep our hospices going. She was very concerned that unless the Government hike up the money—my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford quoted the percentages earlier—there will be a crisis.

I am sure that, when he responds to the debate, the Minister will agree that we all want to be healthy. There is nothing as stressful as having a child who is ill. Ironically, it affects the child's loved ones rather more than it does the child, because children are very tough and resilient, but the parents and other relatives can go to pieces, for the very good reasons of stress and anxiety and the understanding that there are no miracle cures. Little Havens is a first-class hospice that looks after such children. It also provides respite care for their loved ones. Again, I say to my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford—because some of the children from his area are looked after at Little Havens—that Little Havens wants to do more, but it cannot because of its tight budget.

In conclusion, I say to the Minister that all hon. Members recognise that the Treasury has its priorities. We all know that Health Ministers will do their best to fight for as big a share of the cake as they can get. However, we should never take for granted the work of our hospices, their army of volunteers and the number of charitable organisations that support their overall budget. The hospice movement wants to retain its strong sense of independence but, increasingly, it finds itself struggling. How can we say to parents, "This is going to be very difficult because we are running out of money and there is a limit to what we can do"? I do not suggest that we go in for blackmail, but there can be no greater priority than looking after children who are unwell at a time when emotions are running high. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford on having enabled the House to consider these matters, and I very much look forward to hearing good news from the Minister about the future amounts of money that will be dedicated to hospices, not only in Essex but in the rest of the country as well.

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) on having secured a debate on such an important and emotive topic, and recognise the passion and commitment with which he addressed his subject.

It has been said a few times that, nationally, there are 38 children's hospices. The nearest one to my constituency is Little Bridge House in north Devon. On a good day on the M5 and other roads, that is about two hours away, but frequently it takes rather longer to get there. There is certainly demand in greater Bristol for a new children's hospice. In the heart of my constituency, we have the Bristol Royal hospital for children. Bristol, West also has CLIC, the well-known charity for children with cancer and leukaemia, which was founded in Bristol. The Association of Children's Hospices is also based in Bristol. There are plans to build and equip a new children's hospice at Charlton Farm in Wraxall—just over the Avon gorge, which divides my constituency from Woodspring. However, it will cost £15 million to build and equip the new hospice and to endow the initial running costs. Some £5 million per annum will also need to be raised to run it jointly with the hospice that I mentioned in north Devon.

I was pleased recently to attend a fundraising ball; it will contribute in a small way towards the costs of running the hospice, but as has been mentioned, such charitable fundraising is competing with ever-growing demands from other parts of the health care system and from other charities that are trying to raise funds. The children's hospital in Bristol is having a Wallace and Gromit appeal to raise funds, while the hospice is having its Babe's Big appeal. We therefore have well-known children's characters competing to raise funds for essentially the same sort of care for children. I am also aware of the campaign being run by The Sun, although I was not aware, until the hon. Member for West Chelmsford mentioned it, of the campaign run by Somerfield. I am pleased to hear about it, however, because Somerfield is also a Bristol-based commercial company.

As has been mentioned, children's hospices receive about 5 per cent. of their funding on average from the state, but 15 of the 38 existing hospices get no state funding whatever. That compares with core funding of 28 to 30 per cent. for adult hospices. Surely, it is reasonable that hospices that give children essential palliative care, which might otherwise be provided by the NHS, should get a fair price for those services from the NHS or other health care commissioners. It is not immediately clear, however, how they can access some of those funds.

In 2002, in response to a parliamentary question tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), the then Minister, now the Minister for Housing and Planning, the hon. Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), said:

"It is for the national health service locally to make arrangements for financial support for both adults' and children's hospices, given the extent of local diversity both of the services provided and of alternative sources of local support."—[Official Report, 11 March 2002; Vol. 381, c. 818W.]

The restructuring of primary care trusts has been alluded to, and I wonder whether existing PCTs or even new ones have adequate funds to provide that support, particularly given the situation that I mentioned in the south-west, where children will typically come from a wide range of communities. A better way of directing funds towards hospices might therefore be to fund them on a regional level.

In the recent general election, the Labour party manifesto contained a commitment to increasing end-of-life palliative care, and I look forward to the Minister expanding on what that means, particularly for hospices. I share the concern expressed by other hon. Members that it would be unrealistic to expect the state to fund hospice care entirely, and we are certainly not arguing for that: it would undermine hospices' charity ethos, their volunteer base and their independence from the state. Surely, however, it is realistic to expect the state to pick up more than 0 per cent. of funding in 15 cases and more than 5 per cent. in 23 cases, and to at least match the average funding that is given to adult hospices. That would give children's hospices some degree of core funding and security so that they can provide an important and appreciated service in our communities. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

I too congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns). It is a shame that more hon. Members have not been able to participate in the debate, but that does not reflect on the seriousness of its subject, which affects all hon. Members; in many cases, it will have done so directly and personally, because relatives and friends will have used the facilities that children's hospices provide. They do an essential job.

I declare an interest as a patron of the St. Barnabas hospice in Worthing, which is the parent organisation of a recently set up children's hospice, the Chestnut Tree house, which is a fantastic facility on the outskirts of Worthing. Staff at that hospice have already looked after many of my constituents. St. Barnabas has been running for 32 years, and in that time has provided direct care to 20,000 people. That is no mean achievement.

It is estimated that, generally, hospices must provide about 80 per cent. of all palliative care in the United Kingdom. Part of the problem is that the provision of hospices is subject to something of a postcode lottery. There is patchiness in the provision of children's hospices. As with many charitable causes, they are quite often less easy to find in less affluent areas. That results in a double whammy whereby many facilities are not available in areas where they are desperately needed.

Hon. Members have already mentioned the legacy of Dame Cicely Saunders who died this year, having set up the first hospice in 1967 and the first children's hospice in Oxford in 1982. The Chestnut Tree house hospice was opened for overnight care in April 2004, and has already cared for 135 children and young adults with life-limiting conditions. It has also provided services for almost 500 family members. I wish to pay tribute to Monica Ridley, who recently stood down as chairman of the trustees of the Chestnut Tree house hospice, and to Hugh Lowson, who, as chief executive of St. Barnabas, has made a great impact on that excellent resource over the past few years.

All hon. Members agree that we owe a great debt of gratitude to the volunteers who make the hospice movement possible. They are unsung heroes who do much to take the pressures and strains off the national health service, which would otherwise have to pick up the tab. All hon. Members have, in affectionate terms, mentioned hospices in, or close to, their constituencies. We heard about Little Havens in Essex, Butterwick in the constituency of the hon. Member for Middlesbrough, South and East Cleveland (Dr. Kumar), St. Luke's hospice in Southend, and Little Bridge House in Devon, which the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Stephen Williams) mentioned. The latter hospice is two hours away from the hon. Gentleman's constituency, which reinforces my point about the patchiness of provision. There are other high-profile children's hospices that do a fantastic job, such as the Shooting Stars hospice in south-west London and the CHASE hospice in Surrey, which has been at the forefront of a campaign to secure a fairer deal on funding.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford made some good points, especially on how important it is that hospices are able to keep their independence. There is a strength and wealth of talent and good will in the hospice movement. The last thing that hospices would want is to be nationalised in some way. As the hon. Member for Middlesbrough, South and East Cleveland put it, we must achieve something approaching parity of funding with adult hospices. He made some good points about the range of care that Butterwick hospice is able to offer. It is not just a matter of the last few days of someone's life; especially for children, it is a matter of their going there for short stays to take the pressure off parents and to take advantage of specialised facilities and complementary therapies. The hon. Gentleman freely admitted that that hospice is facing a funding crisis. I defy any hon. Member who has been in touch with a local hospice to come away with a different story.

Nationally, about 20,000 children are suffering from life-limiting diseases. An average of around 4,300 of those children and their families are assisted by hospices, but there are only a few hundred acute beds available in children's hospices. Those figures apply to the 38 fully operational children's hospices and another five that are planned or being built.

It is interesting to reflect on the nature of the diseases that children's hospices treat. Some 96 per cent. of cases that are treated in adult hospices tend to be of some form of cancer. Mercifully, only one in 600 children under the age of 15 develops a cancer, and children respond differently to treatment than adults do. Some diseases that children's hospices deal with are: Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which affects 100 boys born each year; Batten disease, or neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis—that will really frustrate Hansard—which affects one in 30,000 births and leads to a progressive and incurable deterioration of the brain and nervous system; Rett syndrome, which affects more than one in 10,000 females and causes profound and multiple disabilities; and cystic fibrosis, with which hon. Members will be more familiar.

Children with those diseases now live well into their teens, so many fall into the gap that exists between adult and child provision. Therefore children with the aforementioned diseases form an increasing body. As a result of advances in medical technology, more children can live much longer with diseases from which they would have been expected to have only a short lifespan. Surely children's hospices' work load will increase as the pool of children with whom they will deal increases. Unfortunately, those diseases will still be around until we find a cure, but they are much more manageable, and children can, fortunately, often live on into adult life.

First and foremost, children's hospices deal with health problems. In a country that has a national health service that is charged to deal with such problems, surely hospices should be an integrated beneficiary of national health funding. Even at the most advanced stages of a disease, caring for the dying is a fundamental part of health care and should not be treated as some novelty good cause that may be lucky enough to pick up public funds through a lottery board's philanthropy.

I fear that the care of children with life-limiting conditions often does not fit into the Government's obsession with a health service that is driven by target tables, waiting-list numbers, hospital admission numbers and bed blocking. How does one measure the outcomes of looking after children who have life-limiting conditions? Obviously, one does not measure those outcomes on the basis of how long they stay in hospital, by minimising the cost of their drug treatment, or by curing their diseases and cutting down on their readmissions. One does not measure those outcomes based on comparative morbidity rates or on the number of complaints made about treatment. They can be measured only by the length of time for which quality of life can be extended, the impact of physical pain relief on the child and his or her emotional well-being, and, of course, the impact on the family and how they cope at a tremendously emotional and traumatic time before and after their child has passed away. That is what children's hospices are all about.

One cannot easily evaluate, quantify, tick boxes for or comply with target tables for children's hospices. They are measured by the comfort and relief that they bring. As someone put it: "Hospices are not places where people go to die; a hospice is somewhere where you can come to life." That is the modern vision of palliative care.

On the subject of funding, many hon. Members have already mentioned that children's hospices receive, on average, little more than 5 per cent. of their funds from public sources. The former Minister for Public Health, Melanie Johnson, raised the problem. She stated:

"Funding the services provided by hospices is a matter for negotiation between the hospice concerned and the NHS primary care trusts to which the hospice provides a service. There are no limits to the amount of funding which may be provided; this is for local decision."—[Official Report, House of Commons, 16 September 2004; Vol. 424, c. 1759W.]

The problem is that there are no limits to the minimum amount that primary care trusts can provide. In many cases, because it is not a statutory requirement and because of the great funding pressures on PCTs, they provide zero funding for children's hospices. Unless there is a statutory duty on PCTs to provide funding, I am afraid that, because of priorities and because PCTs are strapped for cash, children's hospices will not get a look-in, whatever we might say here. The Minister and his Government must take direct action to encourage PCTs to provide funding.

The new opportunities fund—now the big lottery fund—provided £48 million over three years for 130 palliative care projects. The funding runs out at the end of March 2006. At present, there are no plans to renew that funding. I shall be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about his intentions, now that March 2006 is just four months away. Children's hospices have received little, if any, of the extra money from the cancer plan funding that the Government established some years ago. The Government promised to double the level of investment in palliative care, but, often, that extra investment has got lost in PCTs and has not found its way to end use in hospices—most certainly not children's hospices.

In addition, in the past few years there have been many extra funding pressures on charitable institutions such as children's hospices from national insurance increases, extra pay pressure from Agenda for Change, price inflation of 7 to 9 per cent. for pharmaceutical products that are heavily used in hospices, extra requirements under the Care Standards Act 2000, and the estimated £400 million of VAT that is not reclaimable. I hope that the Minister will be able to give assurances of a more sympathetic financial treatment of children's hospices from the Treasury in future.

I remember speaking on this subject in the House three years ago. It is not a new subject or a new problem, but it is getting worse. I was told that new funds such as Futurebuilders would help to deal with the problem. Futurebuilders is a fund designed for voluntary bodies. I tabled a parliamentary question recently to ask how much money Futurebuilders had paid out, and how much of that had gone to children's hospices. Out of a promised fund of £120 million, so far about £4.5 million has been paid to voluntary bodies, of which not one penny piece has gone to any hospice, let alone any children's hospice.

Perhaps we should not be surprised about that, because to qualify for funding from Futurebuilders the applicant must be able to show that 50 per cent. of core funding is sustainable. However, children's hospices rely on very transient funding. We cannot say that a given number of people will die in the coming year and leave legacies to a hospice in their wills. Charitable fundraising is, as we know, unpredictable. It is virtually impossible for those hospices to get funding from Futurebuilders.

We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the carers of the children who use children's hospices. There are about 6 million carers in this country, more than 2 million of whom are aged over 60, and 20 per cent. of whom are over 70. They do an enormous amount, for which they get little gratitude, and without them the state would have to pick up the tab and things would be much more difficult. We should be making their job easier, not harder.

I want to end my remarks by relating the problem to the Chestnut Tree house. My local children's hospice is one of those 15 that receive zero funds from the public purse. It has been losing staff because of wage pressures. Charitable fundraising has raised some £600,000 in the past year, but it takes almost double that to run the hospice. Therefore, the parent hospice, St. Barnabas, must subsidise its work. That is unsustainable. Donations have been difficult recently because of all the competing charitable pressures, not least the tsunami. We all know the enormous amount of fundraising that was done for that.

The Chestnut Tree house has four acute beds at present, plus one for emergencies, but it was planned that it would have eight, plus two for emergencies. It has received no money from Children in Need, despite repeated applications to that charity. We are told that West Sussex has had quite enough, so it is tough. It used its grant from the New Opportunities Fund to develop a very sophisticated and welcome bereavement counselling support service for parents of children who have gone into a hospice.

All in all, hospice funding is highly unsatisfactory and it is time that things changed. It is particularly unsatisfactory that many hospices must shrink their services at a time of growing demand. Effectively, many hospices are subsidising the NHS by providing services that it would otherwise have to provide. That contravenes Charity Commission rules. Is that really the way in which to fund health care? Would it be acceptable for the Government to seek to fulfil their target to recruit so many thousands of doctors or to reduce waiting times for hip operations to less than 18 months through random grants from one of the lottery funds? Of course it would not, so why should palliative care for children be treated as a bonus good cause that just happened to come up trumps this year under the Government's current definition of what worthy cause needs to benefit from the British public's gambling largesse? What happens when that funding stream runs out next year? Faced with those pressures, how can hospices plan long-term expansion strategies?

Health policy is not rocket science. It must treat palliative care and hospices as a mainstream health activity, and it must feature in the health strategy of all the NHS providers as a matter of course. We need fair funding through the NHS, not funding at the whim of the lottery, which sends out the message that the Government do not regard hospices as a priority. Surely we should be doing everything that we can to help to nurture, to encourage and to expand the tremendous legacy of Dame Cicely Saunders.

The Government really should be doing more to support the fantastic work done by children's hospices, and I hope that we will hear some wise and solid words from the Minister and the assurance that the Government will at last take children's hospices seriously as a mainstream provider of palliative care in the NHS.

I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr. Chope.

I congratulate the hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) on securing the debate, and my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, East and Mexborough (Jeff Ennis), who has done an extraordinary amount in the past few years to challenge the issue in the House. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Flello), who is not in the Chamber this morning but who very much wanted to be. He secured an Adjournment debate on the subject on 3 November, and I am happy to spell out many of the things that I said that evening, because they correspond directly to the points that hon. Members made this morning. I welcome the support of The Sun and of the Daily Mail, which has dedicated its Christmas appeal to children' hospices.

In the past three months, I have had the opportunity in the course of my ministerial duties to meet some of the most extraordinary people and public servants at work in this country. In Stoke, I met the people behind the Donna Louise trust and some of the families who had benefited so much from the services with which the hospice provides the local community.

As I went around the hospice and met some of the children who use its services, as well as some of the families of those children, one parent really helped me to understand the difference that some of these hospices make to families when she said that sometimes the pressure of looking after a child with a life-limiting illness was so great that all sorts of things crept into family life. She told me that it sometimes felt as if the whole fabric of goodness in the family was unravelling. That helped me to understand that, as well as supporting hospices, there is an enormous amount that we need to do to support carers.

The steps that we have taken to increase support for carers, which is up to £185 million this year, is a vital part of the debate, too. I saw some of the fantastic games rooms that the trust has been able to provide for teenagers. I met one of the children, Tilly, who uses the service there and told me about the fantastic Jacuzzi that makes her visits to the hospice very special.

The trust is only one of five or six different places in which I have seen the most extraordinary services for children in the past two or three months. In Liverpool, I heard from Lynda Brook, a paediatric palliative care consultant, who is behind the reorganisation and development of services for children at Alder Hey hospital. She is also instrumental in developing the Alder Hey at-home service, which is a new service that Alder Hey is pioneering.

At Christie hospital NHS trust, I met Sam Smith and Pauline Sutherland, the paediatric oncology liaison nurse, who shared with me the ways in which they are reshaping services for teenagers. They made the point that the manner of the care must take account of the nature of the individual, because we will be able to provide care sensitively, compassionately and appropriately only if we take account of the way in which people live their lives.

At Great Ormond street hospital I met the team that is working with children that have cystic fibrosis, and I learned about the extraordinary advances that the NHS has been made in treating such children. I also met Dr. Carlos de Sousa, a pioneering consultant who is developing an extraordinary new treatment for people with conditions such as uncontrollable epilepsy.

I walked around the ward with Dr. de Sousa, where we met one of the families whose children are benefiting from an extraordinary new technique. It is called invasive monitoring of the brain, and it allows surgeons to see which bits of the brain are involved in what sorts of activities, and to work out which bits of the brain need treating if uncontrollable epilepsy is to be dealt with effectively. I stood in the room with the family, we looked at one another, and we all agreed that the NHS is indeed at the cutting edge of medical science. It is the medical equivalent of rocket science.

We are fortunate to have world-leading medical researchers, consultants and surgeons. In our local communities, we have extraordinary public servants working in NHS community nursing teams; and we have the hospice movement, which has grown to a record strength over the past few years. I join the hon. Member for West Chelmsford in recording my admiration and thanks for the parents and families that are involved in that movement.

Our challenge is to weave those experts—all those who provide care and support—into a web of care around children and their families. The debate about caring for children with life-limiting illnesses is not only about children's hospices, it is also about providing an entire web of care.

As the hon. Member for West Chelmsford said, the children's hospice movement has grown up over the past 22 years. Since 1997, there have been seven key steps.

I was interested in the Minister's recollection of his visits to hospitals over the past few months. How many children's hospices has he visited in that time, and which ones?

I said at the beginning that I started my travels of the past few months at the Donna Louise trust. That is the principal hospice that I have visited on site, but I have met multi-disciplinary teams working with hospices throughout the country.

On 3 November, in a debate that the hon. Gentleman was not able to attend, I said what steps have been taken since 1997, but I shall repeat them for his benefit. The first was our immediate commendation of the report by the Association for Children with Life-Threatening or Terminal Conditions. That was closely followed by the second step; NHS executive guidance was issued in 1998 that drew on lessons learned from a series of projects that provide a range of care to families.

The third step also occurred in 1998, when a team headed by the Treasury invited applications to establish Diana children's community nursing teams throughout the country. They were to build on the work undertaken in the first pilot programme and blaze a trail for the development of home care for children with life-threatening illnesses. Additional funding of about £1.5 million to support that project in England was provided by the Treasury.

The fourth step was the partnership that became possible in 1998 when the Association of Children's Hospices was registered as a charity to promote the interest of the children's hospice movement. Since then, the Department of Health has worked closely with the association to develop a better understanding of the issues on both sides. In particular, the Department has commissioned the association to provide quality assurance packages to enhance the quality of care provided by children's hospices.

Step five, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned, took place in 2000, when, after discussions with the New Opportunities Fund, about £45 million was made available to 135 projects, including 71 awards to home-based palliative care teams. Step six took place in 2003, when the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence commissioned the national collaborating centre for cancer to develop service guidance on child and adolescent cancer services, including palliative care and bereavement support. NICE service guidance supports the implementation of the national cancer plan and also forms an additional structure to provide support for children's palliative care needs. The seventh step involved work with ACH, where the Department funded the production of care pathway guidance launched last year to complement the national service framework on disabled children and young people.

That is the past, so I will now talk about the future. As hon. Members from all parties have argued for some time, the steps taken are not enough and we must and can go further. Several trends emerge from the work on hospices undertaken by ACH. Often hospices are set up after a family's tragic struggle, and they create an enormous amount of energy to see through an important dream backed through the strength of local communities. As a former native of Harlow I well know the generosity and support that is available in Essex. To help ensure that that energy is channelled in the right way, the Department of Health can do a great deal to support innovative services.

Part of the answer has to be how we support hospices in their plan. To support those ambitions the Department provided funding for ACH to develop a toolkit on how children's hospices work, which aims to provide references to the sources of information that are required to plan and establish services so that any new services that are being set up can make informed decisions about what services the families would find most helpful. As the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) pointed out, children with life-threatening illnesses often have different conditions and needs. The services that hospices need to provide are often varied. However, the toolkit provides a much better understanding of what is involved in starting and running a hospice and an overview of some of the challenges.

Although there is support for the hospice movement, the Government have to bear their share of the responsibility. We must take three steps. First—this is probably the crucial point—we must strengthen the support provided by the local NHS for hospices. We have tripled the amount of money that will go into the health service by 2007–08 to £92 billion. At the heart of this morning's debate is how we make that money work for local people who provide hospices for children. The way in which the local national health services will work together is important.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, East and Mexborough has said on a number of occasions, many hospices provide services over wide areas. I know that the hospice near his community confronts that challenge. We need to ensure that local health service commissioners work together effectively to provide financing. I have launched dedicated guidance for that purpose that will build on and make real the intentions expressed in the NSF for children and young people, which is mandatory for the NHS. I have laid copies of the guide in the Library, and it will support health care organisations, local authorities and other partners. Of course, a range of partners are involved who are working together in children's trusts to understand and develop children's palliative care services and make the mandatory NSF a reality. The guide is important because it sets out the service model, describes the elements that need to be involved and gives practical examples of the services that need to be provided and how they should look.

Secondly, we must make specialist commissioning sharper. My noble Friend, Lord Warner, made a ministerial statement on Wednesday 19 October announcing a review of NHS specialist services. The taskforce set up to lead the review will be headed by Scotland's chief medical officer and will consider how such services are commissioned and how they can be changed in future. It will address to a good extent the issues raised by the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Stephen Williams), when he said that a stronger way of doing things is needed than the method that we now operate.

Finally, I want to consider the question of resources. I made an announcement to the House in the Adjournment debate on 3 November, which was secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South. He spoke passionately about the need to extend the manifesto pledge that we made about strengthening end-of-life care for adults. He asked why we could not extend that commitment to include children. I can tell him, with the agreement of my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department of Health, that we shall extend that pledge for children and young people with life-threatening conditions. I shall make further announcements to the House as soon as possible, but I expect that the Department will be able to say far more about how the policy will be implemented in detail, in the forthcoming White Paper on social care and health.

We have only a few minutes left, and we have heard an awful lot about what the Government do and must do. Now we hear about a White Paper. However, on 31 March the £45 million from lottery funding that has benefited a number of children's hospices will run out. Will the Minister tell us now what resources will be available to children's hospices to make up for that shortfall after 31 March, or whether he is prepared in some way to compel PCTs to make sure that they pass on to children's hospices a fair share of the funding that I think he intends should go to them, but which, in 15 cases at least, does not—not even to the tune of a penny piece?

I can help the hon. Gentleman with that. My understanding, from the advice that I have received, is that the New Opportunities Fund money expires in 2007, not 2006. I shall happily write to the hon. Gentleman to correct those details if I am mistaken. The detail about how we proceed with our commitment will be in the White Paper, which will be published at the turn of the year. We have held several meetings with the national cancer director and officials. We are also in discussion with people who run children's hospices. Much of the planning work is some way through, but the precise details must wait for the White Paper.

I hope that the Minister is not trying to talk himself out. He has spoken for 16 minutes and has three minutes left. The nub of the debate, for every hon. Member who spoke, was whether the Government would give a fairer share of money to children's hospices, compared with the amount for adult hospices. The Minister has not dealt with that and is leaving it to the tail end of his speech.

I regret the manner in which the hon. Gentleman thinks the debate should be conducted. I think that I have made it clear that we must do three things to strengthen funding for children's hospices. We must ensure that specialised commissioning is fit for the purpose and that PCTs provide adequate funding and know how to go about that; we shall also extend funding for children's hospices by extending the manifesto pledge that we put to the British people in May. The way in which we shall implement that will be set out in the White Paper that will be published at the turn of the year.

I thank my hon. Friend for his earlier kind remarks about my campaigning zeal. I shall try to give some comfort to the hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) by asking whether the onus now is on PCTs to engage actively with local children's hospices in trying to set up work agreements and contracts. Previously the children's hospices have always had to engage the PCTs in the process. Are we shifting the onus for who must engage with whom?

The way in which PCTs should operate is set out clearly in the guide that I have placed in the Library. The job is considerably easier for the extra £16 billion that is going into PCTs. We are not quite clear whether that commitment is matched by the Conservative party, but I am clear about the fact that it is helping local health service commissioners.

To strengthen end-of-life care for children with a life-limiting illness we must do a number of things. This is not just a debate about children's hospices. It is also a debate about how we strengthen NHS community care for children and how we strengthen tertiary care and the range of other services that are provided by NHS consultants and surgeons. We strongly believe that treatment for children with a life-threatening illness will be best when the NHS works together with the hospice movement, and that is exactly what we plan to see happen.

I am very pleased to have secured this debate on the 2007 anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, the topic still has much resonance today.

I have the enormous good fortune to represent one of the three Hull constituencies. Hull's proud history as a trading and maritime city and a port goes back more than 700 years, and the city has played an important role in the life of the nation. In 2007, it will be 200 years since Hull's Member of Parliament and most famous son, William Wilberforce, oversaw the abolition of the slave trade, against which he had campaigned for many years.

I want to do three things. First, I shall talk a little about William Wilberforce the local Hull man and about his campaign to rid the country of the slave trade. Secondly, I shall talk about the city of Hull and its long-standing role in championing human rights. Thirdly, I shall discuss the extensive celebrations that Hull is planning for the bicentenary in 2007, which are known as Wilberforce 2007.

In 1759, William Wilberforce was born into a family of wealthy merchants in the High street. His father died when he was quite young, so Wilberforce spent time with his aunt who was under the influence of John Wesley and the Methodist movement. It is worth pointing out that Christianity played an enormous part in his life and the causes that he took up.

It is also worth pausing to note that Wilberforce's house in the old city is now the award-winning Wilberforce House museum, the first in Britain to tackle the subject of slavery and its abolition, and one soon to celebrate 100 years in operation. It is currently undergoing major redevelopment and refurbishment in preparation for the 2007 celebrations.

At 17, Wilberforce went to St. Johns College, Cambridge, and he was shocked by his fellow students' hard drinking—some things never change. He then went on to represent the city of Hull as its Member of Parliament, having been elected in 1780, at the tender age of 21. It was a hard-fought contest and his election cost the exorbitant sum of £9,000. Clearly, that would breach many of the conditions that the Electoral Commission puts on elections these days. Wilberforce entered Parliament and supported the Tories—they were the future then. His friend William Pitt, was the youngest Prime Minister this country has seen.

In 1784, Wilberforce converted to evangelical Christianity and joined a Christian group known as the Clapham set. At that juncture, he decided to follow the social reform agenda in Parliament and was approached to campaign particularly against the slave trade. Between 1776 and 1807, it is estimated that Britain trafficked about 1 million people, so it was a huge issue that Wilberforce was going to have to tackle.

The Society of Friends had been campaigning against the slave trade for many years and had presented petitions in 1783 and 1787. Wilberforce first introduced his Bill against the slave trade in 1791, when it was easily defeated by 163 votes to 88. Of course, Wilberforce had the support of many parliamentarians and people with a social conscience outside Parliament, and I should mention Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp.

The abolition of the slave trade finally became law in 1807 thanks to Wilberforce's tireless campaigning. He died on 29 July 1833 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. One month later, Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which gave all slaves in the British Empire their freedom.

In addition to his campaign against slavery, Wilberforce was involved in other social reform organisations and in setting up of the charity that is now known as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The anti-slavery movement was arguably the first international human rights movement, and Wilberforce was its prime mover in the British Parliament. Hull is very proud that its MP led such an important movement, and I now want to move on to how the city has built on that heritage.

I congratulate the hon. Lady on having secured this important debate. Before she moves on to other aspects of Hull, may I draw her attention to the Reverend William Knibb, a son of Kettering, who was a leading light in the Baptist missionary society? I associate myself with her remarks about Christianity and the promotion of religion, which drove people such as William Wilberforce to abolish slavery.

I am grateful for that intervention. It reinforces the role that religion played in a lot of social reform movements in this country.

Because Hull is a port city, many people pass through it, and it has had to have an eye to the injustices that have happened in continental Europe and further afield because some of those passing through have claimed asylum and refugee status. With its strong maritime and trading background, Hull was relatively unusual at the time of Wilberforce in that it did not develop its wealth from the slave trade, unlike cities such as Bristol and Liverpool.

As a Bristol Member, I am in a position to intervene on the hon. Lady. She has referred to her city's positive past, with Wilberforce as its champion in getting rid of the slave trade. Bristol, as the principal slaving port during much of the period to which she refers, unfortunately has a rather more negative image, but wishes to mount an important exhibition to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. We were therefore shocked and disappointed to discover last week that the application by the British Empire and Commonwealth museum had been turned down at the first stage by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Would she be willing to join me in urging the Minister, as well as her city colleague, the Deputy Prime Minister, who has supported Bristol on previous visits to the city, to ask the Heritage Lottery Fund to consider—

Order. That intervention is too long in a short Adjournment debate.

Thank you, Mr. Chope. I reinforce the point that Hull comes to the 2007 celebrations with clean hands. It had a pioneering MP who fought very hard to bring about the abolition of the slave trade, and I believe that it is appropriate for Hull to lead the national celebrations in 2007 because that would bring clean hands to the whole debate.

I praise my hon. Friend for this great debate. Would she stretch her point to say that the achievements of Wilberforce spilled over to America, which followed some 30 years later in abolishing the slave trade?

That is absolutely right.

I want to combine my historical approach with a tribute to the work done by the city of Hull in recent years in the field of human rights. In 1982, Hull became the first city in the west to twin with a third world city—Freetown in Sierra Leone, the world's first colony for free Africans, which was set up in 1792 by Wilberforce and Thornton. In the 1980s, the then leader of Hull city council, Alderman Patrick Doyle, was instrumental in developing the links to enable it to twin with a developing country. Those links have gone from strength to strength over the years. We now have eight schools actively twinned with schools in Freetown as well as further links with churches and hospitals. A head teacher in Hull recently said to me that he would like to extend the opportunities for teachers to have work placements in Sierra Leone in 2007, and he hoped that some funding might be available to facilitate that.

Hon. Members will also know that Freetown is still recovering from a lengthy period of considerable turmoil. There is much scope for development in Sierra Leone, and I hope that in 2007 the Government will take a view about the extra support that it might wish to offer to Freetown, and to other cities in this country that wish to form links with developing world cities.

Hull was also the first local authority to sign up to Amnesty International, and Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela are freemen of the city. For many years, we have celebrated the spirit of William Wilberforce through the Wilberforce lectures. This year, James Coleridge Taylor, head of the national commission for democracy and human rights in Sierra Leone, will be our key speaker. We are also a proud fair trade city in Hull, having obtained that status earlier this year.

I must also mention the important development of WISE—the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation—which was established at the University of Hull. Its patron Desmond Tutu said of it:

"It is exemplary that the university should build on the history of the city and one of its most outstanding citizens. Tragically, slavery and the violation of human rights are still with us in the 21st century. The institute will be a beacon that will continue to throw a light on issues that are too often overlooked."

The institute brings together the study of history, law, politics, anthropology, medicine and genetics, and had its funding launch at Downing street, hosted by Cherie Booth.

Unfortunately, we know that slavery continues around the world today. A conservative estimate is that 27 million people are still in bonded slavery. That is why it is still a critical issue that we need to address in the 21st century. WISE will be able to build on the work that the University of Hull has undertaken in years gone by on the history of slavery, as well as on the association of the world's first professor of social justice at that university.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Ms Johnson) on securing a debate on a really important issue. While we are talking about Wilberforce and the past, we must not forget that we still have a form of slavery in this country: there are sex slaves imported from eastern Europe. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need a campaign as vigorous as Wilberforce's to get rid of that evil?

I agree absolutely with what the hon. Gentleman says. I am proud to have rehearsed the list of Hull's commitments to human rights over the years. Hull is often portrayed as geographically isolated and a rather backward-looking city. However, it has a forward and progressive approach to today's world.

In conclusion, I want to talk about the plans for celebrations in 2007. There will be 34 weeks of celebration in Hull, starting in March and ending in October 2007, during black history month. I shall read through some of the plans already in place. There will be a fair trade fortnight in March to start the celebrations. Hull Truck Theatre, which is nationally renowned, will put on a play on the subject of the modern issues of equality and freedom, which is to be written by Caryl Phillips, and which will go on tour to Liverpool and Bristol. We shall see the re-opening of the Wilberforce house in March 2007. The Hull Philharmonic orchestra has a special one-off commemorative concert to coincide with its 125th anniversary. There will be an international conference on the themes of "Slavery: Unfinished Business", which the University of Hull is organising. There will be a football tournament in our wonderful KC stadium, at which all teams will be playing for the Wilberforce cup. There will be a film festival celebrating films on the theme of freedom. We hope that there will be a Sierra Leone cricket tour, which will bring a team from Sierra Leone to tour Hull and to play the Wilberforce XI and local teams. We shall also have the Wilberforce lecture, and in 2007 we have already secured the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Prime Minister of Barbados as our key speakers. There will be a memorial event in the Wilberforce gardens, which are attached to Wilberforce house, and we hope that there will be a national competition for a piece of art to celebrate Wilberforce's life.

I am sure that the Minister will recognise that Hull is a long way down the path of ensuring that the celebrations are a success. Given Hull's unique and relevant links to Wilberforce, the council's support for human right over the years, and the city's long standing links with Africa, it is absolutely appropriate that the city should seek to lead, promote and commemorate the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom for the whole nation. I extend an invitation to the Minister to visit Hull, to see how well we are doing with our plans. I hope that he will be able to attend some of the event in 2007.

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Ms Johnson) for introducing the debate, and giving me the opportunity to respond on what I know all hon. Members here will know is an historic occasion for me, as the descendant of freed slaves. The 200th anniversary of Parliament's passing of the Slave Trade Act offers us an incredibly important opportunity to mark a crucial turning point in this country's history.

I want to set out how important I believe 2007 and the bicentenary of the abolition to be. In so doing, I pay tribute to the work of those who have done so much to keep alive the spirit of the abolitionists and who are now planning on making the bicentenary such a success, particularly in my hon. Friend's constituency. I also want to indicate where the Government believe they can best contribute in the lead-up to 2007.

From 1562, when the first English slaving expedition was led by Sir John Hawkins, to the eventual freedom of enslaved men, women and children in the British Empire on 1 August 1838, this country was intimately concerned in slavery and the slave trade. Until the 19th century, slavery was considered by many to be an acceptable part of the economic system and the fabric of this country. It was seen as enabling many countries in Europe and beyond to profit from the exchange of goods produced by a vast pool of free labour.

At the time, the legitimacy of slavery was justified by people from across society: politicians, businessmen, scientists and even some within the churches. Indeed at some time or another much of the country was intimately connected with slavery and its products. Every spoonful of sugar or coffee and every bale of cotton was closely connected with the slave trade. This country was not alone in benefiting financially from the slave trade. Yet, as the strongest power of the age, it bears a great weight of responsibility. As the bicentenary of Parliament's passing of the Slave Trade Act approaches, it is right that we begin to feel that weight more keenly. There are very strongly held views on the historical facts of slavery, the moral and legal accountability of those who were involved and the lasting effects. Many people have argued that the repercussions of the slave trade still resonate down the centuries.

The bicentenary in 2007 marks a crucial turning point in this country's move towards the nation it is today. It was a critical, if long overdue, step into the modern world, which we should still be proud this country took before any other. We took it before France, the United States and Brazil. I am very keen that we use the bicentenary in 2007 to the best possible effect. So, 2007 offers a timely opportunity for the people of Britain to recognise the reality of the transatlantic slave trade, to mark the abolition itself and the role of ordinary people, alongside other Britons, Africans and Caribbean people to help bring slavery to an end.

My hon. Friend has eloquently reminded us of one of the great heroes of the abolition movement—William Wilberforce. His conviction, his strength and above all his belief and sense of purpose, still shine out to us over the intervening years. Many people will already know a little of his life, and those of his contemporaries such as Thomas Clarkson. As my hon. Friend said, 2007 offers a great opportunity for his life and achievements, and those of his contemporaries to be made much more widely known.

I am also keen that in 2007 we do our utmost to celebrate the lives and contributions of those abolitionists who are not so well known. I think of Olaudah Equiano, thought to have been born in 1745 in west Africa, and kidnapped and sold into slavery in the west Indies. Having bought his freedom he became a leading spokesman for the campaign for the abolition of the slave trade and slavery. His autobiography is still in print today.

In addition to Equiano, there is Quobna Cugoano, the acclaimed writer who was born in 1757, who denounced the evils of slavery and pleaded for human dignity, not the relocation of ex-slaves to Sierra Leone. There is also Ignatio Sancho, who was born on a slave ship in the mid-Atlantic in 1729 and who became a leading activist in the pro-abolition campaign.

All three were Africans and important figures in this country's history. One of the measures of a successful year in 2007 will be that the lives and achievements of those still largely unknown Britons are brought to the fore. I am pleased that plans for a major ground-breaking exhibition in 2007 on the life and times of Equiano are already well advanced.

The year 2007 also offers the important opportunity to celebrate the lives and achievements not only of politicians, church leaders, Africans and former slaves, but of the countless ordinary British citizens who demanded change. Their petitions, marches, lobbying and prayers were crucial in putting pressure on Parliament to abolish the slave trade. They were ordinary people who spoke out against what they knew was wrong, despite the unpopularity of their views at the time.

Therefore, in addition to ensuring that the reality of the transatlantic slave trade is highlighted in 2007 and that we celebrate the achievements of the abolitionists, I want to ensure that we make the links between the concerns for justice that were present 200 years ago and our current concerns to tackle modern-day slavery and injustices, such as dealing with people trafficking and smuggling, making progress on providing debt relief for the poorest countries in the world and on development and justice in Africa, and dealing with the trade in sex slaves that the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) mentioned. It is right that we understand and do all we can to combat those injustices.

I believe that the bicentenary in 2007 offers a chance for the country to make a collective commitment to ensure that in another 200 years, no one should feel the need to express the same level of regret for our actions today. That is a bold ambition, but 2007 is the right year in which to make it.

We know that poverty and social exclusion are at the root of most forms of contemporary slavery. Since 1997, the UK has doubled its aid budget and the primary focus of our programme has been the elimination of poverty. Where possible we do that by supporting country-owned development plans. At the G8 summit in July, it was agreed that an extra $50 billion a year would be provided to poor countries by 2010, some $25 billion of which will go to Africa, which will more than double our aid to Africa compared with 2004's figure.

A key aim is to ensure that the needs of the poor, and particularly the most vulnerable groups, are taken into account in all the Government's approaches. It is therefore right that I should highlight just a few of the approaches that are already being adopted by the Department for International Development to tackle modern-day forms of slavery.

In west Africa, we provide more than £1 million to the International Labour Organisation's programme to tackle descent-based slavery and other forced labour issues. In Sudan, we support the participation of displaced children, including those who have been forced to work as soldiers and slaves, in the rebuilding of Sudan. The Government's contribution is nearly £500,000. In Nepal, the modern slave trade project provides more than £250,000 to reduce the number of young boys and girls coerced into prostitution.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing attention to the considerable work already undertaken in Hull at the Wilberforce House museum and the Wilberforce Institute for the study of slavery and emancipation. The close working between the museum, the University of Hull, the city council and others is a strong example of how we are most successful when we work together.

Through its close connections with William Wilberforce and as one of the country's major ports, Hull clearly has a key role to play in 2007. I am especially pleased that it has been working closely with the other great port cities of Liverpool and Bristol, which had a direct connection to the slave trade. The focus in Hull on highlighting the historical detail of the slave trade, the role of abolitionists and the links to modern-day forms of slavery and injustice is the focus that will make 2007 a success. Hull will rightly play a major role in the events of 2007, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for inviting me to visit the city. I look forward to seeing the work she outlined in the new year.

I recognise the pivotal role of Hull—I underline pivotal—and I shall highlight a few of the other initiatives that are already in hand or planned for 2007. The National Maritime museum in Liverpool will open a new gallery, known as the national museum and centre for the understanding of transatlantic slavery. In the design of the displays and through focused outreach, the museum will target new visitors, particularly from under-represented and ethnic minority groups in and around Merseyside. Funding for the museum comes largely from the Heritage Lottery Fund. I am pleased that my Department is directly contributing £250,000 a year to meet the new museum's running costs.

Education and youth involvement is a key element in 2007. As part of strategic commissioning through the national-regional partnerships programme, my Department and the Department for Education and Skills have funded the understanding slavery initiative, involving Hull, Bristol, Liverpool and the National Maritime museum in Greenwich. I am pleased that since 2003 that initiative, which anchors teaching of the history of the period within the school curriculum, has received nearly £600,000 from the Government. It is most important that children in key stages 2 and 3 learn that history.

In funding events in 2007, the Heritage Lottery Fund is encouraging community-based organisations and others to apply for funding inspired by the bicentenary. It is keen to fund projects that add to the collective understanding of the transatlantic slave trade and its impact on our national heritage.

It was noted earlier that there was a problem in the application made in Liverpool; I was also lobbied vigorously on the issue by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy). I understand that the Heritage Lottery Fund will meet the Bristol Empire and Commonwealth museum again soon. The fund is keen to emphasise that it is committed to funding projects throughout the UK to mark the 2007 bicententary. It has already awarded grants totalling £15 million and published guidance for applicants considering projects. I hope that the problems, particularly those in Bristol, will be overcome.

We cannot hope now to right the wrongs perpetuated in the past, but we should not ignore them. We must learn from them, and take the opportunity of the bicentenary to engage more widely in positive debate about the evils of present-day unfree labour, trafficking and forced prostitution. We must also celebrate and commemorate the many lay people and parliamentarians, men, women and free slaves who successfully campaigned in Britain for the abolition of the slave trade.

It is a great pleasure to have this opportunity to raise rural and island transport. I welcome the Minister and thank her for her great courtesy in meeting the leader of the Isle of Wight council, Andy Sutton; the councillor with responsibility for transport, Ian Ward; and myself—supported by officers—on Wednesday 1 December, when we discussed a couple of the issues with which we on the Isle of Wight are concerned. I do not intend to reiterate the arguments made then, but I know that the Minister was impressed by the passionate way in which Councillor Sutton made the case for a highways private finance initiative. We are ready and raring to go with a highways PFI. Our highways have been neglected for many years, so if the Minister wants the island to be a rural pathfinder for such a PFI, we are ready and waiting at the starting block.

I know that the Minister cannot make any commitments at this stage, and she said that she would not be able to visit us while the question of a highways PFI was up for decision, but she would be very welcome to visit as soon as she has made that decision, whether it is the right one or not. However, I am sure that she will make the right decision.

Under its new leadership, the Isle of Wight council is much more dynamic and forward looking than its predecessor. One area in which it is taking a proactive role is in easing and improving public transport. Charlotte Cooke, the member of the Youth Parliament for the Isle of Wight, as well as many of her predecessors and the Isle of Wight Youth Council, which was elected last Monday, have repeatedly complained about the cost of bus fares on the island, especially for young people. One of their biggest gripes is that, once one is 14, one must pay the full adult fare, which is not the case in many places on the mainland. Councillor Sutton tells me that he is looking very hard at introducing a £1 flat-rate bus fare for travel anywhere on the island. That will do wonders for young people in improving their choice of school, improving access to facilities in Newport, Ryde and the other towns, and generally improving accessibility for the young, vulnerable and elderly. We are certainly pleased that that is going ahead.

The second issue that I raised with the Minister was cross-Solent transport. We have an excellent service; let us be in no doubt about that. There are around 300 sailings a day of various kinds and at various times across the Solent. However, they are costly for low-income groups. The hovercraft goes between Ryde and Southsea; the catamaran goes between Ryde pier and Portsmouth harbour; a car ferry runs between Fishbourne and Portsmouth harbour; the Red Jet runs between Cowes and Southampton; and another car ferry goes between east Cowes and Southampton. We also have the Lymington ferry. I will not go into all those services in detail.

I do not propose to ask the questions to which the Minister gave clear answers a fortnight ago, but I must reiterate the case for action to improve cross-Solent accessibility. The Minister's hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department of Health said 18 months or two years ago that she recognised that islanders should not have to cross the Solent to get to a dentist. I am pleased to say that there have been slight improvements in that area. Not all islanders now have to cross the Solent to get to a dentist. However, they must cross the Solent for other major medical interventions, including radiotherapy. A 30-day season ticket for the Red Funnel ferry—which is what one needs for a 28-day course of radiotherapy in Southampton—costs £180. That is a substantial cost, which is not met for everyone by the hospital travel cost scheme. That helps only the poorest. It does not help those visiting or accompanying patients. I met a resident in Newport earlier this year whose husband had died in a hospital in Portsmouth. She was very distressed because she could afford to visit him, she said, only twice a week before his death.

People also cross the Solent for education purposes: for higher education and for some aspects of further education that are not available on the island. I am anxious to ensure that a dialogue opens up between my local authority and the Minister's officials, so that the Minister will not in future be placed in the position in which she was placed this time. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced his Budget for elderly people to get free bus travel, that was costed without taking into account the cost of Isle of Wight ferries.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that perhaps one of the most crucial things for islanders, be they on the Isle of Wight or the Scottish islands of Na h-Eileanan an Iar or, indeed, Orkney and Shetland, is that a mile travelled at sea should be equivalent to a mile travelled on land, in that there should be some equivalence in the fares to overcome the disadvantage of island living?

I shall not go as far as the hon. Gentleman would perhaps like me to, but I thank him for his intervention. There are different costs to providing transport in different places on the mainland, so there could be no standard fare on the mainland, even if there were to be one on the island. I do accept, however, that people should not be significantly disadvantaged because they live on islands.

We do not have—I do not want to use the word "enjoy"—any subsidy for our ferries. That enables them to operate as quickly as they can and to respond to the needs of the market without an intermediary body. However, I would like the Minister's officials to work with officers of the Isle of Wight council to ensure that if another scheme comes up, we are not forgotten. I accept that, in the recent past, the council has not made approaches to the Department for Transport or its predecessors. As far as I know, it has not made any such approaches since 1997. I can therefore understand why the issue was not on the Department's radar, but I would like the Minister to accept that ferries are an integral part of an island's public transport network and to ensure that, in future, her officials are alert to our needs.

The Minister kindly agreed, when confronted with the costs of travel, to "reflect"—I use that word carefully. I am sure that, when reflecting, she will understand that a hospital car, which someone might use to get from home in, say, Alnwick to a hospital in Newcastle upon Tyne, is no use when travelling from Bembridge to Southampton.

There are a number of related cross-Solent issues. One is the failure of the Strategic Rail Authority and South West Trains to co-ordinate changes to timetables with ferry services and Island Line services. For example, the Portsmouth harbour train from Waterloo sometimes terminates short of Portsmouth harbour. If it finishes at Portsmouth and Southsea, people miss their ferry connection. Ferries will sometimes delay if a train is running late, but they cannot delay too long or they will miss the connection with Island Line at the other end. Island Line is, I think, the premier service in the country as regards meeting the Government's punctuality targets. The problem is that those targets are not as useful for people on the island if the train departs before the ferry arrives, as they might be in other places. There is a crossing loop on Island Line only two thirds of the way along the route, so an asymmetric service has to be provided. Will the Minister consider whether the punctuality targets can be appropriate for our trains in our places, rather than a standard national target?

Another change that the SRA and South West Trains made without consulting the ferry companies was in the services from Waterloo to Cowes. The through services that now leave at 5 minutes past and 35 minutes past the hour just manage to miss the bus that gets to the ferry in time to catch the Red Jet to the island, so the service between Cowes and Waterloo that used on occasion to be a two-hour service is now a two-and-a-half-hour service.

The bus and ferry companies could at least adjust that, should they so want, but the Lymington service, with which you may be familiar, Mr. Chope, has changed, too. The London to Brockenhurst to Lymington service has been adjusted, so it now no longer matches the times of the Wightlink sailings to Yarmouth. It is much more difficult for the ferry company to adjust its sailing times, because two ferries cannot pass each other in the Lymington river. Each of those examples is an occasion on which the SRA must consult other transport undertakings before it sets in stone new timetabling arrangements.

My final moan about South West Trains and the Strategic Rail Authority concerns advertisements for services, especially those from Waterloo. It would help if Cowes, Shanklin and other island destinations were advertised at Waterloo as they would be if they were railway stations on the mainland. The fact that there is a break in the service to take a ferry is no excuse not to advertise those destinations. If public transport is to be integrated, whether by Government or the private sector, it must be integrated fully. There must be effective advertising of all available services.

While I am on the subject of trains, I ask the Minister to look at the duration of the Island Line franchise and at Network Rail's long-term plans for the permanent way of the island's rail service.

I have two fears. First, the Minister may be aware that we have a unique vertically integrated railway franchise. That means that Stagecoach, which owns Island Line, is responsible for maintaining the permanent way— the crossings, embankments and bridges—and for purchasing, or hiring, and maintaining the rolling stock. If there is a short franchise, the money provided—notionally to support the permanent way—will be spent elsewhere in Stagecoach's extensive network.

Secondly, with a short franchise, there is not the same incentive that there might be with a longer franchise to invest in rolling stock. As a consequence, the Isle of Wight is still running London underground stock that dates back to the 1950s. It is quite effective, but it is not exactly attractive. We could do better for the island.

The Minister will be interested to hear about a ragbag of odds and ends that I want to draw to her attention. As well as ferry services, it is important that we develop air services to the island. They would not be used by an overwhelming proportion of the population, but they would encourage business and investment to the island. Air services would also encourage some higher-spending holidaymakers to visit the island.

We are pressing the South East of England Development Agency, through the Isle of Wight economic partnership, to examine the possibility of a helicopter link to Cowes, perhaps from Southampton airport. We are also pressing for the navigation system at Bembridge airport to be upgraded in order to make blind landing possible there. It is a wonderful airport with an excellent runway, but, at present, it is not possible to land a plane in the dark or when there is low cloud.

Just before the most recent council elections, the ruling group on the council proposed the introduction of a landing charge. Islanders viewed that as a covert form of congestion charge. Not surprisingly, they threw out the ruling group and elected the Conservatives instead.

I should like the Minister to give some assurance that if Portsmouth or Southampton city councils were to consider a congestion charge the cost would not be borne by Isle of Wight motorists. As I have said, the cost of crossing the Solent is already significant, and we do not want any artificial boost to that through a congestion charge.

Finally, as the Minister will know, two thirds of the island is made up of areas of outstanding natural beauty. Many areas that are not designated as AONBs are very attractive and worth visiting. I congratulate the Government on an excellent booklet on street design, reduction of road signs in rural areas and on enhancing the environment that English Heritage and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister have recently published. The environment of the Isle of Wight is precious to us all. I congratulate the Minister and her Government on that booklet and should welcome her if she would like to come to the island in the near future.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) on securing this debate and on his energy in making representations to me a couple of weeks ago. He and his council colleagues have made many valuable points about transport on the Isle of Wight. We can all agree about the special character of the Isle of Wight and some of the particular challenges faced by rural and rural island communities in transport and in accessing services.

I hope that I will be able to respond to a number of his points. If I cannot cover them all, I shall be happy to speak to him later. He talked about bus transport today, as he did when we met earlier. The Government are heavily committed to supporting bus use. We are providing more than £360 million a year through the bus service operators grant and through rural subsidy grant, which is now £53 million a year and helps to support around 2,200 rural bus services. We also invest in particular projects, such as bus challenge schemes and kick start.

Isle of Wight services are benefiting from more than £250,000 in rural bus services grant in this financial year and have been awarded more than £1.6 million since 1998 to develop their rural bus services. That supports 15 services in the authority's area. The Isle of Wight was successful with a 2002 rural bus challenge bid, the "East Wight villager", for which it was awarded more than £400,000. The "East Wight villager" is essentially a demand responsive service, linking the small villages with the principal towns. The award paid for the purchase of the vehicles and provided support to maintain the service for three years.

The hon. Gentleman referred to concessionary travel. As he knows, the Government are committed to helping older and disabled people to access public transport. We introduced the first statutory minimum entitlement in 2001, which guaranteed half-fare travel on local buses. We will provide an extra £350 million in the next financial year to allow older and disabled people to travel free on local off-peak bus services. As he is aware, we have made it very clear that this is a baseline of service on which local authorities are encouraged to build. That may be in partnership with other local authorities, which is not so easy when one is separated by a body of water, or by developing additional services on top of the concessionary fare that is essentially Government funded.

It is pleasing to hear that the council is looking at innovative ways of approaching flat fares or other concessionary fare approaches to help meet the particular local needs of the community. The Government are investing the money to provide a service but we recognise that central Government cannot and should not attempt to develop a very responsive service to every local area's particular needs. We want local government to take a lead in doing that.

One of the appropriate ways for local authorities to rise to that challenge is in the field of community transport, which is particularly relevant to rural communities. Provision and funding of transport to hospital and medical facilities, for example, can be provided by a number of different organisations, such as the hospital trust, local, voluntary and community groups, and bus and taxi companies. Community services operated by the voluntary sector have a valuable role in supplementing public transport provision. Local authorities have the flexibility to support these services from their local budgets should they choose to do so. A local authority can use its allocation of rural bus subsidy grant to help fund such services, and many community transport operators are also eligible to claim bus service operators grant from the Department.

The hon. Gentleman has made several representations on making travel concessions on ferry crossings a statutory entitlement; that was the clear theme of his speech today and at our meeting on 30 November. As he vigorously explained, it will be necessary for islanders to travel to the mainland to access hospital health services or services such as education. However, I assure him that travel concession authorities can already provide enhancements to the statutory minimum requirement, and it would be within the local authority's power to give concessions on ferries, subject to financial priorities. The current basis of concessionary travel is the Government framework for a minimum entitlement, which leaves local discretion to add extras, such as bus travel before 9.30 am, community transport schemes and concessionary travel on services outside the local authority boundary.

The context is the financial settlement for local authorities, which was announced early last week. It was the first two-year settlement for local authorities' Government grant. Overall, £62 billion will be provided in 2006–07 and £65 billion in 2007–08. For the Isle of Wight, that means an extra £6 million, or 5.5 per cent., in funding in 2006–07. Taking formula grant and dedicated schools grant together, that will increase to £7 million, a 6.1 per cent. increase.

Can the Minister give a figure for reimbursing the cost of introducing the free fare scheme for pensioners?

I am afraid that I do not have the figure with me, but the grant is not ring-fenced, as the hon. Gentleman is probably aware. The distribution is done under a formula and in consultation with local government. The money is then put into the general environmental and protective cultural services block of the revenue support grant for local authorities to draw on.

On roads, the hon. Gentleman made a strong case for supporting the roads private finance initiative. It may be helpful if I explain the bidding process for PFI. We aim to invite expressions of interest for further highway maintenance PFI pathfinder projects from local transport authorities early next year, although the exact details have yet to be finalised. Under the process for accepting bids, the Department will invite expressions of interest from local authorities and ask the strongest bidders to produce an outline business case. If the Department approves an authority's outline business case, it will be put forward to be approved by the project review group. The group is an interdepartmental body chaired by Her Majesty's Treasury and has to approve all PFI schemes that require central Government support.

On air services, the White Paper on the future of air transport supported the growth of regional airports and recognised in particular the role that air services can play in providing rapid access from the regions to other parts of the country. The network of domestic air services in the UK has expanded significantly in recent years, and several airlines specialise in serving thinner routes to small regional airports. We are looking to those carriers, working with airport operators, to introduce proposals for new commercial services and to open up parts of the country that do not possess air links. I am aware that there is a history of air links to the Isle of Wight, although no sustained air services have operated for a great many years. The potential for new services to the island would of course be restricted by the limited capabilities of the two licensed aerodromes, which could support only smaller types of commercial aircraft.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned Island Line. As he knows, it is a stand-alone train operating company franchise operated by Stagecoach, and it is due to end in February 2007. The first stage of the procurement process for the letting of the new South Western passenger rail franchise has started. The new franchise will encompass the existing Island Line franchise. There has been no significant investment in the line for a considerable time, but it is being designated as a community rail line as part of the Department's community rail development strategy, which is examining the cost-effectiveness of infrastructure enhancements to enable a more regular service pattern to operate while reducing ongoing costs.

Progress has been made in establishing a community rail partnership for the island that involves the railway, the council, Wightlink and other user groups. Its main purpose will be to raise the profile of the line and to promote its local use and use by mainline visitors.

The hon. Gentleman made important and valuable points about information, advertising and rail punctuality. I promise him that I will ensure that the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg), who is responsible for rail services, is given a note of what he said, and I will ask whether he can add anything to my comments today.

We recognise that there are many challenges ahead, and that rural communities, particularly on islands, face very specific challenges. We believe, however, that there is a healthy future for rural transport of the island, given the Government's investment in local government settlements, in local transport plans and in the bus service, and given the partnership achieved by the Isle of Wight authority. I assure the hon. Gentleman that officials in my Department want to continue to work with the local authority to ensure that we make the best possible use of the opportunities available to us.

I am absolutely delighted to have secured the debate because the issue that I am about to discuss is causing great consternation in four villages in my constituency. Under an initiative that it has called "Transforming learning communities", Cheshire county council has introduced a document on which it will base its attempt to tackle what it describes as falling rolls and surplus school places. Several people in the villages of my constituency believe that, rather than transforming learning communities, the title of the document is a sort of euphemism and that the council will close at least two, or possibly three, schools in my constituency. That is why they are very concerned.

The council decided on the basis of population projections and birth rates that it will have a surplus of some 5,000 school places by 2010. It decided on a piecemeal approach to dealing with the problem and has divided the county into eight different areas, three of which it will visit this year, a few of which it will visit next year, and a few the year after.

The first tranche of the review deals with the area that it has called Frodsham and Helsby, which contains Manley village school, Kingsley St. Johns and Norley Church of England school, as well as a primary school. The review also covers Frodsham technology college, which it recommends for closure because it has only 700 pupils, at least 400 of whom are from outside the county council area. Most of them, in fact, come from the Runcorn part of my constituency, which also causes me some concern.

I do not believe that the county council has thought through the implications of closing Frodsham technology college for the other parts of Cheshire, particularly for the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller). Young people from the village of Elton in that constituency will be very much affected by the closure, and may be forced to go to a school other than Helsby high school for their secondary education.

The first tranche of the review suggests that Alvanley primary school merges—the council uses the word "amalgamate"—with Manley primary school, and that Kingsley St. Johns and Norley Church of England school should amalgamate. That could result in the closure of all four schools and the opening of two new schools on sites yet to be determined, or it could result in two of the schools closing and the two other schools amalgamating on one of the sites.

Whatever happens, village schools in my constituency will close. When we pressed the county council on the matter, its first argument was that it had to tackle falling school rolls and surplus places. The four primary schools, however, are full. They have a buoyant intake, they do not face the prospect of falling school rolls and they provide an excellent education for the pupils in their care. The role that they play in their communities is equally important. They are vital to the infrastructure of their communities, and closure of any one of them would be irrevocable.

The first thing that I asked the county council was that this was the first tranche of the review and it did not know what would happen in the other schools in the county, so why the piecemeal approach? It said that it would review the area again in 2008, so not only do we face a traumatic review in 2005, but three years down the track, when the county council has found out the implications of its reorganisation, it will revisit the schools that stay open. I have told the county council that it should adopt a two-stage approach. It should review every primary school in the county and, when it has an idea of the changes it would like, go to the second stage of the process and carry out the statutory consultations required by law. That would give us a clear picture of the effect on the whole county, and we would not have to tell schools that they would be reviewed again. Everyone would see that the process was fair and transparent.

There is a fear that the county council will do the first tranche of work and find out that the temperature out there is so hot that it needs to rethink its views, so that village schools in my constituency will close but a different attitude will be taken to reviewing the rest of the county. That would be unfair and unnecessary. I hope that the county council will consider that view, but I am not optimistic that it will do so when it makes its decisions tomorrow and on 19 December.

When pressed on the matter of falling rolls and surplus school places the county council has used 2002 statistics. The statistics for 2003 show that the birth rate in the county council area of Cheshire is growing. The county council advised me in a letter that it accepts that the birth rate is increasing, but does not know whether it is a trend. Without waiting to establish whether there is a trend of an increasing birth rate the county council went through an exercise of removing surplus school places across the county. It readily acknowledges that Alvanley primary school, Manley village school and Kingsley St. John's and Norley Church of England primary schools are, all four of them, full. They turn parents away each year because they are popular village schools.

The county council then deploys a different argument. When I first encountered it, I thought that it had carried out an assessment of the education in those four primary schools and come up with specific criticisms about what was happening. It said that the schools are small, with cross-age group classes, that they teach across the key stages, and that the head teachers all have a significant teaching commitment. Of course, that is true for those four schools, but it is not seen as a problem by Ofsted, which has inspected the schools and found them excellent.

On digging below the surface, one finds that the criticism does not arise from observation of the four primary schools in my constituency. It is taken, lock stock and barrel, from a Government document called the toolkit for falling rolls, which mentions the three relevant characteristics as being found by Ofsted in schools with falling rolls; but that is not a criticism that can readily be levelled at the four schools in my constituency. In less strident language, the county council draws attention to its concerns that the four schools may not be able to deliver the national curriculum, and that they may have weak leadership and governance. Those three observations, of course, do not derive from direct observation of the schools, but are taken from the Government toolkit on falling rolls.

The county council has always said that transforming learning communities is not about saving money. However, the document that it has produced, and of which I have a copy, makes it clear—and draws specific attention to the fact—that educating pupils in village schools is more expensive than educating pupils in urban areas. We all know that, but we also know that it should not be a barrier to pupils' attendance at their village school to get the excellent education that it provides. Those arguments have all been put to Cheshire county council, which has not taken cognisance of the strength of feeling in the villages.

That leads me to a very important issue. If the schools do not have falling rolls and are not facing surplus school places in future, if they are full and buoyant and Ofsted has given them a good report, and if parents clearly want to send their children to those village schools, why does the county council propose to merge them? The county council has come up with a figure; it says that most primary schools should aspire to have 110 pupils, and the fact that those four schools have fallen below that figure is one reason put forward for their amalgamation.

I would refer the county council to another important document produced by the Department for Education and Skills, entitled "Schools organisation changes" which is drawn up for decision makers. Paragraph 52 of that document is specific. It states:

"There is 'a presumption against the closure of rural schools.'"

It goes on to say it does not mean that rural schools should never close, but it sets out strict criteria about what needs to be in place should a local authority propose closing a village school and the arguments that it should provide to the school organisation committee. It draws specific attention to transport.

The parents of the children in my four rural schools can currently walk their children to school. If Alvanley or Manley schools were to close, it would mean a two-mile journey for the pupils. There is no public transport, so the parents will have no choice but to take them by car. The same applies to Kingsley St. John's or Norley Church of England primary schools; if they were to close, transport would be a problem.

I asked the county council whether, when making its initial proposals, it had taken account of the impact that closing any of those schools would have on the wider village communities. Quite straightforwardly, it said that it had not but that it would do so when it undertook formal, statutory consultation. Again, the county council is being remiss in not recognising the role that primary schools play in the life of the community.

The document also talks about federation. All four schools have said that they would like to consider that option. I have to tell my right hon. Friend the Minister that the parents in Manley, Alvanley, Norley and Kingsley do not want federation. They all want their village schools to stay open. The governing bodies of the four schools have gone for federation because they think that it is the only way to save their schools.

My view is that if there is a true consultation—one about transforming learning communities, improving education and sustaining rural communities—the status quo must be an option. I accept that the status quo is not an option for the entire county and that things will have to change. However, no case has been made for the amalgamation or federation of those four schools, or for the closure of two of them, or even all four. The parents are right. They should have the option of federation.

The volume of opinion in the four villages—what people are saying in support of the four schools and in response to the county council's initial consultation—should give the council pause for thought. It should take stock and reconsider the issue. I would be reassured if, at its meeting tomorrow, the county council decided to consult properly; the decision would need to be confirmed by the executive committee on 19 December. If it put all the options on the table—the status quo, amalgamation and confederation—it would go some way to addressing the villagers' fears.

The county council has not given an educational reason why any of the four schools should be faced with the threat of closure. I hope that when my right hon. Friend replies to the debate, she will be able reassure me about Government policy, because when the hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) was shadow spokesman for education he wrote to one of my constituents and tried to blame the Labour Government for what is going on in Tory-controlled Cheshire county council.

I have never wanted to make a political issue of all this. It is not one. It is about what we should do in the 21st century for primary school kids in my constituency. They should still be able to go to schools that serve their villages, and some of those schools have been doing just that for more than 120 years.

I thank the Minister for allowing me to speak in the debate initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall). Apart from being an hon. Friend and a genuine friend, he is also my Member of Parliament.

I have some troublesome constituents.

My hon. Friend gets some awkward letters from me.

Alvanley, one of the schools that he mentioned, is in the village where I live, and my wife is a member of the governing body, so I am accountable through that route as well. The project affects the whole of Cheshire. The county council has split the county into a number of sub-units and intends between now and the end of 2006 to complete its review. I have said from the outset, in respect of the parts of the review that impact on my constituency, including those that overlap with the constituency of my hon. Friend, that it is absurd that they should be dealt with in isolation. My hon. Friend suggested a two-stage approach. I do not think that any irrevocable decisions should be taken until the whole county has been reviewed. That would be illogical; we would create fixed borders between the sub-areas of the county, and if a decision were taken in, for example, Weaver Vale that affected Chester or Ellesmere Port and Neston, illogical decisions might be made in relation to schools that were close to the border because they had been dealt with in different blocks. There ought to be fuzzy borders, and a different approach will have to be adopted if that is to work.

I concur with my hon. Friend in questioning the methodology. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will undertake to check whether the approach being adopted by Cheshire in respect of predicted population figures is sound—there are statisticians who would argue otherwise. In my constituency, the review has produced a bit of a curate's egg. There are some welcome parts and some that will cause serious problems, not because of the rural make-up that my hon. Friend described but because no explanation has been offered as to what will happen to schools such as Gorsthill and Mansefield, which have served the community well for a long time, Mansefield with a multiple learning disability unit. Gorsthill has a dangerous fast road.

One thing in the review of which I am critical is the lack of any real thought about special educational needs. When I challenged the county council about that, I was told that it will review the special needs of individual pupils. In my hon. Friend's constituency, two schools are affected by the review, both of which have provision for special needs.

My hon. Friend is right. That raises a legitimate question against the proposals. There are major implications for the secondary sector. One of the proposals involves two centres for 11-to-14 year-olds and a 14-to-19 academy. That must be reinforced with very substantial sums from central Government. I have not been consulted about my views, either directly by the Government or indirectly through the county council. I hope that Members of Parliament will be engaged directly with the issue.

My final observation concerns a small school, Dunham Hill. It is a tiny little village school with a unique feature: over the years it has developed a specialist unit to provide education for the children of Travellers. It is unique. The current proposal is that the school should be closed and moved, lock stock and barrel, into Horns Mill in my hon. Friend's constituency. That might be perfectly logical in terms of numbers, because Dunham Hill does not meet the 100 criterion. However, one has to ask whether it makes sense in terms of broader social policy considerations, because it will jeopardise the effort that has been made over the last 10 to 15 years by successive county council administrations to integrate Travellers' children into mainstream education, which is now showing success in getting some youngsters into the secondary sector. I do not believe it is possible to pick up such a unit and physically move it, and I have concerns about it.

I fully understand my hon. Friend's comments about rural schools, and, like him, I do not want to make this a political issue, but we find it a tad amusing to see signs popping up all around the county that say "Save our schools"—we must remind people that this is all about saving our schools from a Tory county council.

The issue is complex; there must be change in some parts of the county, but I hope that the Minister will use her good offices to intervene to ensure that the changes that take place make sense in all the policy areas that my hon. Friend described, which have an impact on children in the communities.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall) on securing the debate, from which it is evident that there is great interest among local people in Cheshire's transforming learning communities initiative, and particularly on the impact that it may have on primary and secondary school provision in my hon. Friend's constituency and in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller). My hon. Friends and other stakeholders in the local community should and will have an important role in considering the issues. It is good to see local MPs not only ably defending their constituencies but being willing to see the coherence of the plans throughout the area.

Changes to school provision in a district are essentially matters for local decision, as the local authority has the statutory responsibility for planning school places and for proposing to close schools and open new ones. The local authority has a statutory duty to ensure that there are sufficient places and that high quality education is provided in a cost-effective way.

My hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale rightly put great emphasis on the quality of the primary education that will be provided in his constituency, which must be at the heart of any proposals or changes made. The Department's five-year strategy for children and learners, which followed from our primary document "Excellence and Enjoyment—A Strategy for Primary Schools" sets out the success story of primary education, with many schools delivering high-quality education. Impressive strides in literacy and numeracy have been made in recent years, and teaching has improved in every curriculum in primary schools since 1997.

My hon. Friend is right to say that overall primary standards in Frodsham and Helsby are good and broadly in line with the average for all Cheshire schools. In Cheshire as a whole, key stage 1 and 2 results are above the national average. No primary schools in Frodsham and Helsby have been identified as requiring special measures, having serious weaknesses or as under-achieving. The staff and governors at Alvanley, Manley, Kingsley St. John's and Norley primary schools are doing an excellent job in ensuring that the work continues for my hon. Friend's constituents.

Cheshire county council is reviewing primary and secondary school places in Frodsham and Helsby because of the surplus places that exist in both sectors. The county council has informed me it is undertaking public consultations on the proposals for schools in Frodsham and Helsby. It is important that the process allows for the consideration of alternative proposals put forward by local stakeholders with an interest in education. Clearly, both my hon. Friends are concerned about and involved in that. Hon. Members must be involved. We recently changed the guidance on schools organisation to ensure that local Members are fully engaged in decisions. I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston that he will be consulted about any academy proposals in his constituency.

Later this month, the Cheshire schools panel will consider the outcome of the consultations and will make recommendations to the executive of the council on which proposals to recommend for publication. The executive will then decide whether to authorise publication of statutory proposals setting out any planned changes. There will then be a formal process, which must be carried out, which I will outline in a moment.

My hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale concentrated particularly on the possible amalgamations involving his four primary schools. He outlined the need to ensure that the proposal to close the secondary school in his constituency is dovetailed with proposals for other changes and that considerations of the knock-on effect of any closure on where young people and families will receive their secondary education is important. In the Government's view, any changes to school organisation should focus on boosting standards and opportunities for young people while matching school place supply as closely as possible to pupil and parental needs and wishes.

The Education Act 1996 places a duty on each local education authority to ensure that sufficient school places exist to meet the needs of the local population in order to promote high standards of attainment for all pupils. If an authority decides to reorganise provision, decisions will not be taken by Ministers but will be decided locally, as Cheshire county council is starting to do. As I indicated, the proposals are at public consultation and have not yet moved into the statutory phase. All interested parties must be consulted before proposals are published by the authority, provided with sufficient information and allowed adequate time in which to respond. If there is a decision to proceed with closure proposals for individual schools, formal notices must be published in a local newspaper, posted at the main entrances of the schools named in the proposals and placed locally in another conspicuous place. There is then a six-week period in which people can submit representations in support of or against the proposals, except in the case of a school in special measures, when the period is one month, although that clearly is not the case in my hon. Friend's constituency.

If the authority publishes the proposals and there are no objections, it may proceed and implement them. In all other cases, such as those for which objections are received and those concerning voluntary-aided schools, the proposals are referred to the school organisation committee, which is made up of five or six groups, each representing major stakeholders in the provision of education, including the diocesan bodies. Each group has one vote and must consider all evidence in line with the guidance issued by the Secretary of State before reaching a decision. If a unanimous decision cannot be reached, the case is referred to the independent schools adjudicator for final decision.

Guidance for those publishing and deciding proposals for changes to local school organisation makes it clear that the Government are committed to greater personalisation and choice, with learners and parents at centre-stage, but that must be set in the context of raising standards.

Does the consultation requirement extend to proposals for infant and junior schools to merge?

Yes, it absolutely does. The proposals that my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale mentioned on the four primary schools would involve the statutory process that I have outlined. Our guidance on those changes states that decisions must be made in light of a range of factors, including potential impact on local standards, contribution to diversity, views of interested parties and cost effectiveness.

My hon. Friend made some important points about rural schools, which make an important contribution to their local area. They are often at the heart of rural communities, as my hon. Friend said. Closing a rural school can have effects well beyond the schooling of children. That is why we introduced a presumption against closing rural schools in 1998. Before that, an average of 30 rural schools a year were approved for closure. This has now reduced to an average of five. Of course, the presumption against closure does not mean that no rural school will ever close, but it ensures that there must be a strong case for closing a small rural school, and closure must be in the best overall interest of education in the local area.

As my hon. Friend said, the decision maker's guidance on statutory proposals requires local authorities or governing bodies that propose a rural school closure to provide evidence to show that they have considered a range of factors, including transport implications, alternatives to closure and the impact on the community. We also expect authorities to take full account of our proposals on primary education, as set out in the five-year strategy, when planning for primary school provision.

As for the review of primary and secondary schools in the Frodsham and Helsby area of my hon. Friend's constituency, he identified the arguments made by the local authority on surplus places. Surplus places can represent a poor use of resources that could be used more effectively to support schools in raising standards. In the light of a downward trend in the number of pupils in primary education and the resultant impact on secondary schools, that is a national and local concern. That is why we have developed, in conjunction with the Audit Commission, a web-based toolkit which offers a range of practical advice and guidance on dealing with falling rolls. Where pupil numbers fall below 150, the guidance states that schools may have to take some difficult decisions to maintain the quality of education, including considering the introduction of mixed-age teaching. However, I emphasise to my hon. Friend that the guidance does not state that a school should not have mixed-age teaching, or that that would be a reason for closure or reorganisation.

I think that there are some strong educational merits in mixed-age teaching, certainly in primary schools. I am also certain that, where head teachers of primary schools have teaching commitments, those schools are better for it.

My hon. Friend may well be right. The important point is that there is no central Government instruction; it is a decision that must be taken in the light of the quality of local provision. Indeed, while the latest Ofsted report for Cheshire local education authority states that performance in managing the supply of school places is unsatisfactory, the reduction of surplus places is not a matter for central Government; it is a matter for local decision making and we do not issue instructions on that matter. It is very much a matter for individual authorities to decide whether and how they reduce levels of surplus places, taking into account local circumstances, including school performance, as well as geographical and social factors. That is what my hon. Friend is exhorting Cheshire to do.

Both my hon. Friends made important points about the need to ensure that any changes made locally take into consideration the impact on standards, parental views, coherent provision across constituencies, and the impact on special educational needs. My hon. Friends have provided an important voice for local people. As the proposals proceed, it will be important that consultation, in line with the statutory approach that the Government have set out, ensures that the voice of local people is clearly heard.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at one minute to Two o'clock.