With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to update the House on progress made at the sixth World Trade Organisation ministerial conference, which took place in Hong Kong last week.

I attended the conference with my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and for International Development and my hon. Friend the Minister for Trade. The UK delegation included representatives from the CBI, the TUC and Oxfam, as well as the hon. Members for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) and for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) and my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Roger Berry). I greatly appreciated their participation and thank them for their work.

The conference was attended by delegates from all 150 members of the World Trade Organisation, including Tonga, whose accession was approved during the week and which we celebrate here today.

The Hong Kong meeting was an important staging post in the Doha development trade round. The round commenced just after 11 September in a spirit of harmony and good will, and with a determination to entrench global security by promoting global prosperity. The round was due to be substantially completed by the end of 2006.

We had originally hoped that the Hong Kong meeting would put in place the essential elements of an ambitious and pro-poor conclusion to the round, but in the run-up to the talks, it became clear that substantial divergence between WTO members made such an ambitious outcome unlikely. We therefore set off for Hong Kong with the objectives of locking in the progress already made, constructing a meaningful development package and using the conference as a springboard for the successful completion of the round next year.

From the repeal of the corn laws in 1846 to the successive post-war GATT rounds, Britain's liberal trade policy has fostered rising national prosperity. However, as the Make Poverty History campaign has highlighted, trade reform—alongside debt relief and increased aid—is also crucial for those in impoverished parts of the world.

The UK's G8 presidency has focused on sub-Saharan Africa and the conditions needed to foster sustainable development in the region. The meeting of Finance Ministers in June and the meeting at Gleneagles in July delivered substantial additional aid and debt relief, but trade has far greater potential to generate sustainable prosperity for poor countries. The Commission for Africa, which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister set up last year, judged that an ambitious conclusion to the Doha round represented the best opportunity to create a reformed world trading system that would allow poor countries new scope to trade their way out of poverty.

For all the heightened political interest in trade across the world in 2005, progress in the round has remained slow. Agriculture is the motor of the round, so it was always clear that there would be no movement on other areas in advance of progress on farming. The crucial elements were domestic support in the US and market access into the European Union. Offers were tabled in October by the US, EU and others to unlock that set of negotiations. While the offers led to intensive negotiations, the major players—both from developed and developing countries—all remained some distance apart on fundamental aspects of the talks. There was a great deal of frustration that the talks were bogged down in an agricultural quagmire that was preventing progress from being made on the other two trade areas: industry, or non-agricultural market access—NAMA, to use WTO terminology—and services.

The week itself saw little real discussion on the overall level of ambition on agriculture, either in terms of domestic subsidies or tariffs. With limited movement on agriculture, it was always going to be difficult to make any significant progress on industrial goods and services. However, there was limited progress in six areas, which meant that while the talks could not be described as successful, neither could they be categorised as a failure.

First, there was progress on the agricultural export subsidies that lead to first-world farmers' produce being dumped on the third world with ruinous consequences for local producers. The House is aware that we have argued that these should be scrapped. Some European Union members came to Hong Kong reluctant to concede anything. Others argued that the end date should be dependent on broader progress in the trade round. The compromise reached was an end date of 2013. Although that is later than we would have liked, the date is specific and fixed and, furthermore, the elimination is progressive. There is a commitment to phase out a substantial proportion by the mid-point between the end of the Doha round and the 2013 end date—by around 2010.

While the EU's export support is transparent, similar practices in many rich countries are opaque, but have exactly the same effect. American food aid provides some help in feeding the hungry, but it is primarily about boosting the incomes of the well-fed by guaranteeing that significant overseas demand is met exclusively by US produce. State trading enterprises in Canada, New Zealand and Australia use a mix of export credits, financial underwriting and monopoly power to similar effect. Although export subsidies are delivered in a number of ways, the effect on poor producers is the same, so we successfully ensured that the deal provides for parallel abolition of all such practices, also by 2013.

The second area of limited progress concerns duty-free and quota-free access for least developed countries—the very poorest countries—to developed country markets. The European Union has already committed to that principle under its "Everything but Arms" initiative, and at Hong Kong we pushed hard to get the developed world to take the same approach. Other nations signed up to the principle, but only on the condition that they retained some temporary flexibility to exclude 3 per cent. of tariff lines during a transition period of indeterminate length.

That is a step forward, but the risk of a 3 per cent. exclusion is that developed countries will apply them to precisely those products where the poorest countries have the best chance to export. I very much hope that the US, Japan and others will now face real pressure from the rest of the WTO membership to give an early date for 100 per cent. coverage in this area.

The third important area was cotton—colleagues may remember that this was largely the cause of the complete collapse of the Cancun talks—where progress was made, but on a very disappointing scale. There was a commitment to end cotton export subsidies by 2006. There was a commitment to grant duty-free and quota-free access to least developed countries' cotton from the date of implementation—progress, yes, but market access had never been the key concern over cotton. The real issue on cotton remains the $4 billion a year in trade-distorting domestic subsidies received by American producers that deny a level playing field to west African producers. On this there was agreement to discussions with the most affected countries, but sadly as yet no commitment to action.

Fourthly, on aid for trade, which will help poorer countries to build the capacity that they need to trade successfully, the week saw new commitments and a new Geneva-based taskforce set up to maintain momentum.

Immediately before the conference Japan committed to US$10 billion in aid for trade over the years to 2010; in Hong Kong the Americans committed to $4 billion by 2010, and European member states committed to new money to go alongside that already pledged by the Commission. The various announcements take us well beyond Gleneagles, replacing vague aspirations with specific commitments and specific dates.

Fifthly, solid progress was made on trade facilitation. To give just one example of how important this area is and the sort of bureaucracy that it will tackle, in India an exporter needs 29 documents for clearance, in quadruplicate, with 257 signatures along the way. Progress in trade facilitation is important, although it is fair to say that progress was virtually guaranteed before we went to Hong Kong, so it cannot be described as an outstanding outcome from the conference.

Finally, and crucially, we have agreed a road map for conclusion of the round. Reaching a deal on an agreed way forward is an important, if modest, achievement for the WTO and the multilateral trading system that it encapsulates. After failed ministerial meetings in Seattle and Cancun the credibility of the WTO and the prospect of concluding the round next year depended on such a deal. So how does this outcome from Hong Kong measure up against our objectives? Overall, the outcome is disappointing. While it was good that talks did not break down, it is fair to say that we wanted much more progress than we achieved.

An agreement of a development package covering aid for trade, cotton and duty-free and quota-free access for LDCs is to be welcomed. But this is no substitute for fairer trade rules, which will bring the majority of gains for this round, where there was no breakthrough. We welcome the decision to phase out export subsidies progressively. This is an important step forward. We will continue to press to ensure that they are phased out as quickly as possible.

I said in my opening remarks at the ministerial conference in Hong Kong that we still faced a mountain to climb and that we needed to use the week of talks to get beyond base camp. The conference did do that—WTO director general Pascal Lamy has judged that we are now more than halfway to the final deal. And it has set out a potential route to the top—agreement of the final architecture of a deal in agriculture and industrial goods by the end of April 2006, and the substantive conclusion of the round by the end of next year.

We should not underestimate the challenge that this poses. Talks have moved slowly over the past four years and some of the trickiest terrain still lies ahead, but we remain passionately committed to a successful round. The Doha development round has the potential to lift hundreds of millions of the world's poorest out of poverty for good, and entrench prosperity and security across the world—a huge prize that we will continue to pursue unrelentingly. I believe that we have the support of the whole House in this endeavour.

I thank the Secretary of State for giving me a copy of his statement in advance. It is four years since we last faced each other across the Dispatch Box as deputies in our trade and industry teams, and I am happy to resume our friendly battle of the Alans.

To be successful, the WTO talks in Hong Kong needed to advance the cause of free and fair trade. Agreement was needed to reduce global tariffs, to give poorer countries more open access to our markets, and to remove trade-distorting subsidies, especially for EU exports. It is in everyone's interest that that should happen, and we risk failing in our obligations to the developing world if it does not do so. The outcome of the talks has been cloaked in the language of disappointment and failure. Looking back at them, they were not as good as we had hoped, but they were not all bad. In fact, we should give credit to many people who have striven to make progress in what, inevitably, is a laborious and cumbersome undertaking. In addition to the attendees listed by the Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell) has just returned from the talks.

So have I.

And my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow).

There were some undeniable achievements, such as the accession to the WTO of Saudi Arabia and Tonga, and the very fact that, unlike Cancun, the talks reached agreement and did not totally break down. The decisions that were made, however, were not quite as certain as the repeal of the corn laws. Was it not a pity that the Hong Kong talks were under way at the same time as the budget negotiations in Brussels, given that the EU position on CAP reform was a crucial ingredient for success in Hong Kong? The Secretary of State, indeed, has just called it the "motor of the round". Was it therefore not ill-advised to hold Hong Kong concurrently with Brussels? With sensible planning, it would have been better to hold Brussels followed by Hong Kong, so that a pre-determined EU position could have played constructively into progress in Hong Kong. If we had used our agenda-setting powers under our EU presidency, and the talks had been consecutive, might we not have had some prospect of securing the removal of EU subsidies by 2010, instead of 2013, as eventually agreed? Does he not recall that Labour's election manifesto intended to meet a 2010 deadline? Far from Europe making that happen, as has been claimed for Hong Kong, anyone can see that Europe stopped it happening better, and must shoulder much of the blame for the Hong Kong talks not achieving more.

Any sensible person will welcome the fact that 97 per cent. of product lines in developing countries will have free access to European markets, but how was that figure reached and calculated? Of course, 97 per cent. feels tantalisingly close to the full Monty, but can the Secretary of State tell us exactly what makes up the 3 per cent. that is omitted? He has just said that the 3 per cent. might contain many of the goods that developing countries most want to trade. Might it not in fact cover items such as textiles and so on, thereby penalising developing countries quite severely? While one accepts that progress in the agricultural sector was stymied by everything that was going on, or perhaps not going on, in Brussels, surely there was no excuse for failing to make progress in the service sector? What agenda will the Secretary of State now outline for future progress in liberalising the international market in services?

On aid for trade, how much new money has been pledged by the EU as a whole, and how much by the UK itself over and above the commitments outlined in the pre-Budget report a fortnight ago? We are told that world trade talks are like a sausage. It is sensible not to look too closely at how they are made—it is what we end up with that matters. The great expectations expressed by the Government before our May elections have not exactly been delivered. Things have inched forward, but at least they have moved in the right direction.

Where do we go next? If the USA is to participate fully in the next stage, the modalities must be agreed next year to allow them to come into effect by mid-2007. What plans does the Secretary of State have to renew momentum in order to get the details hammered out as quickly as possible to convert what is only an outline agreement from Hong Kong into a fully implemented scheme? Will he reconfirm his confidence in the WTO as the best global vehicle for advancing the cause of free and fair trade?

We should all be grateful for the progress that has been made, and we should not be churlish about it being less than we might have hoped for. We are but one of 150 countries, and global agreements are never easy. We must see that what was agreed in Hong Kong is fully implemented, that the WTO continues to work with the constructive participation of all its members and that momentum is not lost. We must all continue to strive for a global economic model that increases prosperity, tackles poverty and builds harmony and co-operation between the nations of the world.

I welcome the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) to his new position. It is a great pleasure to be reunited with him after four miserable years apart.—[Laughter.] Perhaps I should say four disappointing years apart.

I mentioned the hon. Members who were in Hong Kong as part of the official delegation, and the hon. Members for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell) and for Buckingham (John Bercow), in addition to other hon. Members, were also present in various capacities. There was huge interest in the Hong Kong conference.

On the timing of the discussions, the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton asked whether the outcome would have been different if we had managed to choreograph the Brussels conference before the Hong Kong conference. I do not think that that was possible—the date for the Hong Kong conference was set in stone, because it is not easy to rearrange accommodation for 6,000 delegates.

On the budget discussions in Brussels, it is almost par for the course that presidencies do not start moving until they approach their end. I do not know whether the conferences could have been choreographed differently, but I am sure that that would not have made any difference to the outcome.

The huge reluctance of member states, including France, to agree the end of export subsidies was about protecting the CAP, and I ask hon. Members to recognise that the big issue in relation to those talks and the CAP has not been tackled yet. Market access is the big issue, and it is responsible for 90 per cent. of the money made in terms of the three pillars in agriculture. To get a meaningful deal on not only agriculture but industry—services are a slightly different matter—next year's discussion will be very interesting, because given the mandate of the negotiators, Commissioners Mandelson and Fischer Boel, it will be very difficult to achieve a meaningful outcome to the talks without interfering with the CAP, which is where the galvanising effect of Hong Kong is significant. Watch this space and see what happens early next year.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman about tariff-free and quota-free access for the least developed countries. I cannot say exactly what tariff lines are included in the outcome, because the argument concerned the percentage—once one has agreed the percentage, one then decides the tariff lines. The US would not accept anything higher than 95 per cent., but the developing countries wanted 99.8 per cent. immediately, with the other bit being closed over a period of time. A compromise was reached at 97 per cent., which is why all 150 member states signed up to the statement and why the developing countries were in the end happy to make progress. However, it is important to close the other 3 per cent., because, as I have said, that 3 per cent. is likely to include the very tariff lines from which poorer countries can benefit by exporting into developed markets. However, the issue concerns not only the United States, but Japan and a few others.

On aid for trade, the UK will provide new money. We think that the EU will provide new money, but there is a process to make sure that the commitment is genuine. Many questions were asked about the substance of Japan's offer, and a process is taking place to make sure that that contribution is genuine.

How do we go forward, given that, to use the hon. Gentleman's comparison, the WTO is rather like a sausage—Bismarck once remarked that laws are like sausages? The process is difficult and tortuous, but the timeline set out in the statement agreed on Sunday night is that the modalities—in other words, the formulae—will be in place by April 2006. By July 2006, we will have completed the schedules—the items to which the formulae will be applied. Given the American fast-track system, which involves the US Trade Promotion Authority, America can put the package before Congress and the Senate on a take-it-or-leave-it basis until summer 2007. After that date, the process will become tortuous, which could mean that the US finds it difficult to deliver on an ambitious deal. The momentum exists to get the process moving satisfactorily: the director general of the WTO and the European Commission are key players, but heads of state probably have a role to play in galvanising the discussions.

Finally, I confirm our absolute confidence in the WTO. If we were to move from multilateral discussions and agreements back to bilateral agreements, the poor would be the losers. Although some voices, some of which belong to professional sceptics, say that no deal would be a cause for celebration, I think that no deal would bring into question the future of multilateral negotiations, which would be bad for developed countries and worse for developing countries.

I thank the Secretary of State for providing an advance copy of the statement and note his sense of disappointment with the outcome of the Hong Kong conference. Does he share the view of Oxfam and others that on the whole little has been achieved for developing countries? Does that not demonstrate a collective failure by the rich developed world to end the hypocrisy of, on the one hand, calling for free and fair trade, and on the other hand maintaining protection of their own economies?

May I remind the Secretary of State of the G8 commitment to make a success of Hong Kong and, in particular, to

"reduce trade distorting domestic subsidies and eliminate all forms of export subsidies by a credible end date."?

Does he agree that the commitment to end export subsidies by 2013 represents no real progress, given what is already happening within the EU in particular, and avoids the wider issue of the trade-distorting effects of domestic subsidies? Overall, does he share the concern that a grand gesture in the G8 followed by an abject failure to deliver simply increases everyone's cynicism about whether anything can ever be achieved?

Following on from the questions about CAP reform by the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan), the timetable for CAP reform within the EU fatally compromises any prospect of a breakthrough for developing countries in the Doha round, given that the date for re-examining the EU budget—2010—is after the date for the fast-track process in the States, to which the Secretary of State has referred. Does the Secretary of State have any plans that can genuinely re-establish the momentum of the Doha round, given the apparent intransigence of France and other EU countries and the sense of paralysis in Europe on any prospects of reforming the CAP? Does he share the view that that has been starkly demonstrated by the Prime Minister's total failure to secure a real breakthrough during the British presidency?

On the development of the EU's negotiating stance, will the Secretary of State respond to concerns about the secrecy of the process? The article 133 committee meets in secret. Those who are blocking progress can hide behind that secrecy, and no one ever knows who is the real block.

With regard to the United States, the Secretary of State seems to share the sense of frustration that no real progress has been made on a timetable for ending the outrage of US cotton farmers receiving more funding than the entire GDP of the four west African countries most affected—Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali. What can be done to get the US to move on that?

On market access for developing countries, where some very limited progress has been made, does the Secretary of State agree that that access on its own is not enough? Vital assistance is also needed to overcome gaps in infrastructure, boost product quality and improve connections to international supply chains. He referred to the Geneva taskforce. What is the timetable for that meeting? Does he agree that the exemptions negotiated by the US and Japan substantially diminish the impact of the market opening agreement?

Does the Secretary of State share the concern of many that the continued failure to reach agreement and a significant breakthrough for developing countries ultimately puts at risk the multilateral process through the WTO? I agree that a drift away from that to bilateral and regional deals would be very damaging, particularly to developing countries, but if we cannot secure agreement that brings a genuine breakthrough for developing countries, there is a real risk to that multilateral process.

Does the Secretary of State have any real confidence that the road map will achieve the progress that we need, given the failure to deliver on other significant road maps? What progress can he secure to ensure that during 2006 a deal is reached in time for the fast-track procedure to work in the United States?

I dealt with many of those points in response to Conservative Members, but I shall pick out a few.

I agree with Oxfam that very little has been achieved. We have always said that—we are not trying to suggest that this is a great celebration of a huge victory. "Low expectations barely exceeded" would be a good way to put it. However, there has been progress. Had we not made the progress that I set out in six points, the conference would have been an abject failure, but it could not properly be described as such. The hon. Gentleman mentioned hypocrisy. We made that point ourselves in the DTI White Paper last July.

On export subsidies, I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. Real progress has been made. The UK had set out a position—it was part of our election manifesto—on getting rid of export subsidies by 2010. Not many other member states were 2010-ers—they included Sweden and, I believe, Denmark. A great deal of concern was expressed about export subsidies. Germany, for instance, understood the issues but felt that its farmers would need much longer before such subsidies could go. Brazil and India did not want the abstract formula that was in the original text—subsidies to go after the finalisation of the round plus five years. Whereas we want Doha to finish at the end of 2006, the experience of the Uruguay round suggests that these things could go on for ever. A formula saying that export subsidies would go five years after the end of the round could have meant 2015 or 2020, so India and Brazil wanted a fixed, certain date. In the end, the fixed date of 2013, with the progressive elimination of those subsidies up until then, and with the parallel elimination of food aid and state trading enterprises, was an important achievement.

On the timetable for CAP reform, the writing is on the wall for the fixation with agriculture. Farmers in this country have adapted and changed in line with the 21st-century knowledge economy. Many other countries have been through a painful process—New Zealand in 1985, and Australia—but they would never go back to the old days. We need a combination of the review in 2008–09, agreed as part of the budget discussions in Brussels, and the elimination of export subsidies. As I said in response to the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan), the real issue in these negotiations is how we sort out market access in the EU. Once that is achieved it will ensure that we say farewell to the ridiculous situation whereby the EU spends 40 per cent. of it budget on 2 per cent. of its population.

The article 133 committee is talked about as though it is some kind of secret society, but it is merely the committee of EU officials that meets when the Council of Ministers is not meeting. The secrecy to which it is subject is no more than one would have in any Government and civil service meeting. The poor souls who slog through every day on the 133 committee—the Council of Ministers met every other day; the 133 committee met every day for hours—should be congratulated on their contribution, not treated with suspicion.

As my right hon. Friend will be aware, the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) and I attended the parliamentary conference in Hong Kong last week. I am sure that he shares my concern that many of the delegates to the parliamentary conference perceived last week as being a tug of war between the EU and the USA. May I urge him to follow up his suggestion that we need leadership at the very top from the world's political leaders in 2006 if we are to achieve a credible development agenda at the WTO talks?

I add my hon. Friend to the list of people who made a genuine contribution. It is not the kind of conference that one goes to in order to have fun.—[Interruption.] Well, I did get this suit, but never mind that.

It is fair to say that the big beasts of the US and the EU needed to make progress on domestic support in relation to market access to the EU. The EU made a good argument to the effect that having agreed to eliminate export subsidies a year ago, although no date was attached, having agreed to duty-free and quota-free access to the EU for least-developed countries, and having put forward a serious offer on 28 October—it was serious, unlike the offer of 10 October—it was now time, in a proper negotiation, for some other countries, particularly larger developing countries, to start moving on industry so that a proper negotiation across the three elements of agriculture, industry and services could proceed.

However, I agree that we have to break the logjam. We have to ensure that when people sit down and make conditional offers they turn over their cards at the same time, because the stage of holding cards close to the chest is well past. Heads of Government have already been involved in that, but they may have a greater role to play over the coming months.

The constructive efforts by the Secretary of State and his right hon. and hon. Friends deserved a better reward in Hong Kong than they got. Given that the failure to achieve a satisfactory deal is a frustrating inconvenience for the rich north, but literally a death sentence for all too many people in the poor south, and that western agricultural protectionism is deliberately making the poor poorer, does the Secretary of State accept that there is a powerful case not only for bilateral or multilateral initiatives but for unilateral initiatives by the European Union and the United States to end trade discrimination against developing countries in dairy products, textiles and cotton in order to give the most destitute people on the planet the chance to compete and grow?

I agree. That is what "Everything but Arms" was all about. However, we must accept that this is a huge political issue in many of those countries. There are problems in terms of their ability to reach a position where they can sell such deals, and there is a set of negotiations that requires 150 countries to agree with each one having a veto.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the sensitivity of reaching an agreement whereby we just eliminate those subsidies in the developed world. I understand the necessity to get to that point, but I accept that doing so in democracies—some of the countries involved are not democracies, but most are—will take a little longer. Huge political interest has been shown in this issue, and organisations such as the Trade Justice Movement and Make Poverty History need to keep the pressure on, because politicians now hold the elimination of subsidies as the major ambition, not just in terms of tackling world poverty but in terms of dealing with global security issues.

The whole House will be grateful to my right hon. Friend and the delegation for their efforts in the fight for trade justice last week. Clearly, the WTO is a large monster that is proving difficult to control—as much King Kong as Hong Kong. In discussions last week, was progress made on promoting trade between developing countries and less developed countries, or was it all related to the relationship between the more developed and less developed countries?

Most of the discussion was about the relationship between least developed countries and developed countries. South-south trade is a very important issue, but it did not really get on to the agenda last week. Given the problems that needed to be resolved over five or six days, it is probably understandable that it did not. My hon. Friend is right, however, that the issue is an important part of the totality of this trade round.

Ministers are prone to adopt the rhetoric of the Trade Justice Movement and Make Poverty History. There must therefore be some disappointment, given the strong position of the United Kingdom in holding the presidency of the European Union, that more could not have been achieved in Hong Kong or in Brussels last week. We have a commitment on 5 per cent. of farm support in terms of export subsidies, but what about the other 95 per cent. of support to farmers in the United States and Europe? On tariff barriers, can the Secretary of State be more specific on what will be included in the 3 per cent?

Our policy is to go for 100 per cent., so we are not just interested in what the 3 per cent. should include. We are pretty sure about what Japan and the United States would include in that 3 per cent. box—cotton from Bangladesh springs to mind, for example, and other imports from Cambodia. In fact, the United States originally put forward a proposal whereby countries would be specified as not being able to sell their products into its markets. Eventually, thankfully, that was dropped. In terms of adopting the language of the Trade Justice Movement, that is done across the House because what that movement is saying is true. This is a crucial issue for developed and developing countries. What we do about the rest of those tariffs, which was the thrust of the hon. Gentleman's question, is to return to the fray to get a successful, ambitious outcome by the end of next year. Only then, when we reach the final part, can we judge whether the whole round has been a success or failure. We have taken a small step forward in Hong Kong, but there is still a long way to go.

Does the Secretary of State accept that many people are very sad that food dumping policies will now continue for several years more, with the attendant problems for agriculture in the poorest countries in the world? Will he assure the House that in the discussions before the end of next year, no pressure will be put on the poorest countries to force them to lift import restrictions on manufactured goods from the western world or to privatise public services, which seems to be part of the agenda behind the NAMA—non-agricultural market access—proposals originally put forward?

I agree with the thrust of my hon. Friend's question. In terms of this round, there should be no question of the least developed countries doing anything. Countries such as Singapore, however, which is listed as a developing country, are perhaps not in the same position as Sierra Leone, so certain elements must be considered. Our policy of no forced liberalisation remains, however, and in terms of the issues around services, even though the UK held the presidency of the European Union, we opposed the introduction of benchmarking in services. That has been replaced by plurilateral discussions, which do not interfere with developing countries' ability to say no on a particular service—they decide which services to open up under what is called the request and offer principle.

I am sure that the whole House is grateful to the Secretary of State for his characteristically honest and thoughtful statement. Does he agree, however, that if we are to achieve a more successful outcome to the round during the coming months, the attitudes and intentions of the more developed developing nations are crucial? In that context, will he comment on the remarks by Jagdish Bhagwati in the Financial Times today:

"Indian industry has come of age and has moved, thanks to its success in information technology, from a defeatist embrace of protectionism to a 'can do' attitude. Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, and Kamal Nath, his commerce and industry minister, both see protectionism as a relic of the past."?

I think that there is a lot in that. Kamal Nath is visionary, in many respects, in terms of where he wants to take the Indian economy. Nevertheless, India is a democracy. In the summer, we had the pleasure of moving from the EU summit in China straight over to India. We were reminded that things could be done in China, in terms of opening up markets, that could not be done in India because of the huge consequences for constituents. India, in particular, will be very disappointed if we do not get a good agreement on industry and services, because its focus is on that rather than on agriculture.

I welcome my right hon. Friend's statement in the sense of sharing all the disappointments that he has expressed but also sharing his determination to see as much progress made in the final stages of the trade round as is now possible. That disappointment will be shared by many thousands of our constituents and Members on both sides of the House who are part of the non-governmental organisations and faith groups in the Trade Justice Movement. What is his advice as to how they can best apply their undoubtedly effective campaigning energies in those final stages? As well as keeping us on track, are there other things that they can do?

We meet the NGOs regularly, and the major message is to keep up the pressure and perhaps take French nationality.

Is it not an eloquent fact that although there are eight Ministers in the DTI, only one is responsible for trade, and he is shared with the Foreign Office? Will the Secretary of State ensure that the entire subject of trade liberalisation on behalf of poor countries is given more weight, influence and prominence, both within the British Government and at future talks, rather than the whole thing being subcontracted to the European Commission, which has done a very bad job on behalf of British interests at the recent talks?

I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman's final comment about the Commission. We have our debates about Europe, and the Conservative party has more internal debates, but I thought that the issue of a single market generally found approval across the political spectrum. If we consider what is happening around the world, negotiating as a block is becoming de rigueur. We found out in Hong Kong that the G20 has now teamed up with the G90 to be the G110. I cannot wait for the day when we have the G150. Such trading blocks are quite common. I think that Commissioners Mandelson and Fischer Boel did a good job on behalf of the European Union last week, recognising that each of the member states, if we were not negotiating together, would still be able to block the whole deal because of the way that the WTO operates. Bringing them along together is therefore right.

I do not think that an equation can be made with the number of Trade Ministers in the Government. We have an excellent Minister for Trade who does the job extremely effectively. Other DTI Ministers also have an involvement in trade, and I think that we have the balance right. Certainly, one cannot judge the success of a policy in terms of how many Ministers are pursuing it.

Is not one of the WTO's greatest strengths its provision of the rule of law to stop discriminatory behaviour, and to stop the rich from bullying the poor? What steps are being taken to strengthen the dispute settlement procedure, and to halt the slide into bilateral and unilateral action?

The matter was discussed briefly in Hong Kong in the context of other focus rules. There is much work still to be done, but member states recognise as a major attribute of the WTO the fact that if something happens, there is a rules-based system to deal with it. When we were in Hong Kong, the Polish representatives told us about a problem that they were having with Russia, which is not a member of the WTO. That problem could have been resolved if both countries had been members.

Such problems are important, and they will be sorted out by means of the rules. We made a little progress in Hong Kong—not very much, but I do not think that the round will stand or fall on that basis. I think that we shall find a solution.

May I take this opportunity to wish the right hon. Gentleman a happy and relaxing Christmas with his young family? I wonder whether, when he has time to reflect, he will regret sending a departmental Christmas card to his erstwhile right hon. Friend Peter Mandelson. Is it not a fact that Commissioner Mandelson is now the most effective exponent of the interests of French farmers, and is it not a fact that the deal that the EU put on the table would have cut agriculture subsidies by just 1 per cent. in real terms? Does it not now appear that until Commissioner Mandelson is history, the aspirations of the Make Poverty History campaigners are but a distant dream?

First, I do not agree with the hon. Lady about Peter Mandelson.

Keep a straight face.

I can say with a straight face that he did an excellent job last week. Secondly, I do not believe that I sent him a Christmas card.—[Laughter.]

Was any progress at all made on north-north trade?

No, because that was not the focus of the discussions, but north-north trade is very important. There was a significant development in Brussels a couple of months ago, when we opened a dialogue with the United States Government about EU-US trade. The hon. Gentleman is right: there are a number of barriers. Let me add that it would be good if we opened up trade in services within the EU as well as across the world.

While the conference may not be termed an abject failure, ultimately it represents limited failure. During the general election a number of us met representatives of trade justice organisations, and a number of us have been to Africa and seen at first hand the impact that blockages of progress are having daily on hundreds of millions of people in the poorest parts of the world. The Secretary of State has been honest today in naming names when discussing the guilty countries. What more can be done in the European Union—although we shall lose the presidency at the end of the year—to give us a more positive role and the opportunity to take more positive action, and to provide a more united front enabling us to assist the poorest people in the world?

I will resist the temptation to endorse the suggestion of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Industry and the Regions that staying in the European People's party might be helpful.

On reflection, after six months of chairing committees—the DTI has a huge number of committees dealing with telecoms, energy and so forth—I think that getting rid of the presidency cap and once more being able to express the UK view on trade, a view that unites the House, will do us a great deal of good. It will allow us to join our increasing number of allies. I believe that there is also a role for the electorate in the various countries. Representatives from New Zealand and Australia told us how difficult it was to face up to the electorate when it came to changing farm subsidies in their countries.

Just before we went to Hong Kong, we saw the depressing results of a poll to find out how individuals felt in various countries around the world. They did not give these issues the prominence that might have been expected by the Trade Justice Movement and Make Poverty History. There is a great deal of work to be done to get public opinion on our side. When we have done so, we can change the views of member states.

Despite Britain's best efforts, were we not badly let down by our EU counterparts? Does the Secretary of State agree with the Make Poverty History campaign that although EU decision makers have been quick to echo the words of trade justice campaigners, they have not changed their policies in practice? Is not Britain being let down by a combination of pressure from overfed French farmers and ineffective leadership from the EU's Trade Commissioner?

I do not agree. I certainly feel that some member states were making life difficult and will need to have a complete rethink about their approach if we are to reach a successful conclusion, but I am absolutely sure that all member states want a successful round and none wants to be responsible for its failure. There is political pressure in that respect.

As for Commissioner Mandelson and Commissioner Fischer Boel, they did sterling work on behalf of the EU last week. They were in a negotiation. It was not an "Anne of Green Gables" world in which everyone just says nice things about each other; they had to negotiate a settlement that had the agreement of all their 25 member states, and would then have the agreement of 150 WTO countries. That was a very difficult task. I think that they performed it wonderfully, and I do not think it helps anyone to personalise the issue and apply it to one or two individuals.

Incidentally, I should be surprised if members of the hon. Gentleman's party who were in Hong Kong felt any differently about the work put in by Commissioners to secure a satisfactory outcome.

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a bill to amend the Fireworks Act 2003; and for connected purposes.

At this time of good will, I do not wish to be seen as some sort of party-pooper; nor do I wish the House to think that I bear deep resentment towards Guy Fawkes. I think it right for the voice of animals to be heard at this time, however.

Let me begin by acknowledging the efforts of many Members of Parliament to establish fireworks Bills and regulations in law. I especially congratulate Bill Tynan, who fought tirelessly for a year to ensure that legislation reached the statute book. It was long overdue, and in hindsight I think that it may not have gone quite far enough, but it has given the House a foundation on which to work. To be even-handed, I also praise the British Fireworks Association for working closely with Bill Tynan and the Government. I know that it has been doing its best to comply with the Fireworks Act since 2003.

Regulations produced in 2004 set the maximum noise level from fireworks that can be bought over the counter at 120 dB. As we are made aware only too often, the bangs seem to be getting louder and louder. The RSPCA's figures show that the new regulations have, sadly, made no difference to the increasing number of calls that it receives about the distress suffered by animals as a result of fireworks. In fact, the society has reported a shocking 82 per cent. increase in the number of calls that it received between Friday 4 November and Sunday 6 November.

A child should never be exposed to any noise louder than 120 dB, but the thinking behind the current legislation seems to be that that is an adequate level. Animals' noise threshold is much lower than that of humans. I am the owner of a dog called Michael who holds the title of laziest dog not just in the country but in the world, but as he lay there listening to fireworks this year he practically jumped out of his skin because the noises were so loud. Dogs can pick up frequencies that the human ear cannot.

Research conducted by the excellent RSPCA organisation shows that the distress suffered by thousands of animals up and down the country would be dramatically reduced if the fireworks available to the public for private displays were no louder than 97 dB. The Minister may be pondering how the figure of 97 dB was arrived at. Animals get used to normal household and everyday noises, such as doors slamming, the washing machine and the television being on, and apparently 97 dB covers those activities and more.

The RSPCA told me about a case concerning Claire Patterson and her dog, Mabel, from Newquay. On 5 November this year, Claire was walking her two Jack Russells, Mabel and Travis, along the beach during the day, when fireworks unexpectedly went off. Both dogs bolted from the noise and, while Claire managed to catch Travis, Mabel ran all the way into the town centre. She was hit by cars and subsequently died. That is not an isolated or exaggerated case. Another incident reported to the RSPCA was that of a horse terrified by fireworks set off this year near a field where it was tethered: it managed to get free and was running dangerously loose in the local high street.

The results of the RSPCA's annual veterinary survey, to which a total of 190 vets responded, are worrying. There were 34 cases of animals injured by fireworks and 3,639 animals treated for stress—in the majority of cases, by sedatives. The symptoms that the animals displayed included vocalisation, hyperventilation, destructive behaviour, loss of appetite, licking or panting, shaking, hiding, whimpering, urination and self-harm. I suppose that Members of Parliament might occasionally display them—[Interruption.] Not only is it distressing for the animal, it is equally distressing for the owner, who has no power to remove the cause of the fear.

Dogs are most affected: 88 per cent. of all reported cases involved dogs; 10 per cent. involved cats; and horses and other small mammals made up the final 2 per cent. If 3,639 animals were treated for stress by the 190 vets who responded to the RSPCA survey, just how many cases were there in the UK as a whole? That is very worrying indeed. Only five of the veterinary surgeries surveyed—3 per cent.—reported a decrease in the cases they had seen, and 97 per cent. of veterinary surgeries reported that the number of cases had either increased or stayed the same. It is clear from those figures that the fireworks regulations are not working exactly as Bill Tynan or, indeed, the Minister, would have wanted.

Sadly, the trauma that fireworks cause is not confined to just one weekend a year. Even though regulations restrict the times of year and time of night at which fireworks may be let off, they are, in reality, extremely difficult to enforce. There is nothing to stop a person stockpiling fireworks in November in order to use them throughout the year. About 51 per cent. of the vets who responded to the RSPCA survey reported their first cases in October. It is unrealistic to think that the police, with the enormous amount of work that they have to do, can check every complaint that the general public makes.

In addition, although the curfew is somewhat helpful to domestic pet owners, who can shut in their animals, it does not recognise the plight of farmed animals or wildlife. It is difficult to explain to a distressed horse, for example, that a firework being let off before midnight is any less terrifying than one being let off after midnight.

Let me make it clear, in conclusion, that I do not want to spoil hon. Members' enjoyment of fireworks—far from it. Public firework displays organised by local authorities and administered by experienced pyrotechnicians are perfectly adequate events for people to enjoy. They are more impressive, considerably safer and are advertised well so that people know when to make arrangements for their animals. The country will fully expect a spectacular extravaganza for the opening and ending ceremonies at the London Olympics in 2012. If the Southend pier is repaired by that time, I hope that fireworks will be displayed on it. My proposed Bill has no intention of thwarting the celebrations of this fantastic achievement for British sport. It will be in place purely to prevent the public from buying loud fireworks.

The Bill seeks to prevent the sale of fireworks over 97 dB, but popular fireworks such as Roman candles, rockets and fountains will still be on sale. They are often much more visually impressive than the loud rockets and do not necessitate curfews or other limitations. The RSPCA rejects the claim that the 120 dB limit prevents even the noisiest fireworks on the market from being manufactured. An independent study showed that no firework tested even reached 120 dB, indicating that the fireworks that cause distress to animals now are less than 120 dB.

The fireworks industry has claimed that it is practically impossible to produce fireworks that do not exceed specific noise limits. However, some firework manufacturers have proven them wrong. Clearly defined construction specifications will reduce noise levels, and one of the easiest ways to do that would be to make the firework itself smaller. That would not affect the visual display in any way, and would have the benefit of improving the lives of thousands of animals, as well as those of their owners, in this country.

I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. David Amess, Norman Baker, James Brokenshire, Mr. Roger Gale, Dr. Brian Iddon, Lynne Jones, Shona McIsaac, Rob Marris, Mr. Eric Martlew, Bob Russell, Joan Walley and Miss Ann Widdecombe.

Fireworks (Amendment)

Mr. David Amess accordingly presented a Bill to amend the Fireworks Act 2003; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 10 March, and to be printed [Bill 106].

First, I wish you, Madam Deputy Speaker, Mr. Speaker and all his team a merry Christmas.

I must say that I am disappointed that the House is adjourning without a proper debate on Iraq. Last month, the UN Security Council extended the mandate for US and UK troops to continue in Iraq for another year. It had been due to expire at the end of this year, after the recent 15 December parliamentary elections. Those have been held and we have been told that they were a success. At least one of the official reasons for the continued military presence has been changed.

There has been no debate in the House of that decision or of the UK position on it either beforehand or afterwards. Barely any proper debate has been allowed in the country's media about the central policy question of whether the troops should stay or go. The BBC tells me that it has "reported on Iraq enough", but reporting events and atrocities is not the same as facilitating policy discussion on such an important issue.

The Security Council extended its own mandate on the basis of a letter by the Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, saying that the Iraqi armed forces should be ready gradually to begin taking over from coalition forces by the end of 2006. There is no rush, then, and the foreign presence is envisaged to go on and on. The non-occupying powers on the Security Council—France, Germany and Russia—have other concerns and interests to tend and saw no diplomatic sense in confronting the US and the UK on the matter: the allies can stew in the mess of their own making. The concession that they satisfied themselves with was that the mandate should be reviewed in June. The decision that the troops should stay—which I oppose—means that the atrocities, the killing and the bitter conflict, which are preventing Iraq from settling down and developing, will continue for many more years.

The hon. Gentleman talks about Iraq in general, but does he accept that there are three regions in Iraq, and that the northern region under President Barzani—the Kurdish region—has shown great advances economically, politically, in human rights and in social development? At least it is safe there, and that could provide a model for the other two areas of Iraq. Will the hon. Gentleman join me in hoping that those will proceed in the same way?

rose—

Order. Before the hon. Gentleman replies, may I remind Members that there is a 15-minute time limit on all speeches? I apologise for the fact that I forgot to do so earlier.

I acknowledge the progress in the north, but the people there did not have the same sanctions as the rest of the country, because they had an exclusion zone. I am not in favour of Iraq being broken up, and I shall come back to that point later.

The coalition military presence fuels the insurgency, which is viewed by many in Iraq as a war of national liberation to end foreign occupation. The activities of the overseas forces—such as what happened in Abu Ghraib, torture, the use of white phosphorous, extraordinary rendition, and even destroying police stations with remote detonators to free soldiers dressed as Arabs—alienate the Iraqi people, and are recruiting sergeants for the insurgents.

I want to share with the House some extracts from the brilliant Glen Rangwala's November paper "What would disengagement mean?", because it puts the argument extremely well:

"The reduction in Coalition troop numbers to significantly lower levels than at present"—

that is being mooted at the moment—

"would reduce the . . . casualties of Coalition troops simply by virtue of there being fewer Coalition personnel in the country to attack. The Coalition draw-down plan is not conditional upon an abatement in the overall level of violence, despite their occasional public claims to this effect: indeed, the reduction in troop numbers over recent months has occurred alongside a heightening of the insurgency, with a level of attacks that has been greater than at almost any point since the invasion occurred: 92 attacks occurred on average per day in early November 2005, compared with 52 per day in June 2004 or 70 per day in May 2005.

One possibility is that the reduction of Coalition troop numbers will take away the primary reason for the insurgency. That is, if US troops were not so visible on Iraq streets and roads, the Iraqi population—particularly those who have actively supported the insurgency in the past—will no longer consider themselves as living under occupation, and thus be less hostile to the Iraqi government and more readily drawn exclusively into the peaceful political process . . . This, at least, is what the optimists within the Coalition have been arguing during most of 2005 ."

I am aware of the work of Dr. Rangwala, who did a splendid job when he exposed the dodgy dossier, but I find the logic of that quotation hard to follow. If the number of troops is reduced, the number of attacks on them will not necessarily diminish, nor will the number of casualties necessarily fall because there are fewer troops on the streets. The number of attacks would be just as likely to increase, because a sign of weakness would have been shown, so the number of casualties could rise.

Indeed; the Russians discovered that in Afghanistan. By the logic of that argument, the hon. Gentleman wants more and more troops, because if we start to take any troops away, that is "weakness".

I think that Dr. Rangwala's argument is well made. Let me continue with it:

"However, it is more likely that a reduction in the overall level of political violence, committed either by the military forces aligned with the Iraqi government or by the insurgents, would depend on the extent to which the Iraqi state and the political process had become—and were perceived to have become—the possession of all sectors of the Iraqi people rather than that of a foreign power or segment of the Iraqi population."

That is the key to any solution.

Here is a good factual passage in the text of the paper:

"The Coalition retains both direct and indirect control over Iraq's armed forces at present. Through the structure of the Multinational Force Iraq (MNF-I), the overall command of all military forces in Iraq is delegated to a US commander, at present Gen. George W. Casey . . .

The commander of MNF-I also acts as the senior security advisor to the Iraqi prime minister. The Coalition also provides a number of advisors to each Iraqi ministry, including the ministries of defence and the interior. These advisors are in effect making policy still on behalf of their Iraqi counterparts, particularly given the limited expertise available to the Iraqi ministries after the processes of de-Ba'thification . . .

In addition, the US and UK have large training teams embedded within nascent Iraqi forces, whose overt task is to educate, advise and monitor those forces, but whose actual role is better characterised as being that of commanding Iraqi units. The Coalition military retains the only operational communications network within Iraq, and thus acts as the liaison mechanism for Iraqi units with each other and with the operating bases."

In reality, the coalition is in total control of the Iraqi forces, and there is very little movement away from that.

This is my last quotation from Dr. Rangwala:

"One argument for retaining the engagement of Coalition training facilities for Iraq's armed forces has been that Iraqi personnel need to be re-trained so that they no longer act as a repressive agent within Iraqi society as they did under the ancien régime, but instead observe human rights and humanitarian law in their practice. A similar argument is made about the re-training of Iraq's police force. This argument presupposes that Coalition training is enhancing the good practice of Iraq's military and police forces. Given the actions of Iraqi armed forces in Tal Afar in September 2005, in which there was the widespread killing of civilians, and other recent military operations, this is far from clear. Coalition personnel have been complicit in many of the human rights abuses committed in post-invasion Iraq, from the torture practiced at Abu Ghrayb and routinely conducted during interrogation, to the use of napalm-like MK77 firebombs and white phosphorus, to the mass arrests of individuals kept without due process of law. The argument that Coalition training inculcates human rights-observant practice in Iraqi officials rings hollow when compared with the scale of the human rights abuses in modern Iraq."

Dr. Rangwala goes on to say that the coalition policy has already bolstered rather than demobilised party militias, and that there is unlikely to be any growth in militia power, because instead of adopting the policy of developing a unified non-sectarian armed force for Iraq, we have helped Iraqi forces become more sectarian. I recommend Dr. Rangwala's paper. The rest of it is as scathing as the passages that I have quoted.

What we are seeing is not portents of progress or peace, and the coalition alliance is overwhelmingly to blame for that. It wants to pretend that it is phasing down its occupation and handing over authority, whereas it is doing no such thing. It remains overwhelmingly the determinant of all major policy and involvement in the killing fields.

Of course, like other Members, I welcome the recent elections in Iraq, and the Sunni population's participation in them. A proper Iraqi coalition government must now be formed, and the sectarianism curtailed, not exacerbated. Real authority must be handed over to such a government, but the portents for that are not strong. All the major Shi'a and Sunni elected parties had two central policy platforms: the unity of Iraq—maintaining its sovereignty and its not being broken up—and the withdrawal of foreign troops. Democracy is not just about voting; it is about implementing what the people voted for.

I realise that I have already read a lot of quotes into the Hansard record, but I want also to quote some key points from an article in last Sunday's edition of The Sunday Times by Hala Jaber, the journalist who recently re-entered Falluja. As the House knows, Falluja was subject to a massive assault by US forces, which we were assisting, in November 2004. She said:

"When I finally reached the city, I was reminded of a remark by a US officer in Vietnam who claimed he had to destroy a village to save it. Falluja has indeed been destroyed. But I found nobody there who thinks it has been saved."

She goes on to refer to that Operation, Phantom Fury, and points out that

"the insurgency continued elsewhere. Yet what I found in Falluja last week was even more dispiriting. It is not only that promises to reconstruct the city and restore normality have manifestly been broken. The bitter truth is that the actions of US and Iraqi forces have reignited the insurgency. Anger, hate and mistrust of America are deeper than ever."

I thank the hon. Gentleman for being so generous in giving way again, especially as he is not now getting injury time. Was it not also reported at the weekend that al-Zarqawi himself was in Falluja at that time, and that he was arrested but not recognised and inadvertently released? Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if that mistake had not been made, the assault on Falluja might well have had a profound effect on the insurgency?

The assault on Falluja would still not have been worth it, even in those circumstances, because masses of innocent people were slaughtered in the attack.

Hala Jaber continues:

"City officials warned that hardships and detentions were intensifying hostility to the Americans. The Falluja-based Study Centre for Human Rights and Democracy has claimed that 4,000 to 6,000 people were killed during Phantom Fury, most of them civilians.

Stoking the anger has been the slow pace of compensation payments, despite the allocation of $490 million by Iraq's interim government last year . . . 36,000 homes and 8,400 shops were destroyed in the US onslaught. Sixty nurseries and schools and 65 mosques and other religious establishments were wrecked. Falluja's mayor, Dhari abdel Hadi al-Irssan, claims that only 20 per cent. of the compensation promised has reached the city . . . Only 170,000 people, half the original population have returned. They live in difficult conditions with 4,200 American Marines and 5,000 Iraqi troops enforcing a curfew from 11 pm to 6 am."

She continues:

"With so many institutions damaged, those that remain are under intolerable pressure. School buildings are being used by three or four schools holding classes in shifts. Electricity and water are severely limited . . . A dire petrol shortage compounds the frustration . . . Yet even these deprivations pale by comparison with the fatalities Falluja families claim to have suffered at the hands of occupying forces. Witnesses spoke of American Marines dumping bodies in the Euphrates just after the offensive and of mass graves where hundreds are allegedly buried . . . It was made clear to me that most of Falluja's residents are alienated from authority. My conversations repeatedly revolved around stories of the dead and allegations of new killings by pro-government forces. Last month the Pentagon confirmed it had used white phosphorus, a chemical that bursts into flames on contact with the air, causing horrible injuries. 'There is now hatred and anger against the government and the forces representing this government,' the mayor said."

That shows that for the bludgeoning coalition forces, the Iraq war is not a war of hearts and minds. We need to change our policy. If the troops are going to stay, a policy that I resent and oppose, we should try to make the winning of hearts and minds much more important than the violence that the coalition forces—including their private contractors, who often also operate militarily—are very much a part of.

I am glad to have had the opportunity to put these matters on the record. I wish that we could have had a proper debate on Iraq, and perhaps even a vote, before we continue with this killing policy. I conclude by wishing a merry Christmas and a happy new year to all those who have suffered so abysmally in Iraq.

It is a great delight to see so many right hon. and hon. Members here and to realise that the House does not adjourn until this evening. This is a splendid opportunity to raise constituency issues, and the one that I have raised in the past eight years in debates such as this has been Frome Victoria hospital. I am very happy to say that I do not need to raise it this year because we are now to get the new Frome Victoria hospital. That said, we are still somewhat worried that the Government's messing about with the health authorities might put the new hospital at risk, but our plan to deal with that is to get the foundations built as soon as possible, in the hope that even a change in NHS structure will not leave a new hospital in Frome half built. We look forward to its opening.

We had an excellent debate yesterday on police restructuring—a debate that was wrung out of the Government by continuing pressure from the Opposition. It was clear that without such pressure we would not be able to make the points that many of us felt we ought to make on our constituents' behalf, and with that in mind I want briefly to address the issues as they affect my constituency. I wholly reject the concept of a regional police force that stretches from the Scilly Isles to the north of Gloucestershire and to the east of Swindon—a region the same size as Belgium, which appears to be the international measurement for these things. To put the issue in context, the north of Gloucestershire is nearer to Scotland than it is to the tip of Cornwall.

I have always been against regionalisation of the police—a policy that has been knocking around the Home Office for a very long time, and which has been rejected by some others in the Chamber in previous incarnations. Regional police forces have always been a Home Office aspiration, but there are four problems in that regard, the first of which is the loss of the desperately important sense of community policing. So far as I am concerned, the tradition of the police being of, with and for the community that they serve is essential, and as soon as we lose that we lose something precious in how our police operate. That is quite apart from the fact that people, particularly in rural areas, will feel increasingly remote from the police who serve them. Nothing will persuade people in rural Somerset that they will even get the same level of service as they currently receive—and we get enough complaints as it is that Bristol, understandably, absorbs a great deal of Avon and Somerset police's resources.

The second problem is that I have heard not a single argument in favour of the efficacy of the new proposal compared with other ways of achieving the same ends. I have argued for a long time that the changes in patterns of crime need a response. International and national crime cannot easily be faced with the traditional police forces, which is one reason why I was so strongly supportive of the concept of the Serious Organised Crime Agency and, indeed, why I argued that it should have a wider role and greater resources than it has. The obverse is that local police forces and chief constables are left to deal with what they should be most concerned with: local crime and keeping the peace in our towns and villages, which is often forgotten. Even within the constraints on existing forces, an awful lot can be done in sharing resources and co-operating that has not yet been done.

Thirdly, the transitional cost of reorganisation is massive. Hon. Members may wonder why Avon and Somerset police retain that name long after the demise of the county of Avon. The answer is simple: when I was chairman of the Avon and Somerset police authority, I refused point blank to change, at enormous cost, every cap badge and every decal on every police car in the force when that money could be spent on providing more police. Those would have been lost costs—they would be gone for ever—and the priority of the local community is having more police.

The fourth point is that the Government offices for the regions bear no relationship to the patterns of crime. Dorset does not get its criminal activity from Bristol or from Plymouth; it gets it from Portsmouth or Southampton, or from the south. Dorset relates to Hampshire rather than to either the far south-west or Somerset and Gloucestershire.

Will the hon. Gentleman clear up some of the confusion that has arisen over the past few weeks? The Liberal Democrats say that they oppose the regionalisation of the police forces, yet for many years they have been proposing regional government. Is he speaking from the orange book or the yellow book today?

I wish, first, that the hon. Gentleman had been listening to what I was saying and, secondly, that he had not tried to inject what he obviously thought was a clever point into a serious issue about policing in the south-west. We have always said that, given that there is a regional tier of government in this country, it should have democratic control and accountability. I do not think that that is an unreasonable request. Clearly, the police boundaries do not follow those regional boundaries, which were set up by a Government who, I believe, the hon. Gentleman supported.

I find it incredible that the Government, through crass mismanagement of the service, have produced the first strike by officials of magistrates courts in over 800 years. We should be seriously concerned about that. These are not people who are prone to industrial action and they are not prepared to take such action without a great deal of soul-searching; they are very loyal servants of the Crown. Yet all over the country today they are taking industrial action due to insensitivity on the part of the Government, a lack of understanding of the role of court officials and a readiness to make promises prior to a reorganisation that were not kept later.

We also saw today the publication of the report by the Law Commission into the offence of murder. Without going into detail on this very complex subject, I am deeply disappointed that some commentators, even before reading the report, have chosen to entertain a knee-jerk reaction to one of the most difficult and complex areas of law. We all agree that the crime of murder is uniquely repugnant and has to be dealt with exceptionally.

Equally, I hope that we all agree that there is a vast range of circumstances—this is recognised in many jurisdictions—in which murder and the taking of a life unlawfully can take place. All 51 American jurisdictions recognise the differentiation and, in a common law country such as ours, it is right and proper that we at least see what the Law Commission has to say and whether there is merit in its proposals.

The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen) was absolutely right: it is extraordinary that we have not had a debate on Iraq in Government time —I have made this point repeatedly at business questions—and it is now well over a year since we last debated Iraq. I was against the war from the start and have not resiled for one moment from the position I took then, as I believe that later events have proved me right. However, given the circumstances and the complex political decisions that need to be taken, surely this House ought to be debating a British Army in the field and a political situation that has the capacity not only to destabilise an entire region but to create the circumstances in which we can expect an enhanced level of terrorism in our country. Those are serious issues and the hon. Gentleman was absolutely right to bring them up.

Neither do I apologise for bringing up again the issue of extraordinary rendition, which has been brushed aside by the Prime Minister and his colleagues as if it were something only an obsessive would worry about. It is not. In this country, we have a right to be told if our airspace and airports have been used for reasons that are, in the eyes of the law and of many people, wholly improper. If there is nothing to hide, let us have a clear indication of that. I have to say that every response from the Prime Minister and others increases the suspicion that there is, and has been, something happening that we would not condone.

The Government should think carefully about this issue over the Christmas recess, come back and make a clean breast of what has been happening and not try to pretend, as the Prime Minister did at his last Question Time, that it was absurd that we should know why American Government flights should be landing at British airports. It is not absurd. It is required knowledge when foreign Government planes, whether from our dearest friends or our bitterest enemies, are using our airspace and landing at our airports. I do not think it unreasonable to be asking those questions.

During our corresponding debate last year not one Member could have foreseen the terrible events of the tsunami on Boxing day. I hope, of course, that we will have a peaceful and prosperous new year without any such events, but I hope also that we have learned from that experience—and, indeed, from those of Pakistan and India—and that we develop the international will to have robust contingency plans in place so that we know where the resources are to deal with emergencies of this kind. Such emergencies will recur; we know that. Disasters happen and, during a period of climate change, it is almost certain that we will have more of them. We must be ready for them and be ready to act appropriately.

There are many issues on which the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party and the Conservative party are united, such as the environment and, more latterly, Iraq, where we both want our troops out as soon as possible and democracy to be working smoothly. Might I encourage the hon. Gentleman and his party to join us where they support us and where we agree?

I always welcome support from the Conservative Benches when it is forthcoming. Sometimes, over the last few years when we have been opposing the Government, it has been forthcoming; sometimes, the Conservative party has decided that it prefers to support the Government. That has been one of the tragedies of the lack of real opposition from the Conservatives during that period. However, I think that he has a point. His colleagues in the European Parliament are deeply concerned at being asked to sit with Ms. Mussolini, Mr. Le Pen and the others in that ragbag. I would not be so crass as to ask them to join the Liberal Democrats, but they might like to submit entry application forms to the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe group in the European Parliament. It would be a shame for the Conservatives to lose all their chairmanships and influence in that Parliament, even though that is what they seem determined to do by joining the wackos on the extremes and thus making themselves a fringe element. Until the Conservative party understands the basics about how to make opposition count, I am afraid that it will hold little attraction for Liberal Democrats.

The hon. Gentleman is an acknowledged expert on human rights, so does he agree that to urge Conservative MEPs to join the Liberal Democrats in the European Parliament would infringe their human rights on the grounds that it is a cruel and unnatural punishment?

Some would say that simply being in the European Parliament was cruel and unnatural, but I am not one of them. I am sure that MEPs do a lot of excellent work.

That is probably an appropriate point at which to end my comments, as I do not want to exceed the 15-minute limit that would have been my lot if I had been speaking from the Back Benches. However, I take this opportunity to wish you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and Mr. Speaker a very happy Christmas, and I extend the same good wishes to all hon. Members who will take part in this very important debate.

I want to turn the thoughts of hon. Members to those who are less fortunate than ourselves at this Christmas season. This Government have done more than any previous Government to tackle poverty and deprivation, and the social exclusion unit's pioneering work has transformed the way that those problems are tackled.

Nearly 2 million pensioners and 750,000 children have been lifted out of poverty, and there are 2 million more people in work. Using the new definition of social exclusion, which deals with people suffering multiple disadvantages, there are more than 1 million fewer socially excluded adults. That is a proud record, but everyone recognises that there is much more to do. I want to use this opportunity to ask Ministers to consider the position of my constituency in Swindon as the Government move forward with tackling social exclusion.

Targeting resources where they can be most effective in tackling such complex issues is, inevitably, difficult, and requires different instruments. Programmes for individuals, both universal and targeted, play a central role. For example, tax and pension credits, significant increases in child benefit and the state pension, as well as the winter fuel payments, have all played an important part in tackling disadvantage under this Government. So too have programmes aimed at groups.

Like many hon. Members, I recognise the motivation behind the benefits system and the complex regime of tax credits and means-tested benefits. However, does the hon. Gentleman accept that vulnerable and elderly people feel pressurised and stressed by the need to work out how the system works before they can make a claim?

I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman says, but it is obvious that he has not talked to many of the people who operate the system. Had he done so, he would have been aware of the simplicities that we have introduced to make it easy to understand. The aim has been to facilitate processing for people who need help. Moreover, the hon. Gentleman does not seem to understand the stress and distress caused by 18 years of Conservative government, when vulnerable and disadvantaged people had no such help available. I suggest that he contact those of his constituents who benefit from tax credits before he makes another intervention along the same lines.

The Government have also introduced programmes aimed at groups of people who are at risk of exclusion, such as disabled children and drug misusers. Rightly, a lot of investment has gone into the most deprived local authorities. Although that focus is understandable, there is a risk that smaller communities that are in need can be missed by such targeting, especially if they are located within more prosperous areas. I welcome the Government's recognition of that risk, and the announcement that the focus will move from the most disadvantaged local authority districts to 903 individual wards, to ensure that effort is more effectively targeted. That must be a good thing, and it will help target deprivation in Swindon that otherwise might be missed by Government programmes because it is diffused throughout a relatively prosperous town.

Moreover, that problem is not confined to Swindon. Using the new geographic unit of super-output areas devised by the Office for National Statistics—at their lower layer, the areas are smaller than wards—I have drawn on the excellent work done by Adam Mellows-Facer and the House of Commons Library in mapping deprivation, for which I am much indebted. From those data, it appears that half of the most income-deprived people do not live in the 20 per cent. most deprived areas.

In the index of multiple deprivation compiled by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Swindon local authority is ranked at 171 out of 354—more or less in the middle. However, 11 of Swindon's 119 super-output areas are in the least deprived 10 per cent. of SOAs in England, and seven of its SOAs are in the most deprived 10 per cent. of such areas in England.

Variations and complexities exist even within those areas. The SOA that covers part of the Gorse Hill and Pinehurst wards falls within the 10 per cent. most deprived areas on the overall index of multiple deprivation. It does better than that on employment deprivation, falling within the 16 per cent. most deprived areas, but it does significantly worse on education deprivation, falling within the 2 per cent. most deprived areas. That poses particular problems for front-line professionals.

Headlands secondary school serves Pinehurst ward and has gone through great turmoil in recent years. It now has new leadership, and the new head, Jan Shadick, and her team are working extremely hard with governors and parents to turn the situation around and make progress. I hope that Ministers will join me in commending all their efforts and achievements, but they know that there is a lot more still to do and they need more support.

It is not just a question of money, although that always helps. Bold and imaginative action is also needed to tackle the root causes of disadvantage. Much has already come into Swindon and the areas that I have mentioned as a result of Government action. For example, the communities now have a successful Sure Start scheme, and I pay tribute to Liz Evans and her team and all the parents of Pinehurst and Penhill who are doing such good work.

However, there is still a lot to do. Jan Shadick, for example, talks eloquently of the need to break the cycle of cultural deprivation. She wrote to me recently and her letter is worth quoting, as it illustrates problems that can lie among some of this country's most advantaged communities. She wrote:

"This cycle of cultural deprivation has built up over the years and desperately needs to be broken. The fact that many of the schools in the area have been in special measures in recent years and the fact that the population remains predominantly stagnant has meant that the opportunities to break it have been missed and it has spread into another generation.

Low aspirations dominate the area. There is work in Swindon and people will find jobs. They will have money coming into the family. Children therefore have the mentality that they don't need qualifications as they will get a job. They are right but these jobs are not well paid and there is no aspiring to managerial positions and positions of responsibility.

This process has occurred over a number of years and the mentality is passed from generation to generation. Parents are therefore not aspiring for their children. They often lack basic skills such as literacy and numeracy as well as the social skills required to take full responsibility in the world. This deprivation is passed on to their children and there is low value placed on education.

The high teenage pregnancy rate in the area ensures that this cycle of deprivation continues and can present insecure family structures. Many of our children lack positive role models in the home.

With all of this there is a fear of education from parents. A fear that they are inadequate to support their children, a fear that the school will judge them and a fear that their children will grow up to want more, will change and move away. This fear is stronger with secondary schools which are larger and perhaps seen as less welcoming and results in an unwillingness to engage and an unwillingness to help their children as they feel inadequate."

I hope that this Government continue to take heed of the needs of Headlands school and the community that it serves—and of the needs of all the other similar schools and communities that are surrounded by relatively prosperous areas. From my perspective in North Swindon, if the Government do not help them, it does not look as though anyone else will.

Conservative-run Swindon borough council has received huge help from central Government in recent years. Funding has increased by 30 per cent. since 2001, and officials from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister have been seconded to sort out the acute managerial problems that the council could not sort out on its own. Yet the council seems oblivious to problems of deprivation and exclusion right in the middle of our town. Cuts are made by the council that tend to fall most heavily on the most vulnerable. Last time round, it butchered the Berkshire advice service, which served the most disadvantaged people in Swindon. This summer, it grandiosely launched a vision for Swindon in 2010 with 50 promises—50 of them. It is a shame that not a single one mentioned tackling poverty or deprivation or disadvantage, but that is modern Conservatism.

The ceaseless efforts of councillors to help their communities in the most disadvantaged wards in my constituency—Pinehurst and Penhill—are routinely ignored by the council. Those communities desperately need support in tackling deep-seated problems, and it would be a tragedy if, just because they are in a relatively prosperous town, they were to be overlooked in the wonderful measures that the Government have taken to tackle social exclusion. As islands of disadvantage in a sea of prosperity, they are always in danger of being overlooked. I hope Ministers will be able to reassure me and the people of Swindon that those communities will continue to be remembered.

I am grateful to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to speak in the Christmas Adjournment debate. It is the first time in many years that I have spoken in this debate—indeed, in any debate in the Chamber—and I apologise to colleagues for being a little rusty. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) has promised me some intensive teach-ins on how to speak in the Chamber, if I turn up on Friday mornings in future. I apologise to the Minister for rattling through a list of subjects. It is not because they are unimportant but because there are so many that I should like to touch on that, if I do not, I shall rapidly run out of time.

First, I raise the state of the Cumbrian economy, which, believe it or not, is dire. Most colleagues will think of Cumbria, if they think of Cumbria at all, as the Lake district—that beautiful stretch of mountains and lakes—but our economy is dying. From official Government statistics, we find that between 1995 and 2002 the Cumbrian economy grew by only 13.2 per cent. The region of the north-west, including Liverpool, Manchester and areas that once were terribly depressed, grew by 38 per cent. The national economy grew by 44 per cent. When indexed against the gross value added per head, the Cumbrian gross domestic product in 1995 was 92 per cent., but in 2002 it had fallen to 74 per cent.

Today I am not going to attack the Government for letting that happen; there will be ample time in the next few years to do that. Today I want to make the point that an economy that has in the past few years shrunk from 92 per cent. to 74 per cent. is in a dire state. And that is on the latest statistics, to 2002. We believe that when the 2003 statistics are released, the Cumbrian economy will have shrunk to 71 per cent. of GDP, and Cumbria will qualify for objective 1 funding. I make a strong plea to the Minister to pass that fact on to his colleagues at the Department of Trade and Industry. We must have objective 1 funding in Cumbria.

The Cumbrian economy is in a worse state than Liverpool was when Liverpool was in its pits. It is in a worse state than Cornwall was when it qualified for objective 1 funding. It is in a worse state than those parts of Scotland that got funding. Yet not many people realise that that is so, because we still have the wonderful image of the Lake district, which seems such a nice, pleasant, wealthy place. I am afraid that it is not.

We are calling on the Government to seek objective 1 funding urgently for Cumbria. These issues must be addressed by a considerable package of UK and European funds, which must be dedicated to the whole of the NUTS 2 area of Cumbria, to be managed and delivered locally. The funds should come from the EU's regional competitiveness and employment fund, which is the new objective 2 of the structural funds. The funds should come with a derogation allowing a certain broadening of scope to target them at a wide range of activities in accordance with the structural needs of the county. We ask, too, that the funds be accompanied by assisted area designation under the regional aid guidelines as an article 87.3(c) area to enable higher investment in companies. I am sorry if that latter part sounded boring and technical; it is, but we are nevertheless losing industries hand over fist and do not have many new high-tech industries. We desperately need smaller, added-value companies in our county.

This is not a plea about the state of farming, which is also in decline, but in decline around most of the country. It is a plea for industry and our economy. We cannot continue at the present rate. If the Government's plans to run down and close Sellafield were to be enacted tomorrow, as opposed to over eight years, another 15 per cent. would be taken out of the Cumbrian economy. I hope that a time will come in the near future when I shall be able to address the issues of the nuclear industry. Let me say simply that I hope I shall be able to congratulate the Government not on running down the nuclear industry and Sellafield but on restarting it. We need the technology at Sellafield, and we need it in Cumbria. I hasten to add that I think we need it producing our power in the rest of the country, too.

That leads me to my next point, which is on wind farms. Energy prices have more than doubled in the past few months. On Friday, I visited a small factory in my constituency which makes polythene bags and a range of products from plastic. Its electricity bill has gone up more than 100 per cent. since May. The Government keep saying, and rightly, that our electricity prices have historically been the lowest in Europe. That was the case, but since May and June it is the case no more. The whole of that firm's last year's profit margin has been wiped out by this year's increase in electricity prices.

Because of that increase in electricity prices, the Government insist on maintaining the carbon tax and the renewables obligation. That obligation has long passed its sell-by date. It has resulted in Cumbria's being afflicted by hundreds and hundreds of applications for giant wind farms in the wrong place, which would despoil what is left of our economy, bring no new jobs and contribute only a fraction of the electricity that this country so badly needs. My next plea to the Government is that if they wish to pursue a wind farm policy, they should consider big ones offshore. They should not try to dump wind farms on the Lake district and other areas of outstanding natural beauty. They do not contribute to our electricity needs, and they are destroying our countryside.

My right hon. Friend may be aware that I am president of the Country Guardians, which is opposed to the ill placing of wind turbines. Does he know that 21 wind farms are currently under construction, a further 68 have been given consent and 160 are under planning consideration? People have had enough of these unsightly, inefficient wind farms blighting our countryside, and it is about time that we had a proper energy policy.

My hon. Friend makes his point in his own way, and admirably well. I applaud what he has said. Wind farms are blighting our countryside. Many of the applications are a mass try-on: companies apply for wind farms en masse, knowing that they will lose some, but hoping to gain most of them, which they can then sell on for someone else to build. The Government must look urgently at the whole policy of wind farms on land.

I want to speak, too, about community hospitals. I suspect that the Conservative pairing Whip did not entirely believe me when I said last week that I should like a day off to help lead a protest march through Penrith to save our community hospitals, which are up for closure. I have been able to produce the evidence, and what surprised most people in Cumbria was that 2,000 others from around the county turned out on a protest march, something those people have never done before—indeed, do not quite know how to do. Those people came from all parts of north Cumbria and from all walks of life. In fact, as the admirable Fred Wilson, the photographer from the Penrith Herald said, the last time that 2,000 people marched through Penrith was in 1745, and they did not get as warm a welcome from the local population as the Scot leading them this time. Three cheers for Bonnie Prince David.—[Laughter.]

The strategic health authority's plans to close four community hospitals in my constituency, plus two in the neighbouring constituencies of Labour MPs, are not properly thought out. They are based on back-of-the-fag-packet calculations. In place of the service offered by the community hospitals, the health authority has scrabbled together an idea for a 24/7 travelling district nurse, backed up by enhanced GP services. I am happy to say that if the professionals in the health service—doctors, nurses and others—had come together, asked how they could improve rural health and, over two years or 18 months, produced a plan involving travelling district nurses 24 hours a day and enhanced GP services, and if they had consulted on that and properly costed it, and if it would deliver more benefits, I could not resist it. But this plan has not come about in that way. It has been devised because the SHA way down in Preston has said, "You're in deficit. Cut your budget." When asked for a steer on what should be cut, the SHA apparently said, "We don't have community hospitals in Preston. Get rid of your community hospitals."

So a plan that will supposedly save £15 million overall is targeting our community hospitals to save £2.4 million. That will be devastating to our rural areas and it will be bad for the acute hospital in Carlisle, because it will lead to bed blocking on a massive scale. That is the nonsense of Government accounting. If the NHS gets away with this scheme, it will save £2.4 million. We will then have to build 120 nursing home places to take the people who are not capable of going straight home from the acute hospital.

The community hospital beds are not a luxury. No Government would have kept those hospitals open if they were unnecessary. We have them because there is nowhere to put people who have been discharged from the acute hospital but are not fit to go home. They need a week or 10 days of intermediate care. But if the health service saves on its budget, the cost of building 120 nursing home places outweighs it. Those mostly elderly people will be shoved into those places and, probably, stay there for evermore. When an elderly person goes into a community hospital for intermediate care, they are there for a week or 10 days and then they come out, but once they get a place in a nursing home—at enormous extra cost—they will be there for the rest of their life. The health service may save £2.4 million, but the county council and the social services budget will increase by at least £4 million. But that is a different budget head, so no one cares.

I hope that the Minister will tell the Secretary of State for Health, in the words we used at the rally, "If you persist with this, you have seen nothing yet." If 2,000 Cumbrians can be stirred up to join a protest march to save our community hospitals, I can tell the Government that they will see protests on a massive scale throughout north Cumbria. People will protest as they have never protested before, because we will not tolerate the closure of those essential services. There are other ways to save money in the health service. Indeed, there are other ways to use those hospitals more efficiently, but the scheme, cobbled together in a desperate attempt to save some money on a budget and targeting rural areas in the hope that rural people are so quiescent that they would not squeal, is wrong and doomed to failure.

My penultimate point is about the state of agriculture in my constituency and, indeed, in the whole of Cumbria, in the particular area of hill farming. I am concerned that the three-tier payment system discriminates against hill farmers in Cumbria. I know that in some parts of the country, such as the Peak district, hill farmers benefit more from the new single payment system. But because of the way in which the three tiers have been designed, hill farmers are suffering. I am not suggesting any more money overall for farmers, but I am suggesting that the Government revisit the three tiers and consider a possible rebalancing between them.

I urge the Government to explore urgently the recent National Trust report. It contains detailed research and suggests some ideas for rebalancing the three tiers to give different support levels to farmers. The concern that we have in the hills is that farmers will stop farming. To put it simply, if a farmer is to get a single farm payment for not farming animals, why on earth should a hill farmer go out at all hours of the day and night, in all weathers and all year round, to look after some yows on the hillside? It is not worth doing, especially if the payments are only £2,000 or £3,000 a year. The National Trust is concerned, as am I, that farming will cease in large parts of the Lake district, and then all the other parts of the landscape that we value—the walls, the fields and the hedgerows—will change fundamentally. That is the National Trust's fear, and I think it is justified. I urge the Government to consider the report carefully.

My final point is that the heart is being torn out of my county now. The administrative heart of Cumbria is going. Already, our fire service control has been moved out of the county to a regional centre at Warrington. The ambulance service told me this week that it will amalgamate with another in the political region. If the ambulance service in Cumbria were to amalgamate sensibly with a neighbour, it would be Northumberland, but that is not allowed because it is across the political border. We had an excellent debate on policing yesterday and I agree with much of what the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) said about it. His words apply equally to Cumbria. There is no need or justification for the Cumbrian force to be amalgamated with Lancashire or Liverpool or into a regional structure. If the Cumbrian police should amalgamate with any other police force, again it should probably be Northumberland. But of course that is ruled out, because it is in the wrong political region. The excuse that every force in the country needs to be up to the same level of anti-terrorist expertise as the Met is barking and incorrect.

We are losing our fire service, our ambulance service and our police service. The Border regiment was extinguished last week, and the Government decided not even to keep its name in the new Lancashire county regiment. Part after part of my county is being stripped out. In a few years' time, why should business come to Cumbria when it has no headquarters of police, fire or ambulance, no learning and skills councils, and no regiment? My message to the Minister is, please give us the regional funding that we need, stop the nonsense of closing our hospitals, and do not tear the heart out of my county.

I wish to address two issues—crime and antisocial behaviour in my constituency and the consultation process on building schools for the future that will take place after Christmas in Hull. The policing of crime and antisocial behaviour is a key issue for all Members of Parliament. The police force that covers Hull is Humberside, which has recently had a somewhat chequered history, including an unfortunate involvement in the Soham inquiry, a chief constable who got into difficulties with the then Home Secretary and a poor result in the police performance assessment that was published recently.

I therefore come to the debate on police restructuring with an open mind. At the moment, Humberside police force is not necessarily serving my constituents as well as it could. We had an interesting debate on the issue yesterday, but it was unfortunate that we had no speakers from Yorkshire on what should happen in that county. Hon. Members will know that Yorkshire has four police forces at the moment—Humberside, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and North Yorkshire.

As I said at the outset, crime and antisocial behaviour are key issues for almost every constituent in the country, and I am proud that measures to deal with them have been high on the Government's agenda. Police numbers have increased; there are 14,000 new police officers on the streets. A range of antisocial behaviour measures has been brought in and the use of closed circuit television has been expanded.

The attempt to modernise the police force is a key factor. We are looking at the jobs that we ask police officers to perform to see whether some of them can be undertaken by civilians or police staff, which is right and proper. We are considering more practical measures, such as the use of non-emergency telephone numbers so that the public can contact the police without using 999.

For a short period, I was a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority and I was keen on the work being done by the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, to devolve to neighbourhoods through local policing teams. He did well in that and I wish him every success in the future. Police community support officers played an enormous part in providing that neighbourhood policing. As a member of the MPA, I learned to pay heed to what the then Metropolitan Police Commissioner was saying about the threat of terrorism not only in the City of London, but nationally. That is of particular importance to me now, as the port of Hull and the Humber estuary could be major targets for terrorism.

Against that background, having regard to what Sir John Stevens said about terrorism and to what was said in the debate yesterday about level 2 crime, I am keen that we ensure that our police force is fit for purpose. Yesterday, I listened carefully to the comments about the report "Closing the Gap", produced by Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary. Humberside police force is made up of just over 2,000 officers and about 1,000 staff, so it fits the criteria in the report for the optimum size—4,000 officers and above—to meet area policing needs. I am persuaded that Humberside's current operational level does not give the force the capacity to deal with major incidents and the cross-regional crime that comes into Yorkshire. If it came to pass that the port and the Humber estuary were a target for terrorist activity, we would not have the resilience we need. As all Members are aware, abstractions from our local policing teams are far too frequent, so I am persuaded that we should change the structure in Yorkshire.

Two options are being discussed: a south Yorkshire and Humberside force of about 5,500 officers, or a regional Yorkshire force of about 12,000. On 16 December, a letter was signed by the chair of Humberside police authority and the chief constable, expressing the view that their preferred option was a regional Yorkshire force, although I stress that they were not asking for a voluntary merger. There will be four months of consultation on the preferred structure, which is right and proper.

It is important to the people of Hull, North that they have the local neighbourhood policing that they deserve. Police community support officers are effective in London, but I am sad to say that our previous chief constable in Humberside did not like the idea of PCSOs and we were the last police force to introduce them. There are only 22. Our new chief constable, Tim Hollis, believes that PCSOs have an important role to play in policing Hull and the general Humberside area and is moving towards the employment of 285 of them by March 2007. I am sure that everybody in Hull will welcome that. The Government have made available £340 million to increase the use of PCSOs across the whole country, and the target is about 24,000 in the near future.

Community wardens have been amazingly successful in Hull. The scheme is run by a community resource team at the Goodwin centre, which shows how the voluntary sector—the third sector—can get involved in providing services that really meet the needs of our communities. Our wardens have won awards and they train wardens throughout the region. I am proud that they are based in Hull.

Neighbourhood watch and victim support schemes also have an important part to play in ensuring that our streets and areas are safe. The whole police family has a key role—be it uniformed officers, PCSOs, community wardens or victim support and neighbourhood watch groups. The Home Secretary gave reassurances yesterday about the localised nature of policing, keeping the basic command unit strong and accountable to the local community. That is the right way to go, while recognising the need for a more strategic role—if there is a Yorkshire-wide police force—to deal with level 2 crime.

Of course, restructuring will be difficult. We have to acknowledge that, but I am convinced that Humberside, which has not done terribly well in the past, will benefit from the advantages of working with other police forces in Yorkshire. There will be savings from ending the duplication of human resources and payroll departments and headquarters. I look forward to seeing the nitty-gritty of what those savings will mean. A regional force would give staff more opportunities to develop specialisms, so that their careers can advance without their needing to move to other police forces.

I want to say a few words about centres of excellence. When I was member of the MPA, I was very impressed by Operation Sapphire, which was an attempt to concentrate resources and effort to deal with sexual assault and rape. Money was put in, on a partnership basis, to build and develop havens for victims, where they could be interviewed by the police and receive medical treatment and counselling. It was not like going to a police station, which can be a difficult experience for a victim of sexual assault.

There are two havens in London. The Humberside force has looked into setting up a haven, but has neither the specialism nor the money to do so. With a regional police force, we might be able to develop centres of excellence and set up havens in Yorkshire. I would very much welcome that.

In the debate yesterday, many people talked about the accountability of police forces, especially strategic police forces. I hope that the Home Secretary and the Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety will ensure that the voices of people who are not often heard on policing issues, especially young people, get a hearing before any new structures are set up. They are the most likely to be victims of crime, yet often they do not have the chance to contribute to debates about resource allocation.

Finally, I want to talk about building schools for the future in Hull. We were lucky enough to be allocated £180 million and in January consultation will start on proposals for building new schools. Newland school for girls is the only single-sex school in Hull. It has an excellent head teacher and a good reputation. It is based at the centre of the campus of Hull university, which provides an excellent role model for young women and girls to further their education at university.

The school, which has been open for almost 100 years, is under threat of closure. One proposal is to close it at the existing site and move it to east Hull. I have received many representations about the need for single-sex schools. There must be choice in education and if parents want a single-sex school, they should have that choice. In particular, the growing ethnic minority community in Hull very much wants the school to continue. We do not need to close old buildings; we can remodel them. The school can be extended, to make it fit for purpose.

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise those two constituency issues, and I wish everybody a happy Christmas.

I am conscious of the fact that these debates, as hon. Members who regularly attend them will know, can turn into a bit of a Christmas whinge, but I am hard-pressed to bring glad tidings of joy from the wonderful county of Devon this year, because we have so many issues that I need to bring to the Minister's attention.

I want to reflect a little on what my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (David Maclean) said about the large rural parts of this country, particularly of England, which seem to be ignored and overlooked by the Government. Like his constituency, the far south-west, particularly Devon and Cornwall, is a very beautiful part of the country that is famous for its tourism, its coast and its river valleys, such as the one that I represent, but that does not mean that it is just a picture book. Real people live there. Real people have to run businesses and earn their living there. We have a younger generation growing up, and we want them to stay in Devon and feel that they have a future there, not elsewhere.

Every time I look at the way in which the Government address Devon's needs, however, I find that the rural parts of this country apparently have a different set of rules from the others. At the beginning of this year, I saw a map of what the Government regarded as the strategic road network for this country, only to find to my astonishment that anything west of Bristol—including the M5, which runs from Bristol to Exeter—was not regarded by the Government as a strategic route. In fact, there were absolutely no strategic road routes in the south-west peninsula west of Bristol at all.

My first port of call was to contact the chief executive and the chairman of the regional development agency—after all, I understood the Government's regional policy to mean that the RDA would look for the inward investment and economic regeneration of an area. When I asked what representations the RDA made to the Government in reaching the decision that there was a total wasteland west of Bristol, I was told that the RDA was not consulted at all.

All credit to the RDA. Over recent months, it has knocked on the Government's door, and I now understand—although no one has received any official notification of this—that the M5 from Bristol to Exeter is apparently now regarded as of strategic importance. However—one must be grateful for small mercies, particularly at this time of year—the rest of the road network that serves my constituency and the far south-west is totally neglected.

We were told that regional assemblies would have a strategic role in considering housing and infrastructure. Indeed, when the regional assembly sat down to consider road and rail infrastructure, it was officially told halfway through its deliberations to forget the railways because there was no money for them. It therefore dropped the railways from its agenda.

Only recently, I received a consultation document about the main rail routes in and out of the south-west. Again, I was absolutely astonished to find that, although we are to have a new town in my constituency, just east of Exeter, and that the main line from Exeter to Waterloo will go through that town and that there will be a new freight depot, supposedly bringing a lot of investment and jobs to the new town and to my constituency, freight is barely mentioned in the consultation document on the future of the railways in the south-west.

In fact, when I asked how freight could be hauled to that depot on what is a single-line track with a 1:32 gradient between Exeter St. David's station and a new station, which will be built in the new town, I was told that there was no money for rail infrastructure, that no one will be able to dual the track or do anything about the gradient and that half a load will be hauled twice a day.

Where is the planning in any of this? Where is the Government's strategic involvement? They seem to ignore the regional assemblies and RDAs that they have set up. Is not the Deputy Prime Minister's personal agenda really to divide England into bite-sized chunks, however the map is drawn. We heard from the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) how our region—the south-west region—stretches from Swindon to Gloucester, down to the Isles of Scilly and along the coast to Bournemouth. It is an enormous area, yet the Government, having arbitrarily divided up the country, do absolutely nothing to recognise the area's needs. Likewise, as other hon. Members have also mentioned today, there is a regionalisation of our public services, particularly the police force, the ambulance service and the fire and rescue services, all of which seems to be done to fit things into a Government agenda regardless of how the services will be delivered to people on the ground.

Hon. Members who represent sparsely populated areas—there are three moors in Devon and Cornwall—know that services for people in very remote, isolated areas will go almost completely off the map. We heard about the delivery of health services. I am concerned that we will have a pan-Devon primary care trust. That is too big. I know what will happen because it now happens in just about every other area, whether in relation to public services or the delivery of grants for sports. People come along with a clipboard and a check list. If certain things on the check list are ticked, the area gets some inward investment and people get some help, but sparsely populated areas do not have the critical mass, so the things on the list are not ticked and the people get nothing at all.

I should like to tell the Minister that it really is about time that we saw what the Government trumpeted as their main ambition for this country—something that comes near to fairness and justice. I can remember that, when they first took office, almost every other speech by a Minister said that they wanted to govern with fairness and justice. There is no fairness and there is no justice for people who live in sparsely populated, rural communities because the whole system has been geared not to devolving things down to local decision making, but to taking them away from local decision making, so the services or the inward investment is not tailored to the needs of specific communities. Everything is decided from a central point, further away from the point of delivery, purely to fit an agenda that is political, arbitrary, unfair and unjust. That is how I see my constituents being treated by the Government, and they are not unique.

Since the Government took office, we have been asking, as the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome will know, for a second strategic route in and out of the south-west servicing the coastal ports from Weymouth and Poole and on to Kent. Such a route would be important for our businesses, for inward investment and especially for industries such as tourism. The Government kept kicking the plans into the long grass. They eventually said that we could not have a second strategic route, but that they would put the money into some other road. They have not produced the money for the other road. There is no money. There is no inward investment anywhere. One can look at the south-west from Bristol down and see that we are treated like second-class citizens, and I tell the Government that that will not do.

Let us forget the political representation, whether by a Conservative or Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament. I realise that the Government do not have too many MPs in the south-west. In fact, only about one in 100 people voted for the Government in the south-west, but that is not the point. The point is that, when people govern, they should govern for a nation, not for selected parts of a nation that happen to share their own party political prejudices.

As this is surely the Labour Government's last throe, given that the Prime Minister is running out of time to make his mark as the great man of Europe or whatever—all those things that he wanted to tick off and be remembered for in the history books—let him get back to basics. Let him get back to what he said on the day that he took office. Let him at last in this Parliament deliver fairness and justice for the whole country, not just selected bits of it.

I am sorry that my speech has not brought you a great deal of light-hearted joy at this time of year, Madam Deputy Speaker, but these debates give us an opportunity, for which I am grateful, to raise issues that really matter to our constituents and communities. I hope that the Minister will take on board what I have said and make my views on behalf of my constituents known to Ministers, especially those in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Despite the democratic vote in the north-east that showed clearly that people in this country do not want regionalisation, the Deputy Prime Minister is pressing on with it none the less. He does not have a mandate for it. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border said of Cumbria, we will not have it in the west country. We will not have this dictatorship of a Government imposing things on us and running the west country in a way that is to the detriment of the people who live there.

May I wish everyone a very happy Christmas? I wish an especially happy Christmas to the staff and Officers of the House and thank them for the work that they do for us throughout the year, for which we are all extremely grateful.

May I send my season's greetings to the people about whom the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning) just spoke?

I would like to take the opportunity of using the last debate before Christmas to talk briefly about a matter that has been brought to my attention by members of the Swansea bay asylum seekers support group. The organisation provides support, advice and practical help to asylum seekers and refugees in my constituency of Gower and other constituencies in the Swansea area. The group does tremendous work, often in distressing circumstances, so I am glad to be able to pay tribute to its enthusiastic and hard-working volunteers.

The specific matter that has been raised with me and other hon. Members is perhaps especially appropriate to this of all seasons if we regard Christmas as a time for families and especially children, as most of us do. I want to consider the impact of section 9 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 on families and children, and the possible future impact of the section throughout the country.

Some hon. Members will remember that section 9 was the focus of much debate during the passage of the Bill, which received Royal Assent in July 2004. It created a new category of people called

"failed asylum-seeker with family"

and made provision for those people to lose their entitlement to financial and material support under our domestic social welfare schemes. The provision means that an adult failed asylum seeker with a dependent child or children who is regarded as having failed to take reasonable steps to leave the UK can have their entitlement to support from the state ended. That is achieved if the Secretary of State issues a certificate. Clearly, the expectation is that the measure will encourage families with children to leave the UK after their asylum claim has been decided. I am not here to argue against the Government's intention when applying and enforcing their asylum policy, but to draw attention to the consequences of the provision and its possible effects in the future.

It was argued during the passage of the Bill that became the 2004 Act that section 9 would allow children to be used as a tool to coerce families into doing what the Government wanted them to do. It was thought that the failure to view refugee children in such circumstances as children first and foremost could breach the Children Act 1989, the Human Rights Act 1998 and the UN convention on the rights of the child. Frankly, I do not have the legal knowledge or specialist expertise to assess whether that is the case or not, but there is growing evidence that section 9 is having a negative impact on children's safety and well-being in some cases, but not achieving the Government's objective.

Perhaps because of the controversial nature of section 9, it has been piloted in three areas: central and east London, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire. It was applied to a group of 116 families from several different countries with 36 adult dependants and 219 children. In all cases, the families' appeal rights had been exhausted before December 2004.

Soon after the pilot began, Barnado's, with the support of the Refugee Children's Consortium, started an assessment by working with local authorities that were involved in the implementation pilot and some that were not. Interviews were held with local authority practitioners and the findings of the research were illuminating. Every local authority that was interviewed believed that section 9 of the 2004 Act was incompatible with the Children Act 1989 because that Act requires local authorities always to put the interests of the child first and says that unless there is likely to be physical danger, the best place for a child is with her or his family. However, section 9 requires a local authority to take away the means of supporting a child and then decide whether to take that child into care to ensure that he or she has food and shelter. No local authority staff had received any guidance from the Government on how to undertake human rights assessments. That is important because the withdrawal of support can be prevented only if there is a breach of the Human Rights Act 1998.

The research found that the approach of different local authorities varied enormously. Local authority staff who were responsible for working with families from which support had been withdrawn thought that they did not have the necessary training or experience to balance child welfare and human rights considerations with the imperatives of immigration control. Local authorities were all worried about resource implications of section 9 and some felt that there had been a deliberate shift of resourcing from the immigration and nationality directorate to local authority budgets.

Apart from engendering a sense of dismay and uncertainty in social services departments throughout the country, what else has the experience of the pilots taught us? What happened to the 116 families involved? I do not have an absolutely up-to-date picture, but I can give a snapshot of the situation in the autumn. Some 27 families had reached stage 4 of the process, 17 of which had had their support withdrawn under section 9. A further 26 families had had their support withdrawn for reasons other than section 9. Although the pilot began in December 2004, not one family had returned to its country of origin by the following autumn as a direct result of the implementation of section 9. On the other hand—this is the bit about section 9 that worries me most—35 families had disappeared altogether, thus losing contract with the services with which they had been working. By definition, of course, we do not know what has happened to those families, but it is clear that they have made themselves and their children acutely vulnerable and open to all sorts of exploitation. Those families represent 30 per cent. of those in the pilot.

There is good evidence that families involved in the pilot did not really understand their situation or options. Halfway through the pilot, the Refugee Council in London and Leeds and Refugee Action in Manchester sent translated letters to section 9 families involved in the pilot. The families were invited to attend advice sessions or to call telephone advice services so that it could be discovered whether they understood their position. It turned out that many families had not received letters relating to section 9 and that few of those who had received a letter understood it.

The thinking behind section 9 is clear and understandable. Why should the British taxpayer continue to support asylum seekers who have come to the end of the appeal process? I know that many of our constituents support the logic that if we take away such asylum seekers' support, they will go. However, it is hon. Members' job to look beyond that straightforward rationale and to examine the effect of the policy.

It is clear to me that the pilot demonstrates that section 9 has not achieved its objectives and that it would be extremely unlikely to do so if it were rolled out throughout the country. It has created legal and practical problems in the local authorities that have been involved in the pilot and have tried to combine the implementation of section 9 with their child welfare and human rights standards. That situation would be reflected throughout the country if the scheme were extended beyond the pilot areas. Rather than encouraging families to leave the UK, the fear of eviction or separation have driven them to disappear. They are presumably living on the margins of our society, vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. Surely that cannot be an acceptable outcome of any policy. If section 9 is rolled out throughout the country, thousands of children would be put in such a position through—whatever one thinks of their parents' decisions—absolutely no fault of their own.

The children's policies that we adopt must take precedence over our asylum objectives if and when, as in this case, they appear to conflict. The children of asylum seekers and refugees are first and foremost children. All of our policies should protect the interests of children as a matter of first principle.

I shall quote from a statement that was put out jointly by the four UK children's commissioners last Friday, which expresses a number of their concerns about the treatment of asylum-seeking children and young people. It identifies, as a particular concern, the withdrawal of welfare from asylum-seeking families and children following a final negative asylum decision and exhaustion of appeals, including the power to separate asylum-seeking children from their families. The commissioners say:

"The Commissioners call on the Government to ensure that asylum-seeking children and young people are treated as children by all those involved at every stage of the asylum process, from arrival in the UK through to removal to their country of origin, and their special needs and rights recognised."

The commissioners

"want to express their disappointment that no-one seems to be listening to what the children themselves have to say or to be considering the impact that their experiences before and since coming to this country may have had on them. The Commissioners in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales will also be making representations to their own Parliaments and Assemblies about the effects of current policy on children and young people in their area.,"

Let us listen to our children's commissioners. Let us listen to people who are working in this area, such as Barnardo's and the Refugee Council. Let us listen also to our directors for social services, and let us just dump section 9.

I begin by paying tribute to the campaigners for the Make Poverty History campaign and the trade justice campaign in my constituency and throughout the country. We should reflect on the success of those campaigns: people were motivated throughout the country and young people, especially, were seized by those projects. That has had a great deal to teach all of us in terms of a political campaign.

I say that with a tinge of regret, having listened to today's statement by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry about the deliberations of the World Trade Organisation in Hong Kong last week. It is unfortunate that it was not possible for the Government to secure proper reform of the common agricultural policy earlier during their presidency. We know from parliamentary answers that the Minister for Europe did not even start to have serious negotiations with our European colleagues on the CAP before October. If we had been able to sort out the CAP and arrive at some sort of proper agreement earlier this year, there would have been a real chance for us to secure a far better outcome at the WTO meeting in Hong Kong. As a result, hundreds of millions of the world's poorest people would have received a much better outcome.

It is glib and easy to talk about poverty and the Make Poverty History campaign, but what does that mean? I was impressed recently by the work of the UN World Food Programme, based in Rome. We must remember that some 6 million children die every year through malnutrition or disease. Those children are loved by their parents and are just as special to their families as are UK children to their families. I note what we have just heard about Hong Kong with a great sense of regret. Of course some progress has been reached, but it is a pity that we could not make real progress under the British presidency to secure CAP reform.

I want to reflect on what the House heard yesterday from the Prime Minister about the European budget negotiations. It is curious that only two weeks ago the Chancellor of the Exchequer came to the House, on 5 December, to set out the state of the nation's finances up to 2008. We learned yesterday from the Prime Minister that we will have some £7 billion less than the Chancellor had anticipated when he made his statement to the House. It is extraordinary that Parliament has not been consulted about such a massive change to the national budget. We have not been told which taxes will rise to pay for the £7 billion or which services will not now be funded. Apparently, not even the Chancellor was contacted to ask to give his agreement to £7 billion coming off the rebate.

The Prime Minister said yesterday that it was all about supporting the new entrants to the EU, and there is much sense in that. However, it is curious to find that Ireland, which has a higher per capita income than the United Kingdom, is receiving more per head than Lithuania, Slovakia and Poland. It would be possible, however, to support the new entrant states properly with a budget that was fair and ensured that money went to the poorest nations and not to some of the richest nations.

These are serious issues. As Members of Parliament, our prime duty is to hold the Government to account and to be the guardians of taxpayers' money. It is extraordinary that this matter has not come anywhere near the House; instead, it will be debated in the European Parliament. We are talking about huge sums. I understand that £7 billion is more or less what the Government spend on policing in England and Wales.

That brings me to the next part of my speech, which is the reorganisation of the police service. If we spoke to most of our constituents about police restructuring, they would probably look slightly blank. When I speak to my constituents about policing, they say that they would like the police station, for example, in Houghton Regis to stay open later in the evening. The same thing could be said about the police stations at Leighton Buzzard and Dunstable. People in villages in my constituency say that they would like to see a police officer more often.

Many of my constituents, like those of all other Members, suffer from the scourge of antisocial behaviour. It is appalling that, in some cases, such behaviour continues for two, three and sometimes three and a half years before those suffering from it are able to get relief. These are the real issues that our constituents want us to answer when we discuss the police service.

The Government's reorganisation of the police service raises the question whether the proposed changes are likely to address the concerns of our constituents better, or whether the situation will become worse. I have a great concern that larger forces will shift the focus from those local policing concerns that our constituents want the police to deal with.

The chairman of the Association of Police Authorities says:

"we are not convinced that policing which is controlled from remote centres which are out of touch with local communities is the right answer when other ways of getting the same result more quickly and cheaply have not been given even a cursory look."

Members on both sides of the House are happy to work with the Government to consider how to save money within the police service and to spend money more efficiently. We have grave doubts, however, about the way in which the Government are proceeding. In my own area, Bedfordshire police say that the set-up costs of a regional east of England force—one of the options proposed by the Government—are £70 million with net savings of only £10 million. The cost of the east-west option that will merge Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire forces or the north-south option that will merge Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Essex is £66 million to set up the new force, with savings of only £6 million a year. There is therefore a 10-year payback period, which is quite a long time in which the police service must borrow to fund start-up costs, possibly having to make cuts in front-line services before those costs are recouped. Nationally, the Government need between £500 million and £600 million to bring about the changes. We can all think of better ways of spending that money to put more police officers on our streets without resorting to reorganisation.

I accept that, in some respects, the Government have a point. Do we need 43 directors of finance in our police forces, or 43 directors of human resources? We could easily centralise functions such as finance, human resources and purchasing to save funds. There are many ways in which we could achieve the economies that the Government seek without a massive amalgamation of forces.

Accountability is key for the police, but it is stretched to the limit. My constituency is at the bottom of Bedfordshire, and the county town of Bedford is a 55-minute drive away. It is not as far as the distances that colleagues in larger counties have to travel, but it is still a significant distance. We need accountability in terms of the BCU—the basic command unit—of the police service, but chief superintendents do not have a structure of accountability. They look up to the chief constable, and the police authority covers the area in which the relevant police forces operates. Chief superintendents who manage police divisions should be made accountable to local representatives, who know very well the concerns of the people whom they represent.

Bedfordshire, too, has been told that any merger plans must fit within the region covered by the Government office for the east of England. Bedfordshire police considered the option of merging with Thames Valley police, who are next-door to us and with whom we share some functions, but we were told that that was not possible because they were in a different Government region. Like many hon. Members, I can confirm that our ambulance and fire and rescue services in Bedfordshire operate on a regional basis. Our strategic health authority is heading in that direction and important planning decisions are effectively made on a regional basis. It appears as if our police force is heading that way, too.

Finally, on behalf of Bedfordshire police may I reiterate the point made my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) yesterday? Bedfordshire police have been asked to pay the full security costs of policing Luton airport, which is a national facility used by planes from across the United Kingdom, Europe and further afield. It is not right that £400,000 should be taken from our police budget to provide security so that people across the south-east can fly safely. That does not happen at Gatwick or Heathrow, so I urge the Government to end that discrimination and give that money back to the people of Bedfordshire.

I, too, wish to conclude by wishing you, Madam Deputy Speaker, Mr. Speaker, all the Clerks and the staff of the House a happy Christmas.

May I begin by sending my good wishes to everyone who works in the House, not least people in less highly regarded areas such as the Whips Office? I should be grateful if my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Mr. Cawsey) would pass on those wishes to his colleagues.

A week today, on 27 December, we celebrate the third day of Christmas, when the quarry products industry receives from the Government not three French hens but something else of continental origin with more than a paltry impact—the European waste incineration directive. The constituency of North-West Leicestershire is a mineral-rich area. Roadstone extraction and treatment is a key industry that employs many of my constituents. The waste incineration directive poses a serious threat to their employers, given the additional costs that it will impose, and to the local and national environmental, given the extra emissions that will arise if the WID is allowed to ban the use of recovered fuel oil in the roadstone coating process and use as a substitute more polluting virgin fuels—which have nothing to do with Richard Branson.

The simple facts are as follows. Asphalt producers have used RFO as a fuel to provide the heat to dry stone for more than 30 years under strict emissions control arrangements without any apparent detrimental effects to the environment. That is largely due to the fact that the emissions from plants using RFO are environmentally more benign than plants using alternative, so-called virgin fuels. There is substantial evidence to underwrite those claims. However, the Environment Agency is adamant that RFO is a waste when bought by the quarrying industry and, because burning it constitutes disposal, it must now comply with the WID. The Environment Agency's arguments are based on rulings by the European Court of Justice that are quite irrelevant. Without significant, technically difficult and costly—in other words, impractical—changes to plants, the quarrying industry cannot meet the WID criteria, and will have no alternative but to stop using it from 27 December 2005 and switch to less environmentally sensitive virgin fuels such as gas, oil and light fuel oil.

The revision of the European waste framework directive, which will be published tomorrow as it starts to proceed through the European Parliament, redefines "recovery" so that RFO purchased from members of the oil reprocessing association is now classified as fully recovered and will no longer be a waste. Above all, the Environment Agency decision flies in the face of the Government's own sustainable development strategy, and waste prevention objectives, as the use of RFO, which is mainly derived from old motor vehicle engine oil, replaces an equivalent volume of virgin hydrocarbon fuel of about 4 million litres a week.

Bearing in mind that the new classification of the period at which a waste ceases to be a waste will be in the public domain tomorrow and that it will be clear for everyone to see that RFO, as bought by industry, is recovered under the new definitions, it is inconceivable that the European Commission should commence infraction proceedings against the United Kingdom if the UK allows the continued use of RFO by the quarrying industry after 27 December. Knowing that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor deplores red tape and that slavish adherence to apparent ECJ legal opinion and infraction constitute the paranoia underpinning the Environment Agency's attitude, the quarrying industry would be grateful to Ministers, including my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, for any pressure that they can bring to bear on the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency in the next few days to replace dogma with logic and common sense.

May I take a minute or two to outline the case that I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will put to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs? The roadstone coating industry currently uses approximately 200,000 tonnes of recovered fuel oil annually, which is about half of the UK's entire consumption. Roadstone coating plants burn RFO to dry and heat stone before bitumen is applied to make asphalt. The burning of RFO in roadstone coating plants significantly reduces the consumption of virgin gas oil by the roadstone coating industry, which preserves natural resources and avoids energy consumption in the production and refining of virgin gas oil, and it decreases emissions across a range of substances in comparison with the burning of virgin gas oil, which is perfectly lawful.

The market for RFO creates an economic environment within which the waste oil collection and treatment industry can thrive. Since the costs of waste oil collection and treatment are effectively underwritten by the end user of RFO, so-called producers of waste oil have every incentive to dispose of their waste oil responsibly and lawfully. The use of RFO by roadstone coating plants in my constituency is therefore of significant environmental benefit. No alternative option currently exists, and no viable alternative has been proposed that would guarantee the same environmental benefit as that received from the established pattern of RFO use by roadstone coating plants.

In my view, the use of RFO by roadstone coating plants is the best practical environmental option, and the Government should fully support it. However, DEFRA and the various waste regulators appear to think that the burning of waste-derived fuel is either a waste-recovery operation or a waste-disposal operation, and that as a consequence all waste-derived fuel must be waste. That is an over-simplification of the legal principles determining when something derived from waste ceases to be waste. As a consequence of that approach, the use of RFO as a fuel in roadstone coating plants is being considered as the co-incineration of non-hazardous waste under the waste incineration directive, and operators of such facilities are obliged to submit applications for permits under the pollution prevention and control regulations by 31 March this year. Those applications are required, even if roadstone coating plant operators choose not to use RFO beyond the compliance date for the waste incineration directive of 28 December 2005.

The industry has continued to co-operate with DEFRA and the various waste regulators in all aspects of the regulation of roadstone coating plants. Indeed, it has an excellent environmental track record, which I have observed because of my regular visits to plants in North-West Leicestershire. However, DEFRA has not yet replied to the industry's concerns about what will happen if RFO is no longer considered as a waste.

Although I am an accountant and not a lawyer, I have seen the legal advice and assessed the status of RFO under the applicable waste law. In my view, the facts justify the classification of RFO as a completely recovered product, in which case the waste incineration directive does not apply to it. The purpose of my contribution is to demonstrate that that argument is well-founded both in law and on the facts, to seek acknowledgement via the Minister from DEFRA and the waste regulators that that argument is well founded and to encourage DEFRA and the waste regulators urgently to work on finding the most sensible resolution to the issues.

Extensive comparative emission and product trials have taken place over the past few months at four asphalt plants around the country using different suppliers of RFO, different types of stone, different fuels and different ages of machinery. The fuels used were RFO and the primary hydrocarbons—gas oil and light fuel oil—to which I have referred. The quarry industry can demonstrate unequivocally that emissions from RFO are more benign than those from so-called natural alternatives. I encourage DEFRA to inspect and respond to those results. Indeed, if the quarrying industry were to stop using RFO next week, the environment would suffer two blows: not only would the quarrying industry have to use more virgin fossil fuel, but one of the most efficient used-oil collection regimes in Europe would be jeopardised.

Adherence to the waste incineration directive will not help the environment in this case. I urge DEFRA to defer the requirement for asphalt plants to obey the letter of the directive until it has had the chance to examine the arguments thoroughly and pragmatically and to read the final rewrite of the waste fuel directive, which disapplies the incineration directive in such cases. To do as I request would not compromise environmental protection, but it may avoid causing irrevocable and avoidable harm to the quarry products industry, which is a crucial employer in North-West Leicestershire.

In summary, the quarry industry and those who work within it seek confirmation that there are circumstances in which it is legitimate to regard waste-derived fuel as a fully recovered product that has ceased to be waste; that the production of recovered fuel oil is the production of a product that has ceased to be waste; that the burning of recovered fuel oil in roadstone coating plants is not the incineration or co-incineration of hazardous or non-hazardous waste; that operators of roadstone coating plants in North-West Leicestershire and elsewhere do not need to apply for PPC permits that incorporate the requirements of the waste incineration directive, which takes effect a week today; and, finally, that roadstone coating plants can lawfully continue to burn RFO, provided that they meet the emissions standards generally applicable to the burning of fuel products.

Although I consider the current methods of quality control employed by the oil reprocessing industry to be adequate to demonstrate the complete recovery of a product, the quarrying industry would be happy to work with DEFRA, the Environment Agency and the oil reprocessing industry to produce a quality protocol if that is necessary for reinsurance purposes. The industry is aware of a US quality standard—ASTM D6823—which relates specifically to the production of RFO. That could provide valuable assistance to speed up the finalisation of any UK RFO quality protocol.

The industry has every intention of maintaining its excellent track record in co-operating with DEFRA and the waste regulators to address any concerns that it may have prior to giving the formal acknowledgement that it seeks. In order for it to do so, I urge the Minister to ask his colleagues to explain any objection to the arguments that I have presented.

This is an urgent economic and environmental matter. I hope that the Government will address it before they depart on a well-earned Christmas break from European controversies and turn to resolving domestic disputes, which we all anticipate with great relish.

As I approach the end of my first year as a parliamentary apprentice, I see this House as a place of contrasts. Sometimes kindness is directed towards Members, while at other times there is cruelty when Members are in full flight after some hapless Minister like a pack of hounds. When I see how Members behave towards each other, I sometimes wonder where the anti-cruelty vote came from.

There can also be a contrast between tedium and drama, as you will have experienced on many occasions, Madam Deputy Speaker. Going through the detail of a Bill with very few Members in the Chamber can be tedious, yet sometimes we see the drama of close votes and Back-Bench revolts. One of my favourite occurrences took place in July when the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) had decided to speak against her own party. It was late at night, thunder was pealing outside and, just as she reached her main point, lightning flashed around the Chamber. My hon. Friends were impressed that the Labour Whips had such power, as we had thought that it was reserved to the leader of our party.

Over the past few months, I have found several contrasts between the Government's attitudes towards issues in England or in the international sphere and towards similar issues in Northern Ireland. I want to raise with the Minister the Government's contrasting attitudes to terrorism, because my constituents want answers on that. Not so long ago, a lone protestor outside Downing street was arrested for reading out a list of names of soldiers murdered in Iraq. Yet this weekend the case was dropped against members of Sinn Fein who were in possession of lists of policemen and prison personnel, many of whom had to leave their own homes, at a huge cost to the taxpayer of more than £30 million, as a result. Sinn Fein has tried to turn that into an intelligence scandal by saying that it is terrible that the police and MI5 were recruiting informers from within the IRA and Sinn Fein. Many in this House would be appalled if the security forces were not trying to recruit informers and gather intelligence. The spotlight seems to have been directed towards the police or the Government, whereas the real questions must be answered by Sinn Fein. Why did it have those lists? To what purpose did it intend to put them? Why were the fingerprints of some leading Sinn Fein members all over them? How can people in Northern Ireland trust Sinn Fein?

The question that my constituents want the Government to answer is this: if those people abuse their position in the Stormont Assembly and use their offices to capture information that could be useful to terrorists, why on earth are the Government pursuing an agenda that will put those same people back into their offices and back into office? Of course, such people are not to be trusted, and there is not the required level of trust.

Another contrast in the attitudes to terrorism was shown in the revolt by Labour Members not long ago in relation to holding terrorist suspects for more than 90 days without charge. Within a couple of weeks, however, those Members were tamely trotting through the Lobby to support legislation that would allow terrorists in Northern Ireland, who have charge lists as long as one's arm and have been found guilty of some of the most heinous crimes, to walk off without even appearing in court, let alone spending 90 seconds in jail. That Bill has been considered in Committee in the past couple of weeks, and the Government must bring back amendments that deal with the serious issues raised by Members in all parts of the House, including Government Back Benchers, and by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, the police and others.

Secondly, there is a contrast in the attitudes to education. The White Paper presented to the House will afford schools in England new freedoms in deciding on their admissions criteria. Despite the hysterical reaction from the Secretary of State—which, of course, we understand, as she must placate her Back Benchers, and it now seems that she must placate some Cabinet members—there is no doubt that those freedoms will enable schools to match children to the type of education to which they are best suited. We can call that academic selection or whatever we want, but it allows schools that freedom. I have no difficulty with calling it academic selection, common sense or whatever; I believe that it is right, and schools in England will benefit from it.

The contrast is that while the Government are introducing those freedoms to schools in England, they are removing them in Northern Ireland, despite the fact that teachers, schools, parents and the public, in consultation after consultation, including Government consultations, have widely supported continuing to match children to the school that they attend through an assessment of their educational needs, aptitudes and abilities. Last Friday, I met several principals who serve schools that take a large number of my constituents. They are all baffled as to how the Government can continue to fly in the face of public opinion in Northern Ireland on this issue. Unfortunately, a White Paper that will be introduced to the House in the new Session will remove in Northern Ireland the very freedoms that the Government intend to introduce—for which they will probably seek our support—in England. The Secretary of State must explain why the two parts of the United Kingdom are treated differently.

Thirdly, there is the attitude to the economy. The Chancellor has problems with the UK economy. Growth rates are half what he predicted in the Budget last year, public finances face a huge gap and a black hole, and the golden rule is in tatters. The Chancellor has rightly tried to talk up the economy, as he does not want confidence in it to be lost. What a contrast that is with the attitude of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who flies off to New York to meet investors and tells them that the Northern Ireland economy is unsustainable. The Chancellor of the Exchequer talks up a flagging economy in the House of Commons, while the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland talks down the economy of which he is in charge.

I understand that there are problems with the Northern Ireland economy. Our dependence on the public sector is too great, and the private sector is too sluggish. The private sector faces all kinds of problems, what with uncertainty and organised crime—by the very people, incidentally, whom the Secretary of State hopes to get into government in the next year—and the planning delays caused by the bureaucracy of the planning system, which has not improved. That has affected a number of projects in my constituency—major, multi-million-pound projects. I hope that the planning delays will be dealt with, so that the £80 million investment in Magheramorne quarry, and the investment in the village of Glenarm and in Carrickfergus are not held up.

There is also a contrast in the attitudes to finance. Only yesterday, the Prime Minister told the House that he had secured a great deal when he gave away £7 billion to the European Union, although he had not achieved any reform in the common agricultural policy, or even any promises of reform, and although he had promised that he would not renegotiate the rebate, period. That largesse towards the EU presents a contrast. When my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Dodds) asked at the end of the statement who would pay for the additional money that would go into the EU's coffers, he did not receive an answer.

I note that my constituents in Northern Ireland are already bearing a heavier tax burden because of a 19 per cent. increase in the regional rate, a promise of new water charges in the new year, and cuts in both the general and the waste management grants to councils. To my constituents, that means that the general grant to Larne, Newtownabbey and Carrickfergus councils will have been cut by 50 per cent. as a percentage of their budgets since 2002, and the waste management grant will be cut by 33 per cent. this year. All that, at a time when the Government have increased the regional rate, means that councils will have to increase the district rate. It is another way of passing on cuts and financing that through additional local taxation, which of course makes it more difficult for new private-sector firms to find their feet.

I also see a contrast in the attitude to international issues. The hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) mentioned those. I have attended lobbies in the House when constituents have come to speak to me about making poverty history in Africa. I have met representatives of schools. I have also have spoken in schools in my constituency, where youngsters have written letters and carried out projects, and teachers have done a great job in raising awareness of the unfairness in the distribution of wealth across the world and the impact that it has.

The Prime Minister has, I have to say, done an excellent job in raising awareness of African issues through the Make Poverty History campaign, the Commission for Africa and everything else. At the same time, however, that contrasts with the lack of action on getting rid of the inequities within the common agricultural policy, which have led to the destruction of many African and other economies through heavy export subsidies that favour the rich world rather than the poor. Those contrasts must be dealt with and we must have answers to questions about them.

I trust that, in the new year, we will have some answers and perhaps a change of heart, and I hope that some of the issues that I have raised this afternoon will be dealt with. Meanwhile, I hope that Members and the Minister will take note of the contrasts that I have highlighted. In closing, I wish you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and all members of staff a happy Christmas.

I represent a large rural constituency with 26 inhabited islands. The geography of the constituency clearly means extra costs and difficulties when it comes to the delivery of public services, so I want to raise some issues about that today.

I will start with Royal Mail—clearly an important public service in a vast rural area. It is inevitable that, when the delivery services are opened up to full competition next year, private mail companies will enter the market, but they will obviously concentrate on urban areas. I cannot envisage any private mail company wanting to deliver mail to houses up a long track on a distant island. The future of the Royal Mail's universal service obligation is therefore vital.

The Select Committee on Trade and Industry has just published an excellent report, which points out how vaguely the universal service obligation is defined. It is important to define the USO clearly. We must have a proper definition of the services included, and it should embrace first and second-class letter mail, a standard parcel service up to about 20 kg, a registered mail service, redirection, international mail and a bulk mail product.

It is important that as postal services evolve over time the USO is frequently reviewed. I hope that we have learned some of the lessons from the privatisation of the telecoms industry. The universal service obligation imposed then related solely to voice mail services, but as telecoms services have rapidly evolved, certain developments such as broadband are no longer part of the USO. We must not make the same mistake with mail services, so we should leave it open for the USO to evolve.

Another important issue raised in the Select Committee report is the need for a universal service compensation scheme—a fund though which private mail operators contribute towards the costs of providing a universal service. It is no good waiting until Royal Mail gets into financial difficulties before setting up such a fund. It is important for it to be set up soon. It must be set up in order to compensate Royal Mail for the extra costs that it incurs in delivering to the remote rural areas that private mail operators would not consider serving.

I am also concerned about the future of rural post offices. Often, the post office is part of the only shop in a village, and without the post office income and extra footfall generated, many of those village shops would not survive. Rural post offices benefit from social network payments of £150 million a year, but they are guaranteed only until 2008. It is important for the Government to commit soon to funding the rural post office network beyond 2008. Unless they do so, it is inevitable that some rural post offices will be forced to close. I am already aware of circumstances in which some postmasters or mistresses wish to retire, but when Royal Mail explains to applicants wanting to take over that the social network payments will continue only to 2008, many of them understandably pull out. Without any long-term business plan, they are unwilling to take the risk. It is important that the Government give a commitment soon.

The Government have already caused a great deal of damage to rural post offices by transferring many pension and benefit payments to the banks. They should try to give rural post offices more business, and they could help smaller post offices by, for example, allowing more of them to issue vehicle licences.

Another area of concern in my constituency is the recent announcement by the Department for Work and Pensions of job cuts in the Jobcentre Plus offices in Oban and Campbeltown, which will have an impact on the local economy because in small towns alternative employment is often hard to find. The work is being transferred to large call centres, and we already know that benefits call centres are failing miserably to carry out their work. Recent figures have shown that as many as one in three calls to them go unanswered. That is simply unacceptable, as is the fact that people have to wait several weeks to receive their benefits when they become unemployed.

Transferring yet more work to failing call centres is not the answer. Many people want face-to-face contact, and many benefit applications could be processed much more efficiently in face-to-face interviews with local staff who understand the local circumstances than by conducting the interviews down a telephone line to a distant call centre. I ask the DWP to rethink its job cuts plans and to keep those jobs in Oban and Campbeltown.

A large proportion of my postbag, like that of many other hon. Members, consists of complaints about the Child Support Agency. It is obvious that the CSA is in a state of chaos. I could cite a long list of statistics to show that it is failing, but I shall restrict myself to a few. More than £3 billion owed to children remains uncollected, more than 35,000 compensation payments have been made for maladministration over the last few years, and there are hundreds of thousands of cases in the queue waiting to be assessed. The average wait for those unassessed cases is 448 days, and many parents are in a state of despair over their dealings with the CSA.

I think that the solution is for the Government to scrap the CSA and transfer its functions to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. The Revenue already holds information about family incomes and children, so is well placed to take over the assessment of child maintenance. Because of the information that it already has about incomes and where people work, it would be more effective than the CSA has been at chasing people and collecting money.

Another area of unfairness that I want to raise is the Government's decision to exclude women between 60 and 64 from the one-off council tax refund of £200. Those women are of pension age, and they should receive their £200 discount, like any other pensioner. Ideally, council tax should be scrapped and replaced by a local income tax, but if the Government want to stick with council tax, we should at least be able to expect equal treatment for all pensioners, regardless of their sex.

It should not be assumed that the different pension age for men and women always works in favour of women. One constituent who wrote to me had been on incapacity benefit, but when she became 60 that was replaced with the state pension, which was lower than the incapacity benefit. Then, to add insult to injury, she heard that she would not receive the £200 council tax discount. She wrote to me pointing out, correctly, that had she been a man she would have continued to receive incapacity benefit until she reached 65, so she would have been better off. Until retirement ages are equalised for men and women, all benefits that accrue to pensioners should accrue to all pensioners, including women between 60 and 64.

Another important issue in my constituency, particularly on the islands, is the high price of petrol. When I visited the isle of Coll in October, it was staggering to find that the price of a litre of unleaded petrol was £1.26, far higher than anywhere on the mainland. When the Office of Fair Trading investigated the high costs, it found that there was no profiteering either by oil companies or by local garages; the high price was simply a result of low turnover. A local non-profit-making company runs the petrol station. Without such non-profit-making community involvement, there would be no petrol for sale on the island.

The Government could help by charging a lower rate of fuel duty on islands. This issue has been raised before with the Government, who have always argued that if they did introduce a lower rate, it would be difficult to know where to draw the line. That argument may apply to remote mainland areas but it does not apply to islands, where such a line is obviously easy to draw. The high cost of fuel impacts on all freight and, therefore, on all goods sold on islands. The Government could help greatly by introducing a lower rate of fuel duty on islands. The loss to the Exchequer would be minimal.

Is my hon. Friend aware that in other European countries such as France and Portugal the derogation has already been taken advantage of? There is a precedent for applying EU law in exactly the way that he describes, and derogation could be extended not just to islands but to remote parts of the mainland highlands of Scotland, such as those in my own constituency.

My hon. Friend is right: other European countries adopt such a policy to help their islands' economies, so there is absolutely no reason in European law why our Government could not do the same here.

I turn to the problems associated with identity cards. I am opposed to the Identity Cards Bill in principle but I want to draw the House's attention to those parts of it that could cause many problems for islanders. One clause gives the Home Secretary the draconian power to order any citizen to attend a specified place at a time of his choosing, in order to be photographed and to have fingerprints taken, and to provide any other biometric information that the Home Secretary chooses.

The Government want to have 70 ID card registration centres throughout the UK. Pro rata per head of population, that would give Scotland about six centres, but it should be noted that it can take those who live on an island a considerable time to get to any part of the mainland. For example, according to the winter timetable there are only three sailings a week from the island of Colonsay, so it would take at least three days for a Colonsay islander to visit the mainland to have their details taken and then return home. That is clearly unacceptable in terms of both time and expense. If the Government insist on going ahead with the Identity Cards Bill, they must provide mobile registration centres and take them to the islands and to remote parts of the mainland to allow people to register.

The final issue that I want to raise is tax credits. We all know that many of our constituents get into severe financial difficulties because they have been overpaid, through no fault of their own, and are then told by the Inland Revenue that they must pay the money back. On 22 June, the Prime Minister told the House that

"we will not seek to get the money back if the error is on the part of the Inland Revenue."—[Official Report, 22 June 2005; Vol. 435, c. 798.]

However, the tax credit office's code of practice provides an addendum:

"and you could reasonably have thought your award was right."

The Prime Minister did not mention that subtle addendum, which adds another test: that the recipient has to understand how this complicated system works, and to be able to judge for themselves whether the award was reasonable. It is clearly ridiculous to expect people to work that out. The code of practice should be the same as the Prime Minister's statement: overpayments as a result of mistakes made by the Revenue should not be reclaimed.

Finally, I wish you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, other Members and the Clerks and staff of the House a very merry Christmas.

May I start by wishing everybody a merry Christmas and a happy new year? I thought that I would do my speech backwards just to confuse everybody, and certainly me. I enjoyed, and agreed with every word of, the speech of the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson). There are so many topsy-turvy things here, which is why I started by wishing everybody a merry Christmas. Because of political correctness, people are supposed now to say "happy holiday" and not use the word Christmas. Christmas lights and Christmas trees have been renamed winter lights and winter trees. What a load of rubbish.

I take joy in the fact that I will be singing Christmas carols at the Swan with Two Necks on Thursday with a number of other parishioners at that local pub, having already sung carols last Sunday. Indeed, I will be having Christmas lunch with my family and, like a number of people throughout the country, I will be looking forward to celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.

I wish everybody good luck for 2006; a number of issues that have been mentioned today will be very important next year. We had a statement on the Hong Kong summit earlier. The hon. Member for East Antrim mentioned Make Poverty History and, at the last election, I was buoyed by the fact that so many people raised that as an issue on which we should do more. People say that charity should begin at home. If so, in my constituency—and, no doubt, in many others—home begins with the world. They see the world as part of their home.

People do not want to sit by idly and watch as parts of our world are ravaged by poverty, HIV/AIDS and deprivation, when things could so easily be altered. I was distressed to hear the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry talking about some of our developed neighbours acting as a block to progress. We have to do more with France and Germany, and we should have a united European front on this issue so that we can negotiate with the United States on an equal basis to do something to alleviate poverty.

I have been to Africa on a number of occasions and have seen for myself the deprivation there. I have also been made chairman of a working party on behalf of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association dealing with HIV/AIDS. Certainly, Africa is a nightmare as far as that is concerned. Three million people will die next year and, even more distressingly, 5 million others will contract HIV during that period. That is distressing for all of us. We ought to be doing more to ensure not only that antiretroviral drugs are made more readily available to far more people, but that education is provided so people do not contract HIV.

It is not just a question of sub-Saharan Africa; 5.1 million people in India have HIV. Even within this country, the figure has quadrupled in recent years, simply because a number of people with HIV have decided to settle in this country. There is not a single country where HIV does not exist and we ought to be doing far more to help to ensure that fewer people contract it. We all know the misery associated with HIV, including the orphans created throughout the world. The economically active people in a society are those who tend to get HIV, so it hits the economy doubly.

I was delighted to hear my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (David Maclean), the former Chief Whip, making his first contribution to the Christmas debate for a long while. He talked about one of my pet subjects: wind turbines and energy generally. Yes, we want far more efficient supplies of energy, and some of us look at the middle east states and worry about the certainty of future supply and the price we will pay for it, but we must not pay lip service to wind power at the expense of far more viable forms of energy. I hope that the Minister will mention the timetable for the Government to say yea or nay to nuclear power. The last thing we need is more dithering. Literally hundreds of wind farms are coming on stream. Wind farm turbines are bigger than Nelson's column, so do we really want such things to litter and pollute our country? The answer has to be no. We must do something about the problem, and I hope that the Minister will say something in response.

Another issue that has motivated me over the past few months is the way that our representation abroad is being diminished. That is happening in Commonwealth countries and in nations that have been friends of the UK for a long time. The Foreign Secretary announced recently that a number of missions were to close—in Vanuatu, Tonga, Kiribati, Paraguay, the Bahamas, Lesotho, Swaziland, Madagascar and East Timor. Each closure is worrying, but the list that I have given is in addition to various other missions that have either closed or been merged.

It is risible to think that we can run our representation in Vanuatu, Tonga and Kiribati from Fiji. We cannot retain our influence on countries when we close our missions: every time we lower the flag, we reduce our influence in the world. However, the vacuum of influence will be filled by other countries, such as China. That country is increasing the number of missions that it has around the world and in Gabon, for example, it has built new schools and a new Parliament building. Closing down our missions will save a few pounds, but the price will be all the influence that is lost.

In addition, this country has made an investment in the work that has been done over many years by high commissioners and ambassadors. All that is being cut away, and I consider that to be a sacrilege. It is ridiculous for this country to pull out of Tonga, for example, given our long association with that country and its royal family. I therefore hope that more consideration will be given to our representation abroad.

The Foreign Secretary says that we are increasing the number of missions in certain countries in the middle east, and that is good, but we are also closing some of our consulates in the US. One reason for having consulates throughout the US, and not just restricting our representation to the embassy in Washington, is that their presence helps many of our constituency businesses to carry out trade. If we want to increase trade between the UK and the US, why are our US consulates being closed? In that connection, I remind the House that some consulates in Germany have also been closed.

I hope that the Foreign Office can find another way to maintain representation around the world. Even if any new system might be different from what we are used to, at least some representation would be better than none at all. I hope that the Minister will respond to that point as well.

I shall finish with one more impassioned plea, this time about the NHS in my area. At health questions earlier today, the hon. Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) and I asked about the merger of the accident and emergency units at the Burnley general and Queen's Park hospitals. The Minister knows the Ribble Valley area well, so he will be aware that much of it is rural. The availability of hospital facilities in Burnley and Blackburn is important to my constituents. It already takes a long time for people in my area to get to those hospitals, whether they go as patients or visitors.

However, we know that the word "merge" is a euphemism for "cut". The Government do not want to say that a facility will be closed, so they prefer to say that it will be merged. In this case, the accident and emergency departments will be merged at one site—not in Burnley, I suspect, but in Blackburn. The excuse that has been given is that all the experts in the area will be gathered under one roof, but the same argument could be used in connection with all sorts of services that hospitals offer. Any merger or closure of facilities could be explained away by referring to the greater throughput of patients that could be achieved by having all the relevant experts working from one hospital.

I want to ensure that the level of service that we had when I came to Parliament in 1992 is still provided today. I know that the Government have invested more money in the national health service, which is why I scratch my head as to why my local hospitals have bigger debts than they have ever had and are cutting back services. That makes no sense to me, and I hope that the Minister will be able to shine some light on what is going on.

I finish as I started, by wishing all hon. Members, Mr. Speaker, the Deputy Speakers, the Clerks and everyone who works in the Palace of Westminster a very merry Christmas.

Some jobs in politics require an optimistic temperament, and the Deputy Leader of the House is the occupant of one of those jobs today. For large parts of the debate, he has had just himself, with a solitary Whip for company, his party having run out of speakers on the Christmas Adjournment some three hours before its end. That seems a statement of the condition of the modern Labour party, even considering that it won a general election victory earlier this year.

My mind goes back to the happy, but false, dawn of 1997, when Labour swept in with all those new faces, all those bright and shiny people and all those wonderful ideas of modernisation. I remember speaking after perhaps three or four months to a new Labour MP, who is sadly no longer in the House, who had a particular interest in defence. I asked whether he would speak in that afternoon's defence debate. "Oh no, Julian," he said, "I can't do that as I would use up my speech allocation." I asked what was his speech allocation, and he said it was four speeches a year. Those were the days, the Deputy Leader of the House must be thinking. Back then, the Whips had to ration their people to four speeches a year; now they are lucky if they can get anyone to keep a debate going.

Another person who is a born optimist is my right hon.—indeed, very gallant—Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (David Maclean). One would have to have been an optimist to become Chief Whip of the Conservative party in 2001, but he was equal to the task and did it very well. During his speech today, when he talked of his experience with his community hospitals, four of which are under threat, I was irresistibly reminded of what is happening in New Forest, East, in New Forest, West and in Romsey. Five community hospitals are under threat, and we, too, had a 2,000-strong demonstration, the first of its sort in many a long year in our part of the world. The primary care trusts have indeed apparently retreated on their threat to close the hospitals. One, in my constituency, remains closed, but we have been promised that it will at least be considered for reopening in the next financial year. We shall watch like hawks to make sure that that happens.

One of the most frightening parts of that campaign was the way in which the figures bandied about were so suspect and the analysis on which they were based so shallow. We were told at one point that only 16 per cent. of people in beds in our five community hospitals needed to be there. We challenged the arithmetic, and straight away the figure shot up to 24 per cent. I am still awaiting further explanation of how a raft of other occupants in beds seem mysteriously to have dropped out of the calculations; they would probably take the 24 per cent. up to about 40 per cent. or 50 per cent. When the PCT finally gave way, it found—surprise, surprise—that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border observed in his case, lots of people would end up blocking beds in the general hospitals if the community hospitals closed. What a surprise that was. However could it not have guessed that, if it had given a little thought in advance?

The trouble with many health issues is that cases are put forward, for change or inaction or not doing that which should be done, on bogus grounds, and on rationalisations caused fundamentally by a shortage of funds. That leads me to the case of my constituent, Mr. Brian Jago, which I have briefly raised once before. He suffers from multiple myeloma, which hon. Members may know is a cancer of the blood. It is a cancer for which there is no cure. The conventional forms of radiotherapy and chemotherapy may work for a little while, but there will always be a relapse.

However, as I have recently discovered because of my acquaintance with this case, there have been some breakthroughs. In particular, there is a new drug, Velcade, which has been licensed in this country but not yet given its guidelines by NICE—the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. When Mr. Jago came to see me, he explained that a bed had been booked by his consultant in the local major hospital in Southampton for him to start receiving Velcade, only for it to be decided by a body called the district prescribing committee that it was not prepared to prescribe the drug for him. I thought that that was a strange state of affairs, because the drug was not being denied to him purely on cost grounds, but because there was insufficient evidence of its efficacy.

Considering that Mr. Jago was being treated by top consultants in Southampton, who are among the world's leading experts on that particular medication, I wondered how a committee of people who are not world experts in such medication can effectively countermand the advice of the consultants. One would have thought that the consultants would be in the best position to know. So I wrote to the chief executive of the Southampton hospitals trust to request that if the issue was money, the committee should say so. Then, at least, Mr. Jago would have the opportunity to borrow the £15,000 that he needs and perhaps get it back, perhaps not in this financial year but in some future financial year when the guidelines have been issued and the treatment is available.

To my surprise, I received a reply that stated that

"there were concerns about the complexity of the trial's statistical data, the lack of quality of life data, the relatively small clinical advantage seen over dexamethasone"—

the more conventional chemotherapy—

"and the relatively high cost of the medication."

With a little help, I did some research on the issue. I shall not bore the House with too many details, but in June 2003, the conclusions of the specialist journals were that

"Bortezomib"—

the clinical name for Velcade—

"a member of a new class of anticancer drugs, is active in patients with relapsed multiple myeloma that is refractory to conventional chemotherapy."

By September 2004, the journals were reporting that

"bortezomib provides a cost-effective treatment option and the best value (in terms of cost/life-yr gained) among the currently available therapeutic options for relapsed, refractory myeloma."

By June this year, the results of a major study concluded:

"Bortezomib is superior to high-dose dexomethasone for the treatment of patients with multiple myeloma who have had a relapse after one to three previous therapies."

An editorial in the leading journal, The New England Journal of Medicine, stated that the take-home message of the trials was that

"bortezomib is an effective therapy against relapsed myeloma: a fact to which anyone who has used the drug can attest. It is a much-needed additional tool against this devastating disease."

Why is it then that a district prescribing committee in a regional health authority thinks that it knows better? I think that it has something to do with the fact that the Government have repeatedly stated that the absence of NICE guidelines for Velcade should not be taken as a sufficient reason not to prescribe it. Therefore, the committee has had to cobble together some pseudo-medical guff as an explanation for refusing to prescribe it. Once the guidance comes in, the committee will be in a very difficult position if it wishes to prescribe that drug.

There are a number of anomalies. If Brian Jago lived in Scotland or Wales he would be able to receive that treatment purely on the say-so of his consultant. There would be no question of a committee of that sort standing in his way. The advice I have had to give him is to live in another part of the country for a time, get himself registered with the NHS locally and try his luck to see whether that will save his life.

Another aspect of the contradictions in the situation is that the treatment that the consultant is being prevented from prescribing—on grounds of cost, I am sure—is less expensive than giving Mr. Jago another bone marrow transplant, which the consultant could do on his own authority and which would cost about £10,000 more than the £15,000 for Velcade.

Finally, although I do not want to cast aspersions on people or groups in the community who suffer from any disease, it is a fact that if someone were in the country illegally and was horribly stricken with AIDS, the medication that they would be given—given—by the same hospital trust would be more expensive than the medication that my constituent, who has paid into the NHS all his life, is being denied.

There is something terribly wrong with that situation. It may be put right in about six months' time when the guidance comes through, but that may be too late for Brian Jago. Although we are busy wishing ourselves a merry Christmas, it will not be a very merry Christmas for him and people in a similar situation.

Several weeks ago I invited fellow Members to visit Shropshire and I invite them to come with me on a journey to Shropshire today. I am concerned about the state of Shropshire, in particular my constituency. Why?

Over the past few years, there have been several thousand job losses. People may say that that is contradictory because the Government talk about full employment, but there has been an outflow of jobs from my constituency, from the defence, manufacturing and public sectors. In the six months since the general election, unemployment has risen by 7.9 per cent. in my constituency alone.

On 21 July, the Government announced that 428 people would lose their jobs at the Defence Logistics Organisation in my constituency. Only three weeks ago, the Government announced that 628 people would lose their jobs at the Army Base Repair Organisation in my constituency. The Government are currently coming to a view as to whether they will collocate, or relocate, 383 people from Sapphire house in the neighbouring constituency of Telford to Bristol and the south-west. The Government's own report concluded, however, that the majority of those jobs are not mobile and cannot be relocated or collocated.

The defence training review will probably come to a decision in July. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will ask Ministry of Defence officials and Ministers not to delay that announcement until the day before the summer recess, so that Members can have full discussion of the outputs and outcomes of the DTR. It is important that we give RAF Cosford a level playing field with St. Athan. It would be wrong for St. Athan to be given taxpayers' money by the Welsh Development Agency to promote itself while RAF Cosford did not have the same opportunity.

RAF Cosford has a proud heritage and history of serving Her Majesty's armed forces, and I hope that that will continue. It currently employs 2,000 military and civilian staff. It is home to the Defence College of Aeronautical Engineering, and I hope that the Government will find in favour of RAF Cosford and bring an additional 2,000 much-needed jobs to Shropshire and my constituency.

I also hope that, in the context of the defence industrial strategy that was announced in the House last week, the Government will tread cautiously when outsourcing defence manufacturing to foreign companies. Yes, it is absolutely right that we should have more private and public sector partnership in defence—that has gone on for many years and under the last Conservative Administration—but the important issue of national security must not be overlooked or dismissed as scaremongering; it must be put at the very heart of the defence industrial strategy.

If the public sector offers the best value for money, while offering national security, it is perhaps the best place to keep some parts of the defence industrial strategy. That might seem strange coming from a Conservative, but no Conservative Member has ever said that the private sector is always right. We have never said that the public sector is always wrong. We must consider each case on its merits, and on occasion, the public sector will offer the best value for money.

I argue that, in defence, the Government are rushing headlong into privatisation. They have more of a machismo doctrine of privatisation than the Conservative party ever had, but such things must be considered on their merits and on a case-by-case basis. The Government should consider what is in the national interest, as well as what is the most effective and efficient outcome for Her Majesty's armed forces. In that context, I have concerns about the closure of ABRO.

We are about to deploy troops to Afghanistan, and those hon. Members who know of ABRO's history understand that its workers are dedicated and work long hours. They work overtime, often unpaid, to repair armoured fighting vehicles that have been damaged on the front line and send them back to the front line to protect our troops. If the turnaround time for those armoured vehicles is increased, lives could be put at risk in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places around the world. Yes, we can work in partnership with the private sector, but will the Deputy Leader of the House please tell his colleagues that they should ensure that the public sector retains some elements of the defence industrial strategy?

In my introduction, I mentioned the large number of job losses in Shropshire and my constituency. Two weeks ago, the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust announced that 280 jobs would go at the local hospital. Significantly, the statement said that that would inevitably include doctors and nurses. Yet, week in, week out, when the Prime Minister comes to the Dispatch Box, he does not hesitate to remind the House of the amount of money going into the health service in answer to virtually every question on health. That is fine—we accept that—but the question in Shropshire that is put on the airwaves of local radio stations, in letters columns and to me, as a local MP, is where has all the money gone. Where has all the money gone? No Minister has stood at the Dispatch Box in the past six months and answered that fundamental question. Doctors who have trained for many years are being put on the dole. We have nurses who have trained for years, some of whom have given 25 or 30 years' dedicated service to the national health service, yet they are being put on the dole. At the same time, the Government say that they are improving patient care.

It was interesting that my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (David Maclean) said that he was open-minded about change to his local health service as long as things were put in place to address what was taken away. I am not saying that we should not change the way in which health care is delivered locally, but when my strategic health authority says that it wants to cut children's services at the Princess Royal hospital, which is in my constituency, and perhaps remove its consultant-led accident and emergency unit, one must begin to question the logic of such action if there is nothing to replace those services.

I am quite open-minded. A Minister could come to the Dispatch Box and tell me that although the Government will make major changes to the Princess Royal hospital, they will first put in place cottage hospitals, because we do not have them, ensure that there is a thriving independent sector and put money into local GP practices so that they can grow and offer more services, become more specialised and treat more patients. If those things were put in place, I would be more relaxed about the proposed changes to my local hospital. However, those services are not in place and, more worryingly, there is no proposal to put them in place or any money to pay for them. The clear message from my constituents to the Government is, "Keep your hands off our local hospital until you've put in the money and the health infrastructure to replace the services that are under threat."

I also want to talk about agriculture and sugar beet reform—this will be just a quick one, really. I hope that the much-trumpeted compensation that the Secretary of State has mentioned to the House in the past week or so will be passed on to farmers. There are more than 200 sugar beet farmers in my constituency and more than 600 in Shropshire as a whole. If we are to keep agriculture alive in Shropshire, East Anglia and other parts of the United Kingdom, it is important that the compensation attached to the new reforms is passed on to farmers.

I am mystified about why the Government have not moved more quickly on biofuels. Some farmers might be forced out of sugar beet production, yet sugar beet could be used for biofuels. We would have a win-win situation because the Government might meet their climate change targets while providing a new market for an important cash crop for rural farmers in Shropshire at the same time.

I would like to mention energy briefly. I had the privilege of visiting Denmark and Finland in the past couple of weeks to look at wind farms and nuclear power plants. I was struck by the fact that wind farms have a place, but that place is offshore, where they cannot be seen and there is plenty of wind. They do not have a place onshore, where they would be seen and could kill approximately 50,000 birds of prey. Onshore wind farms would create blight for not only home owners, but parts of Shropshire that are reliant on tourism.

I hope that the Government will bring forward more wind farms. We have to have them. We must move to an energy mix that has more renewables. However, there must be a balanced mix and a balanced provision, and that needs to take into consideration the points that I have raised along with those raised by other hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans), who did so far more eloquently than myself.

I place on the record my thanks to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to all those who work in the Speaker's Office and to all Officers of the House, including those who are not seen on the Floor of the House—the administrators. Without administrators in hospitals throughout the land, in schools, in Whitehall and in the public and private sectors, the country would grind to a halt. I hope that in the spirit of good will at this Christmas time we can all applaud administrators. They get a tough time in this place. Yes, there is a place for rationalisation, as there is a place for cutting democracy, but I want to champion the cause of administrators today.

I shall touch on three issues. First, I will take the opportunity to discuss mental health in Northern Ireland, and specifically the promotion of good mental health. I shall also mention child and adolescent services later, if time permits.

The mental health review, chaired by Professor David Bamford, is continuing in the Province. One of its working groups has suggested the formation of a mental health promotion directorate to oversee and co-ordinate the entire area of this work. In Scotland, £24 million has been allocated over three years to establish the mental health improvement and well-being directorate. The resourcing of mental health promotion in Northern Ireland should reflect the cost of mental ill health and the potential savings from achieving an improvement in the mental well-being of individuals, families, organisations and communities. Undoubtedly, several millions of pounds would be required. That seems like a lot of money for something that will not be deemed as acute care. However, given annual costs, it represents good value for money in the longer term.

There is a growing body of research on the effectiveness of mental health promotion, with a robust evidence base on specific interventions. The focus of much mental health research is on mental illness as opposed to good mental health. The promotion of positive mental health is necessary at all life stages. Early intervention for children and adolescents has been proven to improve resilience. Older people—an ever-growing population group—have their own specific needs. There is strong evidence to show that mental health can be promoted in a range of settings, such as schools and the workplace. Further education colleges and rural areas are also crucial.

The effective delivery of mental health promotion in all sectors and settings in Northern Ireland will depend on building knowledge, expertise and capacity. This should include training, information and guidance, and research.

In Northern Ireland we have an extra dimension to the causes of mental ill health. The fabric of many communities has been destroyed by the legacy of more than three decades of terrorism. Communities need to grow and to develop, enhancing levels of trust, a sense of belonging and potential for participation to promote emotional well-being. Although some progress has been made towards this vision, much still needs to be done.

Spending on mental health services has mushroomed in recent years. For instance, in 2003, £150.8 million was spent by trusts in Northern Ireland, an increase of more than 31.3 per cent. on four years previously. It comprised £85.6 million for hospital services, £25.4 million on community health services and £39.8 million for personal social services. It does not include £34.1 million for GP consultations on mental health or £44 million for psychiatric drugs last year. Furthermore, the cost to our economy of lost output and the quality-of-life impact on individuals cannot be underestimated. The Northern Ireland Association for Mental Health, in "Counting the Cost", attempted to calculate a monetary figure to reflect the impact of mental illness across all sectors of our society. Costs not generally considered include formal care from family and friends, loss of earnings through sickness absence, non-employment and premature mortality as well as mental health care provision by the private sector or voluntary and charitable organisations. The sum that the study reached represents the savings that would be made in Northern Ireland if there were no mental illness. Its final estimate of the total cost of mental illness to society in Northern Ireland in 2002–03 was £3 billion—a figure greater than total spending on health and social care in the Province for all health conditions. That £3 billion is, of course, an artificial figure, as the eradication of mental illness is not possible, but it highlights the extent of benefits that could be achieved by limiting the prevalence and severity of psychiatric illness.

The cost of mental health affects everyone, as escalating increases in Government spending impact on taxes and access to public services. In a response to a recent parliamentary question, I was informed that spending on mental health promotion in the Province has increased from £50 million to £600 million in the past four years. Those totals have raised eyebrows among mental health professionals, and I have submitted further questions to seek a detailed breakdown of the way in which the totals were arrived at.

In reviewing progress on mental health promotion in the Province, a number of initiatives have emerged as crucial to the achievement of effective delivery, including the prioritising of key at-risk groups, and cross-sector co-ordination and co-operation. To achieve strategic, co-ordinated, cross-sectoral and multi-agency action on mental health promotion in Northern Ireland a regional mental health promotion directorate should be established. It should be part of the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety, and should have responsibility for mental health and disability rather than become part of an overall health promotion structure. Another option, given that good mental health crosses many sectors, would be to include the directorate in the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister.

A fully resourced directorate would increase awareness of mental health promotion, facilitate the achievement of existing targets, and set new targets in future. It would provide greater permanence, leadership and sustainability to drive mental health promotion in the Province. It would assume ownership of mental health promotion across all sectors and relevant agencies. On a related matter, a suicide prevention strategy, separate from any mental health directorate and based on United Nations and World Health Organisation guidelines, should be properly resourced and developed in the Province with an identified action plan, target dates and responsibilities. There is a great deal of concern about the large number of suicides in Northern Ireland, particularly among young men. After heart disease and cancer, suicide is the third largest contributor to life-years lost in the Province. To highlight the personal cost of mental illness, I should like to raise the case of a constituent whose family recently approached me. Their 39-year-old son suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder. He has undergone cognitive therapy but, unfortunately, to little or no effect, and he remains on a high dose of a drug with significant side effects. He sits in his flat all day in torment, unable to go out, to mix with people and to lead a normal life. He is a qualified dietician, and he knows and understands only too well the details of his condition.

Provision for OCD is limited, and the family have pinned their hopes on his being taken by one of a couple of units in London. OCD sufferers face agonising torment, and they struggle alone in silence. That man's mother is concerned that he will eventually commit suicide, because of the hopelessness of his condition. His story highlights the impact of mental ill health on an individual and on their livelihood, lifestyle and family. It is essential that we do everything that we can to provide the best services and work to promote mental well-being. Greater community and voluntary sector involvement is required, more resources need to be invested and extra training should be provided for professionals. Better co-operation between schools, youth organisations and health bodies would be useful, too.

With the increasing popularity of television and the internet, people are living more solitary lifestyles. The sense of community has been diluted, and individuals have less contact with their families and neighbours, which means that they have fewer people in whom to confide. Bereaved families say that little help is available in the aftermath of suicides, which is a crucial deficiency that must be addressed. Families often feel personally guilty following a suicide within the family unit. Much more needs to be done to tackle the stigma of mental illness and to increase public awareness of mental ill health and the risk of suicide, and that will require substantial funding.

The increasing prevalence of suicide among young men is not confined to Northern Ireland. The same pattern is reported across the rest of the United Kingdom and in many other countries. There are numerous pre-disposing factors for suicide, which is more common among impulsive and aggressive personalities. A large majority of those who commit suicide have mental disorders at the time of death. Chronic ill health can contribute, and many individuals have a history of alcohol or drug misuse. Binge drinking is increasingly common across our society, and suicide can also result from the transient mood swings associated with alcohol consumption.

We must also consider the role of the media. Hawton et al showed in 1999 that suicide rates increase after television programmes about suicide, and Eisenberg in 1986 and Gould et al in 1990 showed that the means and timing of suicides are influenced by earlier suicides that attract attention within local communities or receive media publicity.

Mental health crisis response and assertive outreach teams have proved successful, and their introduction across the Province should be encouraged. Despite a high number of suicides among teenagers, children and young people in the Province can wait for up to four years for an initial psychiatry out-patient assessment. There are huge disparities between the duration of waits across different trusts, but even the shortest wait is several months.

Social and cultural factors have led to more young people requiring assessment, and drugs, sexual abuse and difficult domestic environments also contribute. Many more behavioural conditions and autistic spectrum disorders are being diagnosed than previously, and the totals will continue to grow. Planning for future resources must take into consideration the changing demands of the specialist field. We need to invest in more child and adolescent psychiatry staff, including not only consultants but junior medical staff, nurses, social workers, occupational therapists, psychologists and psychotherapists, because existing resources are overstretched.

I want to raise a second issue—I know that I shall not get to my third issue. In March 2004, the Prime Minister's strategy unit published, "Net Benefits: A Sustainable and Profitable Future for UK Fishing", yet little has been seen in the fishing villages of County Down to lead anyone to believe that anything positive is being done to assist the industry after years of EU-promoted decline. Year after year, the fleets of Portavogie, Ardglass and Kilkeel are subjected to increasingly repressive directives that have now begun to affect the processing industry, with the recent loss of Middleton Seafoods in Portavogie.

It appears that this groundhog day is to be repeated in 2006, as information coming through from the EU Fisheries Council in Brussels today indicates that the Northern Ireland fishing industry is once again to pay the greatest price. As a result of the yearly attack on the Irish sea's white fish stocks, prawns now represent the most important catch for Northern Ireland fishermen. News from Brussels today indicates that the prawn total allowable catch for the North sea is to increase by 39 per cent., while there will be a 31 per cent. increase in the west of Scotland. The Irish sea is to have its nephrops TAC reduced by 12 per cent.

While all this has been going on, English and Scottish fishermen have been represented at the Fisheries Council by their respective Government officials, but Northern Ireland has been cut adrift by its Minister with responsibility for fisheries. If that Minister could not be available despite the fact that this date was known for months in advance, he should not be in office and I would ask that he resign.