In 1999, I wrote a pamphlet for the Society of Labour Lawyers called "Rape in Court"—that is a clever double entendre. If anyone wants a copy of the valuable first edition, an odd one is still available. In it I said that, in 1985, 25 per cent. of rape complaints brought a conviction, with no recorded assertion that the conviction rate was unjustly high. By the date of its writing, complaints had risen to an all-time high but the conviction rate for rape was just 9 per cent.

I set out the need to restrict the rules that allow cross-examination about previous sexual history, to encourage women who are afraid of such cross-examination, and to address the findings of a Canadian researcher called Calton that where jurors hear information about a rape complainant's previous sexual history it leads to a decrease in the perception of the accused's guilt, and that that varies directly with the amount of negative information put before a jury. A defendant was seen as most guilty where nothing was known about her. Calton also found that if all the material alleged against her was denied by the complainant, the perception of the defendant's guilt still decreased—a recipe, one may think, for unjust acquittals.

The change to restrict cross-examination about previous sexual history was brought about in section 41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, as far as its admissibility to show that she consented was concerned. It is subject to a number of exclusions, but basically it is excluded. However, that has not worked.

In "Rape in Court" I hesitated to recommend that the defence that the defendant believed that the woman was consenting even if she was not should be changed so that only a reasonable belief that she was consenting would do. Rape is having sex when the victim does not consent—and, in those days, when the attacker did not believe that she consented. I was wrong not to want to change that. A jury is told to decide whether she was consenting first, and simply to end the case if she might have been. Only if it is sure that she was not consenting should it go on to consider whether, even so, the defendant might have believed that she was. At that stage, in the jury's view she has had sex forced on her.

On the question of whether a jury might believe that someone had consented to rape, what conclusions does my hon. and learned Friend draw from the Amnesty survey that showed that a third of people think that a woman is asking for it if she is drunk or dressed inappropriately? Does she think that such attitudes might influence a jury, and what can we do to change them?

I agree that those findings were troubling, and one can only say thank goodness for the other two thirds. However, I venture to wonder whether those factors would carry the same force if the same people were not answering a question in a survey, but were in a jury confronted by the deep trauma of a rape complainant. Therefore, I am not totally pessimistic about those outcomes, but they are serious.

If, at the stage where the jury is told that it must consider consent, and that only if it is sure that the complainant has not consented should it go on, the jury finds that she has had sex forced upon her, it is told that next it must look into the question whether, even though it is satisfied that she was not consenting, the defendant might have thought that she was. In those days, if he said that that is what he thought, even if she said she was screaming her refusal, for whatever reason—perhaps because he is a man who thinks that all women who say no mean yes—the jury had to give him the benefit of the doubt and acquit him. Therefore, somebody who had had sex forced on them while screaming their refusal would get no justice because the man's state of mind carried the day—and her suffering meant very little. That was changed in the Sexual Offences Act 2003, and that was correct. A belief in her consent does not now count unless it is reasonable, so the jury not only looks at his state of mind, but asks itself that second question, probably testing his honesty through the prism of reasonableness, but also redressing the balance between him and her. Therefore, there have been two important changes in the law.

There have been many other changes. In 1999, special measures became available to allow a complainant an easier time in court; the public can be excluded, or she can give evidence from behind a screen. In 2002, the joint inspectors of the Crown Prosecution Service and the police found serious failings in investigations and prosecutions. Lobbyists from the women's movement were happy that at last authoritative sources—as it were—were supporting them. There was an action plan from the Government, which is being implemented. Consent has been redefined as agreement by choice, a model intended to show the need for active consent, and not to muddle it with passive submission. Where the complainant was unconscious or in a restraint situation there is a presumption that she was not consenting and he did not think so. Judges now have to go on a serious sexual offence training course. Also, sexual assault referral centres offer a very supportive model—a place of first resort—for complainants. All those changes have taken place; the Government have made those serious moves, and they are to be applauded for seeing the problem and helping.

However, what are the conviction rates? Seven years after the publication of my pamphlet and all those steps later, they are worse. Instead of the 9 per cent. that prevailed in 1999, 5.3 per cent. is the average nationwide conviction rate. The British crime survey, in which people are asked about their experiences of crime anonymously and for no other purpose but to record them, suggests that 47,000 women were raped in 2004 and that only about 15 per cent. reported that to the authorities. Rape crisis lines suggest that the figure is even higher. There is a myth that there are many false allegations of rape. Home Office research that I will refer to shortly found that 6 per cent. of those reported cases were probably false—that is small in comparison with the acquittal rate of 94.7 per cent.

Let me explain the point that I am making. Those who talk to the British crime survey will be telling the truth, and those who phone rape report centres are doing so for help and are unlikely to be seeking help for something that did not happen. Therefore, those numbers—47,000 in a year of whom only 15 per cent. report—are likely, on first principles, to be accurate.

The conviction rate of 5.3 per cent. is 5.3 per cent. of the 15 per cent. who reported, which means a conviction rate in respect of those who suffer rape of less than 1 per cent. Of those acts of rape, 57 per cent. were perpetrated by men who were known to the assailant. All rape is deeply traumatising, but the trauma and long-term effects of being raped by someone who a person knows can be worse than those of being raped by a stranger; it calls into question not just the conduct of the assailant but the woman's judgment for ever being with that individual in the first place. Rape is a deeply traumatic event. The term for the fallout between the number of rapes and the number of convictions is attrition, and that is the subject of this debate.

What is happening and what can we do? There is no doubt that over the past decade we have succeeded in increasing the number of complaints—not necessarily because more rapes are taking place, but because women have been encouraged to come forward—but the number of convictions has been relatively static. The research—"A Gap or a Chasm? Attrition in reported rape cases"—looks at 2004. Although some of the statutory changes that I have talked about were to do with the trial process, the biggest drop-out is right at the beginning of the case. We must look first at the large number who simply decide not to report at all—about 85 per cent.—and wonder why they do not report. A number of studies have looked into that.

It is true that, curiously, some people do not name the event that has befallen them as rape; they do not think that it is rape. A number of them do not want to report because they are afraid of their family and friends knowing, and feel some shame. However, the bulk of the reasons are to do with not thinking that the police or any other criminal justice agency will define what has happened as rape, fear of being disbelieved by those agencies, fear of being blamed or judged—in particular if they have a previous sexual history—by those agencies, distrust of the police, courts and legal process, and fear of further attack or intimidation. In other words, a large proportion of those who do not report have very low faith in the criminal justice system. That is why they do not report.

Attrition point 2, if I may call it that, is due to people who drop out almost straight away or do not get beyond reporting, and do not even give a statement. Some 34 per cent. of cases that are reported are lost at that very early stage. The import of the research is that the agencies were not pleasant and not supportive. Those respondents who did not even make a statement although they had gone with the intention of reporting cited as key factors being disbelieved or discouraged from proceeding by the police and fear of the criminal justice process. The availability of women police officers, women crisis workers and women forensic doctors was very important, and lack of those has also played a major role.

A proportion of women chose not to proceed because they wanted to take back control of the issue, but a lot of those had no contact with the police for some time after their initial report, and no offender had been identified. There is a real suggestion that many felt that they were waiting too long, could not take it any longer and needed to put the event behind them. That amounted to 34 per cent. of the withdrawal rate.

The third point of attrition is called insufficient evidence, but to that must be added two related categories: cases in which no offender is identified, and cases in which there is no prospect of a conviction. Those are the categories of the documents surveyed, and they account for a further 36 per cent. of all reports. The pro formas that the researchers found related to a failure to trace a named assailant and assessments by the police of weak cases or cases with no prospect of conviction. Some cases in which the assailant was not identified are most interesting. Of 239 cases in which the police could not identify the assailant, they made DNA tests in 19 only. In five cases, samples were sent to, and got hits on, the national DNA database. In 30 cases, the situation was clear: there were no forensic findings at all, so there was no DNA to send. However, in all 190 other cases it is completely unclear why nothing was sent to the DNA database.

My hon. and learned Friend mentioned sexual assault referral centres, one of which is in my area. Does she agree that if they were more widely available, and if all of them had access to forensic nurses and were widely publicised, it might both encourage women to come forward and to be prepared to go to court, and assist in gathering the evidence, including DNA, to enable convictions? Does she have any evidence of how those centres have worked so far to encourage women in those ways?

My hon. Friend, in her characteristic way, puts her finger on a shining light of success. Although it is early days, the evidence running through the research is that women who go to sexual assault referral centres are more likely to stay and make a complaint, to stay the course of a prosecution and to end up with a conviction—although not, I think, by a huge margin. There is none the less powerful evidence that the step of introducing SARCs is correct.

SARCs make DNA available, but the question is what the police then do with it. Paralleling the facts that I gave about the few cases from the sample sent for DNA comparison, if one looks back to the 2002 report by the inspectors of the CPS and the police, one can see that when the woman knew her assailant and a sample was taken from her, a large number of detectives—I think that the figure was 82 per cent.—did not send the DNA sample to the database to look for a match. Okay, so there was no issue about the identity of the individual; but the point is, of course, that the assailant's DNA could have been found on another crime scene stain. Equally, the DNA could be that of a convicted rapist, or of someone against whom there had been one or more previous complaints, even if they had resulted in acquittal. In a majority of cases, that simply was not done when the woman knew her accuser.

That information confirms something that runs through the research, and which is pretty well established: the police have a view of what is "real" rape and what is not. When the assailant is a stranger in a mask in a dark alley, that is real rape, and the police then work very hard at identifying him; but when it is a person known to the woman, they do not seem to treat it as a proper crime, or they would have sent the samples off to the DNA database. The police seem to think that he is unlikely to be a criminal because he is the woman's boyfriend, and that the whole thing is the result of some confusion between the two.

What the hon. and learned Lady says may be perfectly true—I have no reason to dispute it—but does she agree that the attrition of rape cases to which she refers may be equally applicable to other crimes of assault? Does she agree that the police may regard those who hit people in the street as not being guilty of a real assault if both involved were drunk, or something of that sort? I am not trying to diminish her case, but I fear that the police are not as active as they might be in pursuing other crimes.

The hon. Gentleman may well be right that if two people are drunk, the police do not put much effort into the case; I am not in a position to say. However, there is no doubt that all statistics show that the drop-out or attrition rate for rape is far higher than that for any other assault.

My hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General looks after the CPS rather than the police, and of course the CPS has enormous influence and control over the police. It is clear that the 2002 inspection, just like the research of 2004, shows scepticism about whether rape is a real crime. The attitude is, "Don't send a sample off to see if he's a criminal; it's highly unlikely that he is if he knows her. He's her boyfriend and something's gone wrong."

So, many assailants are not identified in situations where the woman knows who he is but does not know his address or cannot put a proper name to him, because the police do not check that up. In at least eight instances from the sample, the identified defendant absconded. I have here a story in which when a woman complained, the assailant

"contacted the police, and said oh, it was all a big mistake, and could he come and see them? And instead of saying 'No, we'll come and see you,' they said, 'Well come up on Monday' . . . So what did he do? Sunday, he got his brother to go down to London, to collect his car, and he caught the first train, bus, walked, whatever, boat, out of the country. Gone."

I doubt that that would happen with many other kinds of crime.

In the remaining types of case in the sample—those in which the assailant was not identified—police decision making turned on evidential issues, all connected with the complainant. Largely, those were cases in which the woman's account was regarded with suspicion or was not supported by any other evidence; cases in which her credibility was explicitly referred to as questionable simply because there was no support for it; and cases where previous, unsuccessful allegations of rape cast doubt on current complaints. Inconsistencies, perhaps explicable by the trauma, were relied on in 27 cases, and in 26 cases the police and the CPS simply took the view that the sex was consensual, and that was the end of it. In all the cases in that group, about a quarter of which were "no prospect of conviction" cases, the decisions were made or advised by the CPS. Some of those "no prospect of conviction" cases involved women with learning difficulties or mental health problems and people who had made previous allegations.

Two earlier studies have shown the complete failure to make progress on cases involving women with learning difficulties and mental health problems. That is a really difficult problem. How can such a person sustain their account against cross-examination? Specific attention needs to be devoted to developing prosecution strategies that will help those vulnerable victims.

Having chronicled the rather poor history of the CPS seeking to drive investigation, I draw attention to the impact of previous allegations on decision making. Where it is mentioned that the complainant has complained before and been unsuccessful, the cases are dropped. The data on multiple attendees at some sexual assault referral centres suggest that there is a group of women who are subjected to repeated sexual victimisation by different assailants. Currently, that vulnerability functions as a cue to dismiss the allegations, but if one thinks rationally about this, it could be argued that the entire attrition process will produce thousands of complainants each year entering a group that, should they have the misfortune to be assaulted in future, will mean that their complaint will be treated with even greater scepticism. The sheer fact of the attrition rate means that there will be increasing numbers of women who have complained before whose accounts will, consequently, be disregarded on a subsequent occasion.

A perplexing aspect of this category of cases is the number of them in which the police and CPS thought that witnesses proved that the sexual encounter had been consensual. However, in no case was there an eye witness. One of the complainants said that she thought

"they were just going through the motions . . . The forensic stuff was never . . . sent off . . . the investigation consisted of them . . . getting"

the defendants in and

"giving their story, sending off questionnaires to students at the college I was at . . . .And people wrote things like, 'She appeared to be really happy in their company that evening,' which of course I was, because I hadn't just been assaulted by them"

then.

"However, that, the officer in the case said, was what would make it quite impossible for there to be a conviction and off it went."

That is a prime example of the woman's case being reasonably clear. However, evidence that truly could not bear comparison with an individual's account was being used, exactly as the researchers' report says, to throw doubt on her account and say, "This is not worth taking forward."

All these examples seem to bear out the fears that characterise the decision of women not to make a report at all: that the matter would not be investigated and taken seriously, and that they would not be believed, but would be doubted if they had any previous sexual history. Such matters seem to show them that they were absolutely right not to take the case forward.

The last attrition point before trial is CPS decision making, which accounts for a relatively small group of cases that drop out at that stage, although it is correct to say that the CPS had offered opinions on large numbers of previous advice files, so it bears responsibility for many of the cases to which I have already referred. The researchers say that there is a shift in the CPS towards engagement with inter-agency processes and recognising the needs of victims. There is also a policy change towards the development of specialisations, which are new and welcome, although their implementation is inconsistent. However, they need to be linked to a focus on building cases, rather than doubting them.

The report, which I have looked at, did not say very much about the significant change that has taken place in relation to charging, which will mean that as far as rape cases are concerned, the CPS will make the decision to charge based on the evidence, whereas in previous circumstances it would have been the police who made that decision. Given that that will probably be quite a significant change, I would welcome my hon. and learned Friend's views on it.

Most of this sample postdates that change. The researchers complained that the CPS has been involved in advising at an early stage, but it should have been saying to the police, "That is not good enough; you should send the DNA away and try to arrest this person. You shouldn't rely on those questionnaires. Go back and do it properly." The complaint is that the CPS is not driving the process. The researchers acknowledge readily the change towards a supportive approach from the CPS—my hon. and learned Friend has a good deal to be proud of—but, none the less, they make those comments on 2004 material, and it was 2004 when the change came into play, as I recall.

There is a further drop rate at trial. Cases involving people under 16 were twice as likely to result in a finding of guilt as those involving over-16s. The absence of alcohol or drugs was associated with conviction. External injuries, which act as corroboration of oppression or force, meant that there was twice as likely to be a conviction. Those who had been to SARCs held on and gave their evidence better, and there was a higher conviction rate from them.

I am sure that hon. Members are aware that the report is a decent-sized piece of research, which, although it is not quite as big as "War and Peace", is a lot bigger than I can fully give an account of here. I shall give a summary of it, which is always subjective. I suggest that the report is read. I hope that I am putting it fairly, but it needs deeper perusal. The researchers conclude:

"The belief amongst some criminal justice . . . professionals that many complaints are false, that victims are to blame for 'risk-taking', places unreasonable requirements on complainants to demonstrate that they are 'real' and deserving victims."

They quote from another piece of research and acknowledge:

"Only a sober young woman, who does not have a bad reputation, who has not behaved . . . provocatively and who has said no in the right way can be raped, and only by a young man who is sober and 'deviant' and with whom she is not in love."

The researchers say:

"It is the awareness of these realities, and the fact that their credibility will be questioned in court (and, potentially, their sexual history raised), that was the most potent reason behind women's decisions to withdraw their complaint. Very early decisions to not complete the initial elements of an investigation are influenced by careless and insensitive treatment by police officers, as well as an existing perception of not being able to face any potential court process. Examples were uncovered of miscommunications, where police officers, in good faith, honestly conveyed the unlikelihood of a conviction and the difficulty of the court experience. These messages, whilst accurate",

were taken as discouragement.

In terms of understanding early withdrawal, victim care and satisfaction are important. The researchers paid great credit to the CPS and the police for increasing and improving the level of victim care and satisfaction enormously, compared with studies conducted even in the 1990s. However, although they say that that has improved, far less attention has been given to improving investigation.

All this is pretty well as it was in 2002 and 1999, when I wrote the famous tome that I have referred to. So, what more can we do? I had the good fortune to have a conversation with a senior, experienced circuit judge, who has requested to remain anonymous, but was good enough to talk to me in my part of the country about how he saw rape, as it were, at the coal face. He said that juries just will not have it unless there is corroboration; they take a moral and, perhaps, practical view that a lot of young women have had far too much to drink and are out for a good time, which might include having sex on the dance floor or somewhere nearby. He said that most acquittals are pretty quick, even after a three or four-day fight. Corroboration, he said, is the most important thing and without it the case is pretty hopeless.

Looking back at all the criticisms of the police, who did not send the DNA and relied on questionnaires and did not investigate people to whom the person had complained—all those failures of investigation—the judge put his finger on what rape researchers know. It is an unusual confluence of views from women in the rape lobby and judges that it is failures of policing and the failure of the police to be driven by the CPS into better policing that account for a great deal of this problem.

The judge also told me that the police do not investigate day-to-day matters well at operational level; they throw resources at getting target criminals and when there is a murder, the sky's the limit on the investigation, but they take rape insufficiently seriously. He said, "There is not a keen enough mind at an early enough stage being applied to how corroboration can be obtained in these cases." He also referred to the admissibility of previous sexual history, which is covered by section 41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, and said, "It always goes on previous sexual history." The idea behind section 41 was that the application to put in previous sexual history should be heard in advance of the trial, but he said, "Well, that will never happen. There are so many rapes and judges are shuffled about a lot, so it is simply not practical to do the application ahead of time. The defence would simply retake the point at the beginning of the trial." However, he also said that the point was not major, because the application is mostly simply not made. But trying to make it ahead of the trial would have a limiting factor; "rightly or wrongly, we would want to hear what the victim said, to form a view of her evidence before deciding whether her previous sexual history was relevant".

An academic called Neil Kibble was commissioned by the Criminal Bar Association to research the operation of section 41, and he concluded that it ought not to have been passed and that there was no point to it. Although it is an arrogant thing to say, I do not agree with his conclusions about his own research. A small number of judges found that the tests that section 41 made them apply to their own thinking made them focus more clearly than otherwise on the relevance of previous sexual history, and led to their excluding such evidence on occasions when they were confident that, but for those tests, they would have put the evidence in.

It is cheering rather than depressing that the section has made some difference. However, the limiting factor on section 41 exclusions is, and has always been, that it excludes previous sexual history only to cover consent. One could not put in previous sexual history to show that the victim was more likely to have consented because she had sex all over the place. However, such history could go in to show that the defendant believed that she was consenting. That is the second test, and showing such belief has never been, and cannot be, excluded.

If a defendant says in a trial that the victim was consenting, it is implicit that he is running both defences at once—first, that she was consenting and secondly that he believed that she was consenting. Whatever the merits of trying to exclude such evidence so that it cannot show consent, in any trial such evidence can come in around the legislation for the purposes of showing belief in consent. That, of course, is a problem.

I ask the following question out of ignorance; I have neither prosecuted nor defended in a rape case, although I have appeared in a similar case that I might talk about in a moment.

When the section 41 point is argued, does the defendant have to persuade the judge that he had some knowledge of the victim's sexual history? Clearly, if the defendant had no knowledge of that history, he could not argue that she must have consented, that she was likely to have consented or that he believed she had consented because of that previous sexual history.

Yes, the hon. and learned Gentleman puts his finger on an important point. The difficulty is that to try to show that the victim had consented, such evidence could come in from anywhere—saying, in short, that she was a tart and very likely to have consented. That need not have been part of the defendant's knowledge. That area of evidence is narrower anyway, but it cannot be put in for that purpose now.

However, when the issue is about the defendant's state of mind, he can put in all sorts of rumour, chit chat and street-end gossip, because as long as such things were relevant to his belief, it would not matter where they came from, although such material would be utterly valueless. In his research, Calton stated that the more previous sexual history is put in—even if it is denied—the more likely it is that the defendant will be acquitted.

Is the time approaching when we have to look carefully at whether the only successful way to exclude previous sexual history is to exclude it for all purposes except in a narrow sector of cases, when it may be relevant to something separate from consent or belief in consent? That is the double-or-quits process with section 41 at this stage. On the front line, judges, rape complainants and campaigners agree that section 41 is not working.

A very interesting point, my next to last, is that there are—

Before my hon. and learned Friend moves on, I should say that one of the section 41 issues that I have been considering is the application of rule 36, which is that prior notice needs to be given of questioning on previous sexual history. Some of that is being breached by the way that judges are reaching decisions. I am particularly considering how we can tighten that up so that women do not arrive at court expecting not to be questioned about their previous sexual history only to find out that they are. That area is key. If a woman knows that she is likely to be questioned on that, she may be prepared for it; if she does not know that she will be until the court makes that decision during the hearing, it will be far more traumatic for her to be cross-examined.

What my hon. and learned Friend has said is absolutely right, and ties in a little with what the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) was saying. As such evidence can come from any kind of rumour or gossip, the victim may not expect it, and throwing such things on a person in public has a very powerful effect. It is imperative that the issue should be tried earlier.

The judge whom I mentioned said that it would not be easy if the issue were tried earlier, because a new judge might have a different view from that of his predecessor and it would be open to the defendant to try again at trial. However, the ruling of the first judge could be made binding on the trial judge, so that it would not be possible to reopen the issue. I agree that it is important that the decision should be made early so that the victim knows about it and can decide not to go.

However, the more important point is that it is easy to get round the whole of section 41, because implicit in saying that the complainant was consenting is the defendant's belief that she was consenting. However tightly we draw the exclusion, if it does not apply to belief and consent, it will not protect her.

The national average conviction rate for rape is 5.3 per cent., but there are amazing differences between different areas of the country. I am poor at geography, but I think that the hon. and learned Member for Harborough comes from somewhere near Northamptonshire, in which case he has cause to be pleased with his neighbours. Northamptonshire had a conviction success rate of 13.8 per cent. in 2004. The county prosecutes 25.25 per cent. of everybody arrested against whom there is a rape complaint, and convicts 53 per cent. of them. Compare and contrast Suffolk, where 11 per cent. of those complained against are prosecuted and only 14.25 per cent. of that 11 per cent. are convicted. Suffolk has a conviction rate of 1.6 per cent. of those complained against—compare 13.8 per cent. with 1.6 per cent!

My own police and CPS area of Cleveland prosecutes a fifth of people against whom there is a complaint and convicts 37 per cent. of them—a 7.76 per cent. conviction rate, higher than the national average, despite the negative views of the judge that I mentioned, who comes from that area. Cleveland has a very good CPS service. Lessons must be disseminated from good areas such as Northampton—south Wales is almost as good—to the poor areas that let everyone down.

Finally, great successes are being reported from specialist courts; the ones that we know of, although they are new, which are domestic violence specialist courts. Is there a lesson to be learned? In such courts, cases, having been investigated by a specialist prosecutor, are heard on the same day, in the same court, before magistrates who are trained specialists.

All the old-fashioned attitudes that permeated domestic violence—that it is a private matter, part and parcel of a relationship, and that we should not interfere—are simply ousted by much exposure and lots of training. Could we oust in the same way the poor attitudes that permeate the investigation and prosecution of rape? Is there scope for specialist sexual violence courts?

South Africa has specialist sexual violence courts. They are relatively new and I know little about them. As the theme that runs through my pamphlet, the 2002 inspectors' report and this research is that attitudinal difficulties, from the first reporting to the failure in the Crown court, are the problem, is further specialism, including specialism of the fact finders at court, the way forward?

All these five points should be considered seriously, because unless they are and unless we take more steps, on top of the good ones that have been taken, when, to public acclaim, I write the second edition of "Rape in Court" soon, I shall hardly have to change it at all.

I am always grateful that the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) gives us regular opportunities to debate this issue, and it is important that we do so. I pay tribute to her consistent and well-informed work, including the writing of the pamphlet she mentioned, which I had not heard of and had not read. I would be happy to take, borrow or, if she is really desperate, buy a copy of it to put on my shelves.

I also pay tribute to the Solicitor-General. He has taken the issue extremely seriously. I detect a change of heart among Law Officers and the Crown Prosecution Service to try to address the fundamental failure of the criminal justice system in relation to violated and attacked women and to women in general who are victims of any offences of violence.

I pay a third tribute, to someone who is not present in the Chamber: my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey (Sandra Gidley), who, after many years leading on women's issues for our party, has just stepped down to do other things. Just the other day she spoke in a debate to mark international women's day. It is important that there are doughty people in all parties who will ensure that these issues are always on the agenda. Such people, who take up the cudgels, must include men as well as women.

I want to make a few short points, because I do not want to repeat the statistics or the evidence. Depending on the timing of this debate, I may seek Members' indulgence to leave just before the end if the debate runs for the full time allowed, Mr. Olner. I have duties elsewhere but I am keen to hear the responses of the Solicitor-General and the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier).

First, it was good that four years ago the Government, having consulted all the agencies, came up with the rape action plan. I know that we are nearing the time when the audit of that will be published. I should be grateful if the Solicitor-General would tell us when that will be, because the statistics that we have heard, and which I knew, which show the very low average conviction rate, need to be evaluated against an objective assessment of what has been done since real effort has been made over the past five years across the criminal justice system.

In that context, I welcome the advertising campaign that is starting this month. It seeks to remind women of their rights and of their entitlement to be protected in every respect, unless they consent expressly to any activity. Indeed, by and large, even such consent would not protect somebody from prosecution if they acted illegally and assaulted someone.

I start with a fairly simple view about crime and criminality, which is that, in essence, there are two sorts of crimes: crimes against the person and crimes against property. Crimes against the person are always more serious. I start from the simple presumption that a crime against the person—a physical attack on somebody else—should result in the attacker losing their liberty. That should be the expectation. I have a simple view about that and the public expect that to happen as well.

Although I appreciate that it is early days, I hope that there will be a serious, informed and robust response when the Sentencing Guidelines Council produces its anticipated recommendations, because if the reports are correct, there appears to be a failure to understand that fundamental point, in relation to rape and other offences against women, and in relation to other offences.

I am not in any way being histrionic. Indeed, in the Chamber the other day I counselled against being histrionic. These things must be taken in a considered way and we have to await the report of the council. It is good that such a body is doing that job. That was the result of debates that we had in Committee and on the Floor of the House. There is now a better system for evaluating sentencing and the types of sentences, which I welcome.

I want to make a point that was raised not so long ago by the hon. and learned Member for Redcar in written questions to the Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs. One of the things that will bring confidence into the system—I appreciate that it is marginal—will be increasingly to have a gender balance in our magistrates and Crown courts, and in the judiciary as a whole. Of course, one cannot presume that just because a woman is chairing the bench, or because there is a woman district judge or a woman circuit judge, there will be a different attitude, but my perception is that, as yet, the British judicial system does not look like and reflect Britain, and therefore it does not command the confidence that it should. I hope that we continue to make the strides that the Government have been trying to make to broaden the diversity of those who judge these things. Juries are diverse but the judiciary currently is not. That is important.

My next point was touched on by the hon. and learned Member for Redcar. There is always a dilemma in having a devolved system of justice—a devolved system of policing and so on; there is a great debate going on about policing—and complaining that the statistics vary in different parts of the country. However, there are some worrying differences in the statistics. Given all the efforts made to ensure that there are specialist advocates and specialists within the CPS, it would be helpful if the Solicitor-General would say why, in his opinion, such considerable variations exist between different CPS areas and different police areas. That such variations exist is more important in terms of the percentage of the allegations that are taken through to prosecution than in terms of the conviction rate. The conviction rate is obviously less explicable, but that first statistic should not involve such variation. There is a proper question to be asked and answered on that.

I want to endorse the point about corroboration, which will always be the most important issue. All our experience of criminal matters shows that an unsupported allegation, particularly in a personal relationship context, is far less likely to be believed.

I ask the Minister to examine one central point. I am interested to hear the responses of other colleagues on this matter. Over the years, there have been developments to make it easier, for women in particular, to go and tell somebody about an attack. I have visited the new centre that was set up for victims in the Camberwell magistrates court in my borough. However, it appears from the figures that only four of the 43 police services in England and Wales have specialist rape units. I appreciate that some groups of people who specialise in dealing with allegations of rape might not be called specialist rape units. It troubles me that so few forces appear to have a dedicated group of police officers dealing with such offences.

More important than having either a victims' suite at court, although that is important, or a specialist rape unit, although that might be important, is the fact that it is still not normally comfortable or convenient for women to report much of the crime against them. I have a strong sense that the reason why most women do not make a complaint is that there is nowhere that they can go, where they will feel confident, before they get there.

It is not easy to go into a police station, because members of the public do not know who they will meet in the porch on the way in and whether they will encounter the right sort of attitude when they speak to people inside. It is not necessarily easy for them to go to Victim Support, because to do so might give them a feeling that they are being stereotyped—or they might be self-stereotyping—and they do not want to be seen going in and out of such places.

I have a proposition. I have done a great deal of work with a co-operative police service and co-operative people in the CPS, Her Majesty's Courts Service and the local authority, and I still do not feel that we have received an adequate response in my part of the world, south of the river in London. Without being gimmicky in any way, it might be worth while for each local authority area, town and community to have something that I call, for the purposes of argument, a women's crime centre, where women can go and report a crime, whatever it is, in surroundings in which they feel comfortable.

My important point is that that would not be a place where women go to complain only about sexual offences; they could go there to complain about any crime. It could be a complaint about a handbag being stolen, or a mobile being taken on the bus, or about a parent in the playground. We need to make it much easier for women to go somewhere to make a formal complaint or discuss whether to make one.

A lot of the difficulty lies in the initial threshold of being willing to make the decision, for all the reasons given by the hon. and learned Member for Redcar. Many people do not go from the trauma of an offence such as rape or sexual assault to telling anyone in officialdom because of the fear, the perceptions of their friends and family, and the potential publicity. The Solicitor-General and other hon. Members will understand that as well as I do.

I am very happy to follow up these discussions with the hon. and learned Member for Redcar, colleagues of all parties and Law Officers, but one of the ways that we could pull together much of the very good work being done around the country area by area, town by town and city by city, is by having somewhere that is accommodating, accepting and not intimidating and is competent to deal with any matters concerning criminality against women. I am not being tokenist about the matter in any way: I do not suggest that we go down a road where we have six other species of place, such as centres only for black people or for young people. It is a women's issue in particular. They are the majority of the population and we ought to accommodate that.

I shall be very happy to hear an initial, considered response from Ministers as to where that approach might have been tried or piloted elsewhere in the country. I know that it is done in other countries, and that there is some evidence of success. It might be that at the beginning of the system we should grant more people a realistic opportunity to make a considered judgment as to whether they want to proceed, and so provide them with the protection that they feel they need in order to go through the criminal justice system.

Of course, once we get past that stage there are the other issues that affect what the hon. and learned Lady calls the attrition rate; I understand and endorse those concerns. But I did not want simply to repeat them; I wanted to make a slightly different point. I should be grateful if in due course Ministers could consider—as could we—how to make the initial doorway through which people can go to complain of offences against women much easier to access and more likely to lead to a successful outcome. My view is that we could considerably improve the number of successful complaints that are followed through if we start in the right way, and if we do that, the rest of the criminal justice process may well follow.

I begin by congratulating the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) on securing the debate, and I congratulate her on not being inhibited by a feeling that, as a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Home Office, she should be silent on issues affecting the criminal justice system. She clearly has a high reputation in relation to this aspect of public policy; she mentioned her own pamphlet from 1999, and why should she not? If one looks through the search engines on the House of Commons website, one will find that she has been a continuous questioner of the Government on such matters since she came to Parliament. It is a matter for some congratulation that she has achieved an hour and a half's debate on the subject today.

During an intervention, I confessed that I have no experience as a member of the Bar in dealing with rape cases as a prosecutor or defence counsel. As a recorder, I am not sufficiently qualified: I have not got, as the jargon has it, my sex ticket to try serious sexual offences, including rape. The fact that I have not suggests to me that the Lord Chancellor's Department, as it used to be called, and those who arrange the way in which criminal judges try cases of this sort, have thought about the matter quite carefully. They require judges—the hon. and learned Lady implied this even if she did not say so expressly—to have specialist training in this area of the law before they are allowed to try such cases because they involve huge sensitivities.

By mentioning emotional trauma, I am by no means diminishing the physical injuries and trauma that a complainant will suffer. In parentheses, I add that it is understandable that many women who are attacked in this hideous way are not strong enough or confident enough to report it straight away and sometimes leave it for days, weeks or in some cases, particularly in relation to child abuse, for some years before bringing it to the attention of the authorities or even their parents. The emotional trauma that a complainant has to suffer in bringing a case, from the first reporting of it, is enormous. It affects those women's families and in many ways it wholly ruins their lives.

However, balanced against that, those of us who have the responsibility of making law and those who have the responsibility of applying the law—judges and others who have the duty of ensuring fairness in such cases—also have to consider the effect on the accused. Although it is sometimes difficult to believe, and it is not always attractive to say such things, those accused have rights, as complainants do. Although I fully endorse much of what the hon. and learned Member for Redcar had to say on this very difficult subject, we should be mindful when we are discussing changes in the criminal law and procedure not to forget the rights of the defendant, particularly in cases involving sexual assault and rape, because in such cases the defendant's reputation, whether he is acquitted justly or improperly, is likely to be tarnished for ever as a result of being connected with such allegations.

Clearly, all criminal defendants who are justly acquitted have some loss of reputation as a consequence of that process. Public policy says that the acquittal is the immediate answer to that concern. I think it is fair to say that an acquittal in a rape case does not always lead to that remedial effect.

The hon. and learned Gentleman is of course right that we need to strike a balance in any court proceedings. Defendants have rights and it is correct that those should be respected. However, when we are dealing with a conviction rate of just under 6 per cent., it is clear that the rights of the defendant are already being respected to a considerable extent. The problem is that the rights of the victim all too often seem to be going by the board.

That is a perfectly reasonable comment to make on the figures presented to us by the hon. and learned Member for Redcar. If the balance is in the wrong place, we do not have a balance. It seems to me that all of us who have discussed the matter today, apart from the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Judy Mallaber) and my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner), who are no longer present, are lawyers of one sort or another. It is difficult on these occasions to remember that we are also citizens, we represent members of the public and we have families who are not lawyers and do not necessarily treat such subjects in the desiccated way that we might in a legal seminar or continuous development course—which we are now required to go on if we wish to remain as practising lawyers.

I do not want to have an argument with the Solicitor-General. I agree with him. I do not want to have an argument with the hon. and learned Lady either. It is important that she has presented to us information about which the public ought to know more. It is not widely known, and it is certainly rarely reported widely in the media. If anybody reads the Hansard record of this debate, we can all congratulate ourselves on disseminating to a wider audience a bit more knowledge about a rather esoteric legal subject.

Taking into account all that the hon. and learned Lady said, we must bear it in mind that as public policy makers and law makers, we are in the business of providing justice, and certainly justice for complainants. It is clear from what she said that in reality, many complainants do not get justice. One need only consider the five reasons that she mentioned for the drop-out rate—the attrition rate, as she called it. The individual does not complain at all; they withdraw or do not pursue a complaint at an early stage; the complaint is discouraged because there is insufficient evidence, there is no identified defendant or accused, or there is no reliable prospect of prosecution; there is something wrong with the way in which the Crown Prosecution Service decides to progress cases, which, to be fair to the CPS, the hon. and learned Lady said formed the smallest cohort of cases; and finally, the individual is deterred by the prospect and actuality of trial.

All five matters are inhibiting factors that, in one way or another, prevent complainants from getting justice. We must be acutely aware of that. However, as I said, we must be acutely aware of balancing those concerns with concerns for those who are accused of these hideous crimes. I want to build in the public a sense that justice is being done as a consequence of what Parliament, the courts, the police, the CPS and all other agencies do between the offence and acquittal or sentencing. We must not forget that a just acquittal either on the direction of the judge or following a verdict from a jury on the facts is not a "failure" any more than a conviction is a "success". Justice cannot be measured in those terms; it should be wholly disinterested—albeit that for the people involved in the case, the individual who has been assaulted, her family, the defendant and his family, it is almost impossible to come to terms with the situation. For them, it is a personal attack of the most hideous nature either on their bodies or, if they are the falsely accused defendant, on their reputation and possibly their career.

The hon. and learned Member for Redcar highlighted an extremely difficult issue. She presented her argument calmly and rationally, on which I congratulate her. I hope that I do not sound patronising. It is always difficult to deal with such issues in a public forum in a way that does not attract criticism for being too much on one side of the argument and too ignorant of the interests, rights and arguments of the other side. She managed to deal with this issue utterly properly.

I am not in a position to comment on why the acquittal rates in particular parts of the country are too high. It is interesting that the neighbouring county to mine, Northamptonshire, is one of the "better" counties for convictions, with a rate of 13.4 per cent. of cases tried. I could not hear whether it was Southampton or Southwark—

Suffolk.

I have no idea why Suffolk managed only a 1.6 per cent. conviction rate compared with the hon. and learned Lady's area of Cleveland, which had a rate of 7.76 per cent.

I shall finish with what I hope is not a light-hearted anecdote. It certainly was not a light-hearted moment at the time. It relates to the north-east. In 2000 when I was the shadow Attorney-General, I was able to carry on my private practice, being instructed to appear for a complainant in a defamation action at the Crown court in Newcastle upon Tyne, one river north of Redcar. My client was suing for slander, which was reduced to libel, over an allegation of serious sexual assault in the workplace which, by the time the complaint had been developed through the company's personnel department, had taken written form on the pleadings in the action and had gone to trial, had been magnified from inappropriate sexual conduct in the staff restroom to the most hideous and disgusting rape. I shall not go into details, because it is simply not necessary.

The matter was tried before a jury of eight women and four men, with a male judge, myself a male barrister with a male junior, and a male defence counsel opposing us and acting for the woman who had made the accusation. The trial lasted two weeks, and it is the nearest that I have ever been to a rape trial. The jury, which as I said included eight women, were utterly disbelieving of the woman's account. At times, when I was watching the jury listening to the woman giving evidence, they were mouthing, "This is a pack of lies." They awarded the complainant in excess of £200,000. He could never recover it, of course, because the defendant did not have that sort of money.

If we present cases properly, if rape victims are taken through the hideous reporting process right the way to trial in the careful way that the hon. and learned Lady said was necessary to preserve the complaint and reduce the drop-out rate and high attrition rate, if the preparatory stages of the case are properly managed by the prosecuting authorities once the arrest and charge have been made, and if the trial judge is acutely sensitive of the issues—by and large they are—we have a greater expectation of achieving justice, not only in the disinterested sense, but in the personal, competition sense and in the necessary personal protection sense that the individuals in the case and the wider public require of our justice system.

That process is not impossible. It is difficult and it requires effort and resources, although it may require not more resources but simply the re-focusing of existing ones. It requires also determination within the prosecuting authorities, particularly within the police, although the modern police have changed considerably from the, "Well, she was wearing a short skirt so she deserved it" caricature, about which we so often hear.

There must be an understanding, which I think is growing, that becoming involved in such police work is not a Cinderella exercise. It is highly important, and it is essential for the civilisation of a country such as ours and for the greater confidence of those who—for whatever reason—sadly become involved in rape cases. I shall listen with great interest to what the Solicitor-General has to say.

It is a pleasure to appear before you, Mr. Olner. I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) not only on her success in securing the debate, but on her work over a considerable time in ensuring that issues relating to rape are put on the public agenda and addressed. I also pay tribute to my predecessor as Solicitor-General, who is now my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs. She helped to take through Parliament the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which significantly improved the law relating to rape.

Too many rapists are getting away with it, and some of them are repeat rapists. Parliament has strengthened the law on rape and the Government are taking steps to provide more help and support to victims. However, changing the law is not the only issue; we also need to change some people's attitude to rape. The "What did she expect, dressed like that?" mindset must be challenged. People should know that there is an absolute right to say no. That is partly why last week the Government initiated a public campaign emphasising that people have a right to say no.

Rape is an appalling crime that devastates the lives of victims and their families. However, rape will always be a difficult offence to prosecute and there is no sense in pretending otherwise. Most rapes are perpetrated by someone known to the victim. Often there is no independent witness, because of the nature of rape—it tends to happen when only two people are present—and often no forensic evidence is available. Particularly given the growth of DNA technology, we need to use the new opportunities that are available to ensure that forensic evidence is collected.

Like my hon. and learned Friend, I was struck by the Home Office report entitled "A Gap or a Chasm? Attrition in reported rape cases". It is clear that in some areas the police have not always sought to bring forward DNA evidence. It is important that we ensure that all police forces adopt best practice. I will bring to the attention of the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East (Paul Goggins), who deals with policing, the fact that we need to ensure that that happens. We need to get right the collection of evidence and the investigation, ensure that the Crown Prosecution Service takes the correct decision on prosecution and, as the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) said, ensure that we have judges who are sensitive. Getting all those things right is the best way to ensure justice in rape cases.

Conviction rates in rape cases remain unacceptably low, with fewer than 6 per cent. of recorded rapes resulting in a conviction. Nevertheless, reporting rates are rising, which is a positive factor. In addition, the number of convictions for rape of a female rose in 2004. Of the 741 people tried at the Crown court for rape of a female in 2004—up from 666 in 2003—28 per cent. were convicted. That is a rise of 4 per cent. from the position in 2003.

In Cleveland in 2004, there were 129 reported rapes, 26 prosecutions and 10 convictions. The rate of conviction is still very low. I have explained partly why that is the case. We need to ensure that we deal with the factors involved. The Government have made a significant number of changes to the law on rape, but research shows that a victim's needs in the aftermath of rape are significant and wide ranging and failure to address those immediate and ongoing needs can have long-lasting implications for the victim's emotional well-being, mental and sexual health and relationships, creating a significant cost for society as a whole and for the health service, as well as for the individuals and their families.

Home Office research published last summer attempted to quantify the costs of sexual violence. There is the cost to the individual and their family in emotional terms, which can be harrowing enough, but the cost to society of each rape is estimated at £76,000. That figure covers all the various costs that society has to pay for one instance of this appalling crime. The research found that sexual offences, rather than just rape itself, account for approximately 23 per cent. of the cost of crime to households in England and Wales.

Sexual violence is sometimes dismissed as a crime that affects a very small minority of people, and a reading of the recorded crime statistics gives the impression that that might be the case. The number of recorded rapes is increasing year on year, but the total figure—14,002 in 2004–05—is still much smaller than the figures for many other violent crimes. However, the British crime survey indicates that the actual number of rapes is much higher than that. The 2001 interpersonal violence module estimated that there were 190,000 incidents of serious sexual assault against women, including 80,000 incidents of rape or attempted rape, in the year leading up to the research. It also estimated—we sometimes forget this issue in discussions such as this—that 0.2 per cent. of men had been subjected to sexual assault in the previous year. There is at least anecdotal evidence that rape of men is an increasing problem. We need to deal with that, which is why some of the Home Office's recent advertisement campaigns have involved gay magazines. It is right that that is the case.

Sexual violence can affect men and women of all backgrounds, regardless of age, race and religion. Certain groups, such as people with learning disabilities and people who work in prostitution, can be particularly vulnerable.

The Government have made a series of changes, but we are determined to do more to tackle the barriers to the successful prosecution of rape, while not tampering with the burden of proof. We can do things around the edges of the burden of proof without changing that fundamental core. I hope that we will be able to do many things in this respect in the coming months and years. I shall issue a consultation paper setting out some proposals shortly.

It is worth delineating a few of the changes that we have made. We have introduced specialist rape prosecutors in every CPS area; there are now 520 of them. We have overhauled the law on sexual offences through the Sexual Offences Act 2003 and previous legislation. That includes clarifying the law on consent to ensure that we give better protection to potential rape victims. Special measures are now available to enable victims to give evidence behind a screen or by televised link, which perhaps makes the experience of giving evidence in court, which will always be very difficult, somewhat less traumatic. We have limited the circumstances in which a victim's previous sexual history is admissible in court. I shall return in a moment to the point on section 41 made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar. We have clarified and expanded the circumstances in which evidence of the defendant's bad character is admissible in court. That is particularly relevant when the bad character involves issues that are very similar to the offences of which he is accused.

We have worked with the Association of Chief Police Officers on producing guidance for the police on the investigation of serious sexual offences, and we are now working on developing training for the police. Through the "No witness, no justice" programme, we have introduced witness care units to keep victims informed of case progress and to provide information about support services. We have invested £4 million over the years from 2004 to 2006 in developing sexual assault referral centres—SARCs—and voluntary sector services for victims of sexual offences. We have funded the production of a handbook to help rape victims by explaining how the criminal justice process works—something that many of them fear.

My hon. and learned Friend referred to the research study, "A Gap or a Chasm? Attrition in reported rape cases", and it is worth emphasising that it was Home Office research. It was published in 2005 and I understand that the data that it reported were collected between October 2000 and 31 December 2002. A large part of the data arose before the changes that we have brought about, particularly since 2003. One of the biggest changes was the introduction of charging, which began in 2004 and is being rolled out throughout the country. It has not yet reached my area in Warwickshire, so it has not been fully introduced, but it will bring a significant change in the way in which rape cases in particular are dealt with.

I am cheered and glad to be corrected that the data predate the charging change, which has come to Cleveland. The CPS's leverage is important. It can, for example, tell the police to go back and look at something again and to investigate more thoroughly. That is how it has been used and I am pleased that I was wrong.

I was not going to point that out.

The charging change is important. A specialist rape prosecutor who has been specially trained looks at the case and advises the police on how they can ensure that all the evidence is brought forward and that a full file is ready for a judgment to be made on whether there is a realistic prospect of the prosecution securing a conviction. We hope that as a result, cases that are prosecuted will be more likely to succeed. That remains to be seen as the statistics are rolled out during the next couple of years, but we hope that there will be a significant increase in the success rate of prosecutions.

We need to recognise that there are disparities between various areas. My hon. and learned Friend mentioned Suffolk and Northampton. I hope that those disparities will be addressed to some extent by the standard training given to specialist rape prosecutors who work with the CPS. That will enable them to work to standards that are broadly the same throughout the country, which should enable judgments on whether a case should be prosecuted to be broadly standard and even out some of the discrepancies. However, that does not mean that my hon. and learned Friend is wrong to suggest that there are other areas where we need to improve, particularly the investigation of some rape cases. Some areas are better than others and we need to ensure that we have appropriate standards and best practice in all areas.

Progress in making some of the changes has been important. There are some key challenges on which we must focus. It is important that the police are adequately resourced and trained, that we have high-quality rape investigation and that barristers work closely with CPS lawyers to ensure that we get convictions. I am pleased to say that the CPS has recently agreed with the Bar Council that all barristers who prosecute rape cases should have special training accredited by the CPS. That is an important change, in that not only will specialist lawyers make the judgment about the initial prosecution—the charging—but when the case comes to court the prosecuting barrister will also be specially trained to ensure that they know how a case should be properly handled.

We have reached agreement that barristers, who previously tended not to talk to witnesses and victims before a trial, will now do so in appropriate circumstances to ensure that a judgment can be made about the case and that some of the questions that need to be asked can be answered. I hope that those changes will be useful and important in the coming months and years.

My hon. and learned Friend raised a series of other issues. First, she referred to police attitudes, which are sometimes dismissive. The police have introduced training, some of which was led by the Metropolitan police who have undertaken substantial work on how to ensure that rape cases and sexual offences are better prosecuted. We are now developing a cadre of specialist officers who are better able to deal with such matters. As the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) said, there are only four units of sexual offence liaison officers, but there are many more sexual offence liaison officers who are not in units. Whether a special unit is established depends to some extent on the number of cases in an area and some forces may not need to establish one because, thankfully, numbers are much lower, but they will still have a sexual offence liaison officer who will be able to deal with cases.

The key change is the introduction of SARCs; there are now 14 of them. We need to focus our attention on such areas.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar referred to a judge who said that a key issue was to improve the way in which investigations are carried out. I certainly agree with him or her on that. I also agree that corroboration is important, which is why we must ensure that we have adequate forensic facilities.

My hon. and learned Friend also referred to section 41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 and the fact that there are still too many cases in which previous sexual history is given. I have a great deal of sympathy with her point and will consider the issue further to see whether there is more work that we can do. Changes to rule 36—giving prior notice—will improve the situation somewhat, but there are other ways in which we can improve the legislation and I hope that we will be able to look at some of those.

My hon. and learned Friend suggested that we consider domestic violence courts and whether specialist courts might be helpful. We are developing a formulation with specialist police officers, specialist prosecutors and specialist barristers in court and we should see how that approach develops, but I am not dismissing my hon. and learned Friend's suggestion. I had a look at the South African model, which has much to recommend it, but I want to see how the data develop before we start to advocate it.

The hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey raised a number of points. I agree that there should be more women judges and magistrates. The Government are seeking to increase numbers.

There is a two-stage process under way for the audit of the rape action plan. The first stage—a stocktake of progress and implementation of the rape action plan—took place in the summer and was based on self-report surveys. We found some excellent good practice, but we need to do more to ensure that that is replicated in all areas and a follow-up thematic inspection will report this summer. We look forward to the recommendations that will inform the new sexual violence action plan. I hope that we shall be able to ensure that we make improvements as a result of that. The hon. Gentleman also asked about variations between different attitudes and statistical differences between areas. To some extent, our standard training for rape prosecutors will address those issues.

I want to ensure that we have a better success rate in getting rapists off the street and into prison where they should be. I want to ensure that victims are better treated by the criminal justice system and that the Government's record on tackling these issues is at the top of the agenda.

It is a delight to introduce this debate today, as world tuberculosis day is later this week. People throughout the world will be encouraged to think about this devastating disease, which many thought was in the past, but which is raging throughout the world.

We can take a snapshot of the position in, for instance, Africa. Africa has 11 per cent. of the world's population, but it accounts for more than a quarter of the global TB burden. Since 1990, TB rates have doubled in Africa overall and tripled in areas with high levels of HIV infection. In Botswana, more than 70 per cent. of TB patients are also infected with HIV. Those statistics are truly sobering.

Africa may be on the front line of the global fight against TB, but Asia has the highest TB burden in the world, largely due to its massive population. India is home to just under 2 million TB sufferers, and while often we think of TB as a disease of the developing world—today's debate is focused on the developing world—closer to home, 67,000 Europeans have lost their lives to it.

The hon. Gentleman mentions outbreaks and the incidence in Europe. Indeed, TB is starting to emerge in a worrying way in my home city of Leicester. Perhaps he was about to deal with this, but does he agree that in an era of international trade, travel and migration, TB control is not confined to the countries and continents where it is becoming rife? We have a direct interest—not just moral, but social and economic—in driving it back to its position 40 years ago, when we thought we had virtually eradicated it.

I could not agree more. There have been several isolated outbreaks in this country, in the hon. Gentleman's constituency and in Aberdeenshire, but, more generally, there is a higher incidence in cities such as London. Increased global travel is certainly one of the causes.

People think about whether the issue directly affects them: they are aware that people from the UK travel abroad to the nearer parts of eastern Europe, but large numbers also travel on ever more direct flights to countries with a high HIV incidence. The hon. Gentleman's point is well made.

I was about to touch on an area relatively closer to home: the former Soviet Union has been hit badly by the disease and it has the second-lowest treatment success rate in the world—only marginally better than that of Africa. The collapse of the Soviet Union left many countries in the region with weak health care systems and particularly poor diagnostic facilities. The real problem is multi-drug-resistant TB, which is more expensive to treat and a particular problem in the Baltic states.

TB does not respect national boundaries or international treaties, and I would like to explain the problem in some detail. TB is the leading form of death from a curable infectious disease. Globally, it is second only to HIV/AIDS as a cause of illness and death, infecting 9 million people every year and killing 2 million. Nearly all those people are in the developing world.

What is more shocking, however, is the fact that the illness is entirely preventable and curable. That is why today's debate is so important. With world TB day on 24 March almost upon us, we must do all we can to highlight the need to get to grips with and eradicate the disease, which continues to claim a life every 15 seconds.

About two weeks ago, I was pleased to host an exhibition in the Upper Waiting Hall in this place. I hope that many Members took the time to look at it. The exhibition comprised a collection of photographs by Gary Hampton, a renowned TB photographer, of TB sufferers throughout the world, including in India, Africa, Europe and South America. The message was simple: TB is current, dangerous and on the increase in many parts of the world, but, despite the scale of the problem, we have the means to cure it completely.

About 80 per cent. of the individuals newly diagnosed with the disease each year live in the 22 most populous countries.

My hon. Friend makes a strong case for the Government and the international community paying close attention to the serious problems of TB, particularly in developing countries. Does he agree that although the media in the west seem to be in a blind panic about avian influenza—which, while not wishing to diminish the deaths, has killed only 90 people—the preventable deaths of 2 million people should grab the attention of the world and of Governments who can make a big impression on this mass killer?

I agree with my hon. Friend absolutely. One problem is that the media are always looking for something new, and TB is not new. It has been around for generations, and many people in this country think of it as something from the past. It is not deemed to be a politically sexy story, but people continue to die. The scale of the problem is massive: 5,000 people die of TB each day. If we were to think that a disaster on the scale of that at the World Trade Centre—about 3,000 people died in that attack—was happening daily, what resources would we be prepared to put into dealing with it?

TB has existed for a long time, and many people have played a part in the fight against it. I shall mention just a few. One who deserves particular praise is Edinburgh's own TB pioneer, Sir John Crofton, whom I met some time ago. He demonstrated more than 50 years ago that TB was curable, and his work led directly to a massive decline in TB cases. Sir John was recently awarded the Union medal, which is the highest honour awarded by the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease. I am sure that all who are aware of Sir John's remarkable achievements will agree that he is a more than worthy recipient. I was delighted to table an early-day motion before Christmas to congratulate him on his latest accolade, and I have been touched by the support it received and the contact I have had with people throughout the country who thank Sir John for playing his part in the fight against TB.

The Department for International Development has done much excellent work for many years. I praise the Minister, the Secretary of State and previous Secretaries of State for playing their part and continuing to fund worthwhile projects in several countries even though the issue has not always been at the top of the news agenda.

On a visit with the International Development Committee, I saw at first hand the work that has been done in Andhra Pradesh in India, and in Kenya, Malawi and Mozambique. The Department's absolute commitment for the long term involves considerable financial cost. The DFID paper produced in December 2005 lists sums committed in the fight against TB: £8.5 million in Mozambique, £7.5 million in Malawi and £20 million in Andhra Pradesh. I have seen some of the excellent work that is being done by the Department's staff in conjunction with local partners, and I cannot praise it highly enough.

Several groups and organisations are involved. TB Alert produces easy-to-access literature to ensure that people in this country know the basics about TB and are able to find out exactly how they can detect infection and what preventive measures should be taken if they are travelling to a high-risk area. Individuals play an enormous part in the fight against TB, none more so than Bill Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has pledged more than $900 million over the next 10 years towards tackling the disease. I shall come back to that.

There are also a number of advocacy groups, including Results, which deserves particular praise for its work on the issue—especially its lobbying of hon. Members. Two members of its staff, Sheila Davie and Louise Holly, deserve a special mention for having contacted several Members from all parties to keep the fight against TB high on the agenda.

As I said, however, the scale of the problem is truly massive. TB is curable, and we have to ask why the problem has not been dealt with. Up to 60 per cent. of TB cases can be detected using existing diagnostic measures, and nearly all of them can be cured using existing treatment methods, so what are the obstacles? One of the first that we need to overcome is the perception that TB is a disease of our grandparents' generation. TB is not a disease of the past, and I mentioned the sobering statistic that 5,000 people die from TB every day, which certainly concentrates the mind.

As recently as 1993, the World Health Organisation declared TB a global health emergency, and when we look at the figures, it is difficult to disagree. Incredibly, it is estimated that a third of the world's population, or nearly 2 billion people, are infected with TB and that 5 to 10 per cent. of them will deliver the active disease.

When I mentioned this debate to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), she said that she was unable to attend, but that she had been a TB sufferer as a young child. More than 50 years after the introduction of effective treatments for TB, the disease remains unconquered. Indeed, in many developing countries—particularly those stricken with HIV/AIDS—the disease remains dangerously unstable.

Moreover, although TB predominantly affects developing countries, as the title of the debate suggests, it is worth remembering that TB is making a comeback in western Europe. Indeed, as the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) said, the number of TB cases in England has increased by 25 per cent. over the past 10 years and continues to increase. About 7,000 new cases are reported each year, most in London. Although multi-drug regimes are available and cure 95 per cent. of patients with active drug-sensitive TB, newer and better drugs are needed because of poor compliance with the six-month treatment regime.

My hon. Friend knows that I share his interest in this subject, because we visited Kenya with Results last September to look at TB projects. Does he not accept, however, that the treatment regimes are pretty robust, at least in the UK, and that the vast majority of patients will survive if they stick to those regimes? Surely the problem is in the developing world, where multi-drug-resistant TB is developing and the bacillus is getting stronger because people do not stick to the regimes. A particular concentration of effort is clearly needed.

What my hon. Friend says is true for several reasons. Not only has the medical battle been fought and largely won in this country, but TB is very much a disease of poverty, and poverty is most clearly associated with the developing world.

I was astounded at the poverty that exists to this day in places such as Kibera—the massive slum on the outskirts of Nairobi—and the general public can see that poverty if they go to see "The Constant Gardner", which is on in cinemas as we speak. The vast majority of people in that slum have no supply of drinking water or sanitation and they live in cramped accommodation with no adequate ventilation—perfect circumstances for TB to thrive in.

In this country, we have managed to ensure that people have clean drinking water supplies and sanitation, but we have also managed almost to eradicate poverty. Poverty is why TB is such a problem throughout the developing world. Whether we are talking about drug-resistant TB or one of the traditional forms of TB, the disease is closely associated with poverty.

We must seek to alleviate poverty through the millennium development goals and other means of raising people's standard of living. We must improve how people live and the quality of their accommodation to ensure that individuals with TB do not live in cramped conditions, because that would mean the rest of their family, their neighbours and their friends being far more likely to contract the disease. Therefore, I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Andrew George).

There has been progress, however, and there is hope. Despite the scale and severity of the problems, Marcos Espinal, executive secretary of the Stop TB Partnership, has said that

"we have the possibility to finally beat TB over the coming decades."

Indeed, over the next 50 years, the aim must be to eradicate TB as a global health problem. In 1991, the World Health Assembly set a target of detecting 70 per cent. of all infectious cases of TB and curing 85 per cent. of those detected by 2005. Those targets were undoubtedly achievable, but they have not been met. Some 80 per cent. of known cases are successfully treated, but only 45 per cent. of cases are detected.

The hon. Gentleman refers to the targets that have been set. How confident is he that the unlikely alliance of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Bill Gates—a commitment to double the £1.2 billion global spend on TB was announced at Davos earlier this year—will halve the number of deaths to which the hon. Gentleman referred? Past targets have proved difficult and illusive, have they not? Is he confident that the new target will drive down the number of deaths in the way the Chancellor and Mr. Gates anticipate?

I am optimistic about the commitments that Bill Gates and the Chancellor have made, and I look forward to the international dimension of tomorrow's Budget being given as much importance as the domestic agenda, but I am pessimistic about the end results. Large amounts of resources have been poured in, but we have not dealt with the combination of factors that have built up the environment in which TB thrives.

Although the resources have gone in, we have seen first hand how many countries have suffered from famine and drought—factors outwith donors' control. In addition, there is still conflict in some countries, and other factors mean that TB is a difficult nut to crack, even though the resources have increased. As I said, I want to ensure that donors, funders and organisations working on TB make the necessary commitment in the developing world, and I can hope for the best, but time will tell how successful we are.

As was suggested earlier, we need a plan for the long term and a commitment to see the issue through beyond national elections, G8 summits and Davos. The Chancellor said:

"If 2005 was the year of commitment then 2006 must be the year of delivery".

Although I wholeheartedly support those sentiments, it will take more than a year. We are all in this fight for the long haul. Tomorrow's Budget is the ideal opportunity for the Chancellor to confirm that the commitment to further spending will be high up the agenda.

At the beginning of the 21st century, TB has been declared a full-blown global emergency, and a global emergency requires a global plan of action. Thankfully, we have one in place. The Stop TB Partnership provides a platform for international organisations, countries, donors and governmental and non-governmental organisations. It recently launched its new stop TB strategy whose objectives are to achieve universal access to high-quality diagnosis and patient-centred treatment; reduce the human and socio-economic suffering caused by TB; protect the most vulnerable groups from TB, HIV and multi-drug-resistant TB; and support the development of new tools in the fight against TB.

The components of that strategy include the high-quality expansion of DOTS—the directly observed therapy short-course scheme—which is often used in the fight against TB and which, I am glad to see, has been successful. The strategy must be collaborative to meet the challenges of TB and HIV control, along with multi-drug-resistant TB.

We must help to strengthen health systems—I am aware that DFID has been involved in that work as well. We must engage aid providers and agree international standards for TB care while empowering those with TB and those communities that are badly affected by the disease. We must also help to promote and sustain research. The global plan, finalised just two months ago, aims to break the back of the global TB epidemic and to eliminate it as a global problem by 2015.

The hon. Gentleman is most generous in giving way once more. He mentioned research, but one difficulty is that there is no significant commercial market in developing countries for drugs that tackle the diseases of poverty. Does he hope that the Minister will refer to the possibility of pharmaceutical companies lowering the prices of their drugs that are designed to tackle the diseases of poverty, of which TB is but one?

As I mentioned, the film "The Constant Gardener", which many members of the public have seen, deals with the issue of the price that drugs companies charge to deliver effective treatment. Clearly there is not money to be made in the commercial world by supplying very poor people with drugs that will save their lives. We await the Minister's reply on that. It is in all our interests—not just morally, but economically—to help the poor nations of this world, which are often the sub-Saharan nations, to improve their economic growth and start trading their way out of poverty. They will benefit financially and we will also benefit.

I am sure that my hon. Friend accepts, however, the need for early intervention and proper treatment before the TB bacilli become multi-drug-resistant. If patients are caught early enough and the treatment is followed through fully, it costs only $10 to cure someone and prevent a death. Surely that is $10 extremely well spent.

My hon. Friend is one step ahead of me. I was aware that he was a keynote speaker at the launch of the global plan. Without a doubt, few things are better value for money than $10 that can save a person's life. As he said, one problem is that successful treatment can be started, but if it is not maintained for the full six months of therapy, patients might feel better and stop taking the drugs, which might allow drug-resistant TB to develop.

In certain areas, drugs are not available or people have to pay, and in countries of extreme poverty paying for drugs can often be the barrier between life and death. That is why I am pleased that some of the many projects funded by DFID ensure that drugs are freely available and that cost is not an issue. Access and maintaining the course for six months might be issues, but the cost of treatment is not in many countries.

The global plan for 2002–15 builds on the partnership's first global plan for 2001–05. It supports the need for long-term planning and for action at regional and country levels. The plan provides a consensual view of what the Stop TB Partnership can achieve by 2015, provided that we mobilise the resources to implement the stop TB strategy, according to the steps laid out in the global plan.

The global plan will help to stimulate political commitment, financial support, effective intervention, patients' involvement, community participation, and research and development. All those will be central planks of the overall strategy to tackle TB.

The cost of the global plan is $56 billion, which represents a threefold increase in funding as compared with the first global plan. Although that is a significant increase, any doubts that anyone might have should be dashed when we consider what we get for that $56 billion. The estimated funding gap is $31 billion, which must be met because the rewards are high. Full funding would save 14 million lives at a cost per life saved of $157, which is much less than the average economic productivity per person per year, even for the poorest individuals.

Even under such a crude economic calculation, the economic benefits far outweigh the costs. When we consider the amount of money spent post-9/11, this is a small price to pay. If averaged out, it is $5.6 billion a year, which is what the US spends in Iraq every month. The figure is three days' global military spending and the amount spent each month is estimated at $58 million—more than the total 10-year cost of the global plan.

What will be achieved if we implement the global plan? Implementation of the stop TB strategy will expand access for all to quality TB diagnosis and treatment. About 50 million people will be treated under the strategy and 14 million lives will be saved. The first new TB drug for 40 years could be introduced in 2010, with vastly improved diagnosis.

By 2015, we will have a new, safe, effective and affordable vaccine available if all goes according to plan. Targets could be met, such as the global achievement of the millennium development goal to halt and begin to reverse the incidence of TB, and the TB partnership's 2015 targets to halve prevalence and death rates from 1990 levels.

What else can we all do, in the House and elsewhere? As I mentioned, the exhibition in the Upper Waiting Hall was one small attempt to raise awareness while today's debate will generate coverage, interest and column inches. Those interested will be able to follow it and know that hon. Members are facing up to the problem. TB is not a disease of the past, and we must remind people of that.

The decline in the incidence of TB in the developed world has been accompanied by a fall in the commercial incentive to develop and invest in new anti-TB drugs. The DOTS programme has revolutionised the treatment of TB across the world, but it is 50 years since its introduction, and treatment and detection rates have remained constant since 1995—still far below the rates and targets set out in the MDGs. To contain the disease properly, new drugs and vaccines are needed to tackle multi-drug-resistant TB. Despite the undoubted success of the DOTS expansion, most countries look unlikely to meet the MDGs for TB by 2015. Further innovation is crucial if, ultimately, we are to tackle TB.

The non-profit organisation Global Alliance for TB Drug Development, which is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, has brought badly needed new focus and leadership for drug development. In the short term, six new drug candidates for TB are now undergoing clinical trials. Indeed, Bill Gates has already pledged $900 million over the next 10 years towards tackling the disease.

However, action from above must be matched by renewed and improved action on the ground—the front line of the battle against TB. The DOTS strategy has helped not only to cure millions of people worldwide, but to strengthen public health care capacities. Indeed, it has been argued that the greatest legacy of DOTS to the overall health of developing countries might be not in control of TB alone, but in helping to build the basic infrastructure of a public health system. For example, in India, where the public health system is weak, more than 422,000 health workers have been trained during the expansion of DOTS. DOTS plus is the first step in moving beyond DOTS.

We must also be aware of the problems of HIV that are associated with TB. Although originally they were largely considered separate diseases, co-ordinated planning and implementation of TB and HIV programmes will lead to more effective prevention and treatment of TB among patients infected with HIV/AIDS. In countries with high levels of AIDS, the scale of the challenge posed by TB simply exceeds control capacities. As a result, DOTS, or any other programme focusing on one disease, will always fall short. TB symptoms are often the reason for accessing the health care system.

My hon. Friend makes an extremely strong case for giving the challenge of the global plan up to 2015 a much higher priority. Given that TB killed more people than all the wars, earthquakes, floods, armies, air accidents, terrorist attacks and murders worldwide last year, and following on from his comparison between the money needed for the global plan and military spend, does he believe that Ministers should use that comparison and take a fraction of the defence budget, for example, to fund the global plan? Should we not use such rhetoric to up the ante and get the plan the priority that it deserves?

My hon. Friend knows exactly where I stand on that. I have never thought that the amount spent in Iraq is particularly good value for money. The amount of money spent on—

Order. I think that the hon. Gentleman is straying way off the point.

I stand corrected Mr. Olner. I may have been inadvertently led into that by my hon. Friend.

I shall draw my remarks to a conclusion. Our efforts need not be focused on simply managing this disease. TB can be cured and consigned to the history books within the next 50 years if we are determined to tackle it in other countries the way that we have tackled it here. The fight against TB must be a marathon, not a sprint. It requires sustained action and attention from the international community. Just as the DOTS treatment is effective only if patients follow the full course of treatment, we will fulfil the aims of the global plan only by committing to it for the long haul.

I look forward to hearing from the Minister and hope that the Government also confirm that they will continue to play their part in the battle against TB.

I did not want to interrupt your line of sight earlier by stepping forward, Mr. Olner. I thank you for the opportunity to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West (John Barrett).

Obviously, the case has been laid out exceedingly powerfully, and I very much want to associate myself and my party with the World Health Organisation and the stop TB strategy. It is not my goal to repeat the facts and figures that have been laid out so eloquently this morning. I wanted to speak in this important debate because world TB day is an opportunity to remind all of us that no matter what medical advances we pursue in our own country and the developed world, basic diseases continue to devastate much of the globe. It is also an opportunity to recognise that the developing world pays a double penalty by being affected by poverty and disease, which so often go hand in hand.

I want to draw attention to some aspects of WHO's strategy, and to pick up on the research provided by the African Medical and Research Foundation, which works extensively in this area. Through many of its studies in Africa, the foundation draws attention to the frequent difference between what appear to be effective TB strategies at national level, and the difficulty of delivering those strategies on the ground.

Many hon. Members will be aware that many African countries, as they develop their health systems, focus on managing TB in a hospital environment, and on diagnosis and prescription. But there is comparatively little penetration and effort to tackle the disease within the communities where people live. If one considers the poverty of the individuals involved, the difficulty in accessing more sophisticated aspects of health care and the way in which the disease impacts on mothers and children and undermines entire communities, looking at the disease in a community context is typical.

I draw hon. Members' attention to AMREF's research in the eastern cape of South Africa, in the designated homelands, which is where millions of black South Africans were forcibly removed during apartheid. It is therefore one of the poorest communities in South Africa. The research showed that health personnel did not have an adequate understanding of TB management; that on the ground, locally, within the community, there were insufficient supplies of TB drugs; and that testing was slow, so it sometimes took up to two weeks to get results. The situation was made worse by the fact that TB patients did not understand prevention, the cause of the disease, or why they needed to take medication for six or eight months to eliminate the disease from their systems permanently.

As a result of that health study, approaches to the problem are changing in the eastern cape. Nurses are being trained in TB management and public transport is being provided to ensure that sputum specimens can be delivered to laboratories and back to clinics with results within 24 hours. That is completely changing the way in which that community is experiencing and tackling the disease. It falls well within the DOT—directly observed therapy—strategy that has been structured and underpinned by WHO, and which has been so effective generally in furthering TB management worldwide.

An issue that has been touched on but not developed, and is, presumably, the risk that we face most viscerally in the future, is the link between TB and HIV/AIDS. Many people will be aware that that is a growing arena for TB as a disease. We are aware that it affects the developing world powerfully, and that it is beginning to take hold in our communities.

The presence of HIV results in a high degree of multiple-drug-resistant TB. Not only do TB drugs have a tendency to be ineffective on people with HIV, but it is much harder to diagnose TB in people with HIV, especially in its early stages. That is one reason why it is crucial that research in this area does not stand still. Although there are effective therapies for the more traditional variants and versions of TB, the HIV-related strains of the disease are not well understood or managed in almost any community. It is crucial, therefore, that the funding that is necessary for new diagnostics to enable efficient testing for HIV and TB in health facilities is available to communities not only in London, but in poor and rural areas across the globe.

TB is a disease of the poor. In the era in which we live, in which we have made the commitment to make poverty history, we must, by definition, also make TB history. I highly commend what has been said today, and I look forward to hearing what the Government have to say about the support that they will give the programme. I note that when my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, West asked the Minister a question on this issue recently, the Government were unable to identify how much funding goes into TB work. I wonder whether they now have a clearer idea of how that money is being used. I appreciate the opportunity to associate myself with this debate.

I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (John Barrett) on securing this important debate, particularly considering that world TB day is coming up, which he rightly highlighted. He summarised well the totality of the issues surrounding TB, and made the significant point that it is not only developing nations that suffer from TB; it affects the developed world as well, albeit, thankfully, to a significantly lesser extent. None the less, we can ensure that we constantly monitor that situation.

The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight and confront the perception that TB is a historic disease. Statistics and personal stories clearly demonstrate that that is not the case. The whole world community—both developing nations and donors—needs to ensure, both bilaterally and through multilateral institutions, that TB is at least stopped in its tracks, if not eradicated, as quickly as possible.

I also welcome the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer). I congratulate her on her new position and I am sure that she will enjoy the role. We look forward to significant contributions such as that which she has made today. She was right to draw attention to the disparity between national strategies in many developing nations and delivery on the ground in communities. I will say a little more about that later. The hon. Lady was also correct to draw attention to the link between HIV/AIDS and the prevalence of TB. I want to ask the Minister some questions about the cross-availability of antiretroviral drugs to enable both diseases to be eradicated.

As hon. Members will hopefully be aware, the Conservative party is supportive of much of what the Government are doing in this area. We support the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and we acknowledge and support the Government's commitment to double the amount of UK taxpayers' money that has gone into that fund. However, we acknowledge, as I am sure that the Minister will, that there have been problems of delivery through the global fund to date.

We support the international finance facility for immunisation and also world TB day later this month. We hope that it will raise the profile of that debilitating and dangerous disease in developing nations, not only in the traditional areas of sub-Saharan Africa but in those areas where the disease has significant and growing prevalence, such as Asia and the ex-Soviet republics, and where the problem has been ignored for far too long.

We welcome the recent announcement of £6.5 million of funding to the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development and the commitment from the Chancellor of £41.7 million to tackle TB in India. We also agree with the G8 Africa communiqué, which said that people should have

"access to basic health care (free wherever countries choose to provide this)".

Alongside the Government, we want to encourage countries to drop user fees, which limit access to health care and are a major deterrent in developing countries, particularly for those who find themselves in poverty.

Like the hon. Member for Richmond Park, I do not wish to bore the Chamber by repeating the statistics that the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West gave in his full and articulate speech. However, I would like to add two statistics that struck me, which I do not think he used. One person per second catches TB. That is a staggering statistic. Also, between 8 million and 10 million people per annum become infected with TB. The problem is not growing in a small way; it is a significant and accelerating disease, and we need to ensure that we tackle it across the international community.

As the hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out, effective treatment is inexpensive. A six-month course costs between $5 and $10, depending on which medical people one talks to. He was absolutely right to highlight the fact that TB is a totally curable disease. We need to ensure—through such debates in the UK Parliament, and in our constituencies—that we highlight the fact that the disease is not historic, but is growing and is more greatly prevalent in all parts of the world than people's perceptions would allow them to believe.

Having said that, in Africa 45 per cent. of people with infectious TB have access to life-saving treatment. However, an untreated person can infect 10 to 50 people a year, which tends to happen in the workplace and through the adult population. That can have a very debilitating impact on the economic performance of communities, giving rise to greater exacerbation rather than alleviation of poverty. The treatment of TB can take up to eight months, during which time a person is unable to work and falls deeper into poverty, as do their dependants if they are an adult. The World Bank estimates that TB costs the average patient three or four months of lost earnings, which can represent up to 30 per cent. of annual household income.

The millennium development goals made specific reference to stopping the prevalence of diseases such as TB by 2015. The international community is a significant way off that. Tackling TB will go a long way to making a significant contribution to many of the other millennium development goals, such as access to education. Fewer children will drop out of school because of infection, to care for relatives or because they do not have teachers any more because they are suffering from TB or, in particular, from HIV.

The hon. Member for Richmond Park rightly made a point about the correlation between TB and HIV/AIDS, which is one of the issues that I want to highlight today. Since 1990, overall TB rates across Africa have doubled, and they have tripled in areas with high levels of HIV. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, West mentioned the fact that in Botswana 79 per cent. of TB patients also have HIV. It is our view that there needs to be significantly better collaboration between TB and HIV programmes, as that will vastly improve the control of both diseases.

I want to ask the Minister what progress the Government and DFID have made in expanding the collaborative TB and HIV strategy. What steps is DFID taking to ensure that developing nations co-ordinate TB and HIV programmes, that those infected with HIV are screened for TB, and that those infected with TB are screened for HIV? That would ensure the provision of antiretroviral drugs to all who need them, not just those who may require them on a superficial basis.

I want to highlight three particular issues: drug development, drug resistance and drug availability. I have some questions that I hope the Minister can answer. There have been some successes. We should not think that TB is on the rampage unchecked. The most notable success has been in Vietnam, where 76 per cent. of all infectious cases in the past year have been cured. That can be done with commitment from the international community and the Governments in the respective countries.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh, West rightly highlighted that there has been no new drug for TB in the past 40 years. The Global Alliance for TB Drug Development aims to have developed a new drug by 2010, but current estimates are not optimistic. It has been estimated that there is only a 5 per cent. chance of that. The cost of producing successful drugs in that time scale is estimated at about $400 million.

As well as research on new drugs, steps must be taken towards new methods of diagnosis and vaccination. I would welcome any explanation from the Minister of exactly what progress is being made not only towards the treatment of TB but towards its prevention. There also needs to be predictable and sustainable funding, particularly to assist research and development. What steps is the Minister's Department taking to ensure predictable and effective funding flows for those research bodies, so that they can come up with new drugs and vaccinations?

Multi-drug-resistant TB has been identified in 91 countries and is widespread in many populous countries, including China, India and the former Soviet Union. What steps are the Government taking to fund the development of treatments for MDR-TB? It is clearly more challenging and requires greater on-the-ground monitoring as people become resistant to the initial programme of drugs.

The hon. Member for Richmond Park also mentioned drug availability. It is important that DFID and other relevant institutions do more to encourage the pharmaceutical industry to allow the manufacture of generic drugs for use in the developing world. The former director-general of the World Health Organisation's HIV programme suggested the designation of humanitarian corridors, which would allow leading drugs manufacturers to produce drugs at low prices for modest royalties, giving greater access to those with limited resources in developing nations. What action is the Minister taking to ensure that TB drugs can be accessed in developing nations? He will be aware that some developing nations have placed tariffs on certain health care products. Some of those tariffs have been reduced, but not sufficiently to ensure the free access of drugs in the developing nations where they are needed most.

Can the Minister also say what steps his Department is taking to ensure collaboration between all the different interest groups—public sector, private sector and non-governmental organisation initiatives? Also, what improvements in collaboration are proposed between all the interested parties in the developed world and the developing nations to ensure the maximum impact of the inevitably limited resources that can be put into controlling TB? Are TB control mechanisms included in the respective countries' poverty reduction strategies? If not, why not? And if not, I hope that they will be included in future.

It would also be helpful if the Minister explained what supportive role the Government will play in implementing the Stop TB Partnership strategy. The 58th World Health Assembly took place in 2005, where all countries made a commitment to ensure the availability of sufficient resources to achieve the millennium development goal relevant to TB, but there is currently a $31 billion funding gap. What is the Minister doing to encourage the UK Government and other countries to fulfil their international commitments, particularly those made at the 58th World Health Assembly?

For strong health care provision to flourish, there must also be political stability. Corruption plays a role; I have debated that with the Minister at other times, and I do not intend to go into it again now. Suffice it to say that economic growth is impossible if a country's population are sick and dying. That is particularly the case in respect of TB, which disproportionately affects adults in the work force. We must encourage schemes that include civil society, NGOs, regional Governments, donor country Governments and the communities on the ground if we are to see progress towards the millennium development goal of halting and beginning to reverse the incidence of major diseases such as TB by 2015.

I want to repeat something that the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West said in respect of the campaign against TB, because it succinctly summarises what the global community needs to do. It needs to

"stimulate political commitment, financial support, effective intervention, patients' involvement, community participation and research and development."

If the UK Government are supportive of that strategy and programme, they will find Opposition Members supportive of them.

I join other hon. Members in paying due tribute to the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (John Barrett) on securing this debate on tuberculosis. Given its timing just days before world TB day, he has done the House a particular service. TB places an unnecessary burden on the developing world in particular—TB causes 2 million deaths a year—and the House has benefited from the opportunity to discuss these issues again. I should also pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman's continuing advocacy on this topic; he has not come to it fresh today. I know through his work on the Select Committee on International Development and his visits to our programmes in Andhra Pradesh and Kenya that he has followed this issue for some time.

I also congratulate the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) on her elevation to her current position. She is fortunate to have in her constituency arguably the greatest professional rugby club—London Welsh. That makes her almost, but not quite, as privileged as I am in terms of the constituencies that we represent. She raised a number of issues, as did the hon. Members for Edinburgh, West, for St. Ives (Andrew George) and for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds) and my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor). I will try to do justice to their contributions.

As all hon. Members said, there is a huge challenge before us because of the number of people who die or become infected as a result of TB. It is, however, a challenge that the international community, supporting developing countries, could rise to. There is already an internationally agreed strategy for TB control—directly observed short-course treatment programmes or DOTS—which we know has considerable impact. I understand that later this week the World Health Organisation will announce that in 2004 DOTS programmes were able to detect 53 per cent. of TB cases worldwide, and to treat successfully 82 per cent. of them. That is encouraging, but those figures also reveal the scale of the challenge that remains. We need to build on that success and do more.

A number of things need to happen if poor people are to get better access to effective TB care. Simply put, they are threefold: there needs to be much greater political commitment to this challenge, more money needs to be allocated, and we need to make better use of the existing money that is available.

Let me start with that last point. Making better use of the money means working in partnership with developing countries, donor partners, those in research institutions and NGOs that specialise in this field. I join other hon. Members in paying tribute to the campaigning work of Results UK, TB Alert and the African Medical and Research Foundation—AMREF—not least for their efforts to enlighten the House further by calling a meeting later this week. The Department for International Development is familiar with all those organisations because of their work in this area. The House owes them a debt of gratitude for their lobbying, campaigning and informative work.

Secondly, we need to ensure that we spend more of the money that is available on research, and make better use of the existing facilities. We also need to ensure that the systems are in place for the money to get down to health care services in the most remote areas and the most marginalised communities. The hon. Member for Richmond Park rightly alluded to that. We need to ensure that people who want to access the drugs are able to do so, wherever they live and whatever their circumstances.

The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness rightly alluded to the Commission for Africa's underlining how critical TB is to the health and development agenda. He will be aware that a similar message was highlighted by the Gleneagles communiqué, the United Nations world summit, and the European strategy on development—that consensus was agreed towards the end of last year. All of them committed the global community to do more on TB.

All hon. Members have also referred to the excellent global plan to stop TB, which was launched by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with Bill Gates and President Obasanjo of Nigeria. As hon. Members said, that global plan sets out a clear picture of what we need to do to achieve the millennium development goal on communicable disease. That plan makes it clear that it is possible, with greater commitment and more money, and by using money more wisely, to halve deaths from TB by 2015. We now need to move from those commitments in the global plan and the various communiqués of last year to implementation on the ground.

Hon. Members who follow the issue will know that last year the Department held a consultation on TB and malaria, in which we reviewed our spend to date and considered whether we needed to increase our spend and how to make better use of the resources available. As a result of that consultation, we doubled funding for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis—crucially—and Malaria for 2006–07. We increased our funding for country programmes; that is the direct bilateral support to which the hon. Member for Richmond Park alluded. As the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness rightly said, the Chancellor announced funding of just over £41 million for TB drugs in India, through partnership with the World Health Organisation. We also committed some £5 million to the global Stop TB Partnership. Those are examples of our work on TB and Malaria. We intend to continue to expand such support later this year.

All the hon. Members who spoke raised the issue of finance. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness highlighted the current $31 billion gap in the plan and pointed out that $56 billion would be needed through to 2015. Some $25 billion is already available and, as I said, we must ensure that that is well spent. I accept that there is a major gap in resources, and we cannot pretend that it will be closed if it is a case of business as usual. We need to maximise commitments from developing country Governments and donors, and we need to work on the commitments made last year.

Crucially, we must explore new sources of finance. Critical to that is ensuring that TB is recognised in developing countries' own health plans—a point made by the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness—and that Ministries of Health are supported in making the case to Ministries of Finance for more funding for health care in general and TB specifically, so that that money is locked into poverty reduction strategies. Of course, we do advocacy work in areas where our country programmes are strong and where we have identified particular problems.

The global fund needs to be supported if it is to maintain its share of the growing response to TB. Hon. Members who follow the progress of the global fund will know that in June there is to be a mid-term review of the global fund's performance to date, and of how the replenishment has gone. That will provide an opportunity to encourage new donors, in particular the oil-producing countries and the private sector, to play their part in supporting the effort on all three poverty diseases.

Even with the new resources that have been pledged, the $30 billion gap is a considerable challenge. Hon. Members will know that this year the international finance facility for immunisation began its work. We hope that that does considerable good in its own right, but also serves to encourage other nations to support a full international finance facility, delivering new resources for work on TB—and health care generally—more quickly.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh, West, knows that I cannot prejudge what my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will say in the Budget tomorrow, but he will be aware of the commitment made last year by the Chancellor and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to spend 0.7 per cent. of national income on aid by 2013. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will want to praise this Government for trebling spending on international development assistance since we were elected.

The hon. Member for Richmond Park asked for more information on how much we have already spent on tuberculosis. Perhaps it would help if I explained that although we fund TB control directly through a number of specific bilateral projects in the focal countries where we operate, we also increasingly fund broader health sector development plans for developing countries through multilateral agencies, including the World Bank, the European Commission and the Asian Development Bank. It is not always possible to draw out exactly what is spent on TB, because money that goes into health sector budgets helps to fund action on a range of other health conditions, too.

Let me give some additional examples of the direct, bilateral support that we provide. In Nepal, we committed some £5.4 million from 2001 to the end of next year to helping with effective diagnosis and treatment for all TB patients who come to existing primary care facilities. In South Africa, we are providing assistance on TB to KwaZulu-Natal, the province with the highest HIV prevalence and the worst treatment outcomes.

Hon. Members have referred to the often considerable links between HIV infection and TB infection. In Pakistan, one of the seven national health programmes supported by our sectoral spend of £60 million is a national TB programme. In Uganda we are providing direct support to strengthen the health system and to strengthen our response on implementing the DOTS programme at community level.

One or two hon. Members mentioned Russia. It is worth drawing the House's attention to Russia's hosting of the G8 agenda this year. The Russians have shown an interest in discussing infectious diseases in St. Petersburg later this year. As the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West, rightly said, it is one of the countries with the greatest burden of TB, and it has a particular problem with drug-resistant TB, so we have been pushing for the St. Petersburg summit to endorse support for the global plan. Indeed, when my right hon. Friend the Chancellor launched the global plan, he made specific reference to that.

I have mentioned the issue of the better use of money. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness rightly drew attention to the need better to co-ordinate the response to HIV with the response to TB. In some African countries—Malawi is an example—70 per cent. of people with TB are infected with HIV, so there is a clear case for bringing responses to the two diseases much more closely together. In some African countries, people still need to go to one clinic to get their TB drugs and another to be tested and get treatment for HIV. Clearly, that is nonsense in the longer term, and we need to support those African countries in bringing those services together.

In 2005, the G8 committed itself to providing universal access to HIV treatment, prevention and care. That commitment was endorsed by the UN world summit. As part of the global steering committee that we co-host with UNAIDS, we have been trying to make a reality of that commitment. We are drawing up plans on how to achieve that, and on how to ensure that TB is seen as a core element of the package of AIDS care.

In an intervention on the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West, my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire rightly alluded to lack of drugs and problems with diagnostics and vaccines for diseases. Those are major problems; those in developed countries have considerable access to those services, and those in developing nations have very poor access to them. We know from international research on the issue that 10 per cent. of global health research and development is directed at diseases of relevance to 90 per cent. of the world's population. That is a huge imbalance and a glaring example of global inequality. That is one reason why we need to accelerate research and development of new technologies; a second reason is to deal with the specific issue of multi-drug-resistant TB. That is one reason why we are supporting the WHO's tropical disease research programme, which includes a major research project in improving TB diagnostics, which the hon. Member for Richmond Park mentioned. If we can get those new diagnostic methods to come on line, it will mean that we can detect TB earlier in primary health services and we shall be able to diagnose it much earlier in people who are also infected with HIV, where diagnosis is often particularly difficult.

We are keen to see new drugs developed, particularly ones that would allow for shorter and simpler courses of treatment that reduce the burden on often fragile health care systems. Ultimately, the goal must be to find a vaccine, if we are genuinely to achieve long-term control.

One key way to try to ensure that new drugs and diagnostics come on line is through public-private partnerships, which are beginning to change the landscape of TB research. The need for public-private partnerships will continue to increase, particularly when embarking on expensive clinical trials. That is why, earlier this month, I was pleased to announce UK funding of some £6.5 million over the next three years to the global alliance for TB drug development. However, that does not preclude the point that my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire made, which was that we need to see, and should continue to encourage, the major pharmaceutical companies in their programmes of research into diseases in developing countries. We should try to ensure that they have effective differential pricing regimes in place to charge higher prices in developed nations and recognise the unaffordability of those prices for poorer nations and bring in cheaper prices there. I have already made it clear that this is a particular issue for second-line antiretroviral drugs to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic, but, more generally, it is one that developing countries are facing.

The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness also mentioned access to drugs. He will be aware of the flexibilities in the legislation on trade-related aspects of intellectual property—TRIPs—which has only just come into force in general terms and is not in force for the least developed and very poorest countries. We are working with a number of developing countries, including Ghana, to ensure that they can take advantage of the flexibilities in the TRIPs regime.

The hon. Gentleman said that many developing countries impose tariffs on drugs and that it is difficult to see the sustainability of such tariffs, given the huge public health burden faced by many of those countries. Nevertheless, he will recognise that Finance and Health Ministers and Parliaments in developing countries must consider that in the round. As I said in answering the point made by the hon. Member for Richmond Park about our spend on TB directly, we put considerable resources into financing health systems to help with the fight against TB and more broadly.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has, in various speeches to generate debate on our forthcoming White Paper, referred to the need for us to increase access to basic health and education services. It is worth pointing out that the WHO estimates that it would only cost approximately £20 per person to provide an essential package of health services. Many Ministries of Health in low-income countries typically spend less than £5 per person, which indicates the scale of the challenge that we face and just how much of a step change we need to see in funding from domestic budgets in developing countries and from international aid.

I draw hon. Members' attention to Malawi, where we are providing £100 million of support to its health sector budget, as part of the health sector plan, which is specifically supporting the Government of Malawi to try to double the number of nurses and treble the number of doctors that they recruit over the next six years. That is being done partly by tackling many aspects of the poor conditions in which people in the health service in Malawi have to operate, partly by raising their pay by just over 50 per cent., an increase that only came on line in April. Early indications are that a significant increase in recruitment is beginning to happen.

The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness rightly mentioned user fees for health care services. We have made it clear that user fees can deter people from accessing the health care services that are needed, that we support the elimination of health care fees and that we will put resources behind efforts to eliminate such fees. In Zambia, when the Minister of Health recently announced her intention to abolish health fees for those in rural areas, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced additional funding for Zambia to help compensate for the loss of those user fees.

In conclusion, I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West on securing this debate. I hope that world TB day receives considerable media and parliamentary attention; it certainly needs to. We in the Department for International Development intend to continue scaling up our work on health care services in general and, through that, our response to the fight to tackle tuberculosis. I look forward to working with the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members to continue the campaign on this issue.

This is a fairly sparsely-attended debate, but the issues that it deals with are none the less extremely important. I shall talk a little about the state of education in the East Riding of Yorkshire and the funding of that education system. I shall then specifically address the issue of the F40 model, which is a mechanism by which the Government can better target funding at those most in need and ensure that they receive the correct funding.

The East Riding of Yorkshire has undergone great improvements in the past few years. In 2004, at key stage 2, 83 per cent. of its pupils achieved level 4 or above in English, which represents a considerable increase on the figure a number of years before. In maths, the relevant figures were 78 per cent. in 2004 and 79 per cent. in 2005. Both are above the national average. At key stage 2, East Riding schools are joint 25th nationally.

Likewise, at key stage 3, there has been a significant improvement and, given the funding, an outstanding performance on the part of staff. By 2004, 77 per cent. of pupils at key stage 3 had reached level 5 or above in English. The figure rose to 79 per cent. in 2005. In maths, the corresponding figure was 79 per cent. in 2004. It dropped slightly to 78 per cent. in 2005. Both results are also above the national average.

East Riding schools were 17th in the national GCSE performance tables in 2005, which was an improvement on 69th in 2004, and 61 per cent. of their students achieved five or more A to C grades. By contrast, the national figure was just 54 per cent. Four East Riding schools have this year been recognised in the national league table for the most improved state secondaries, according to the proportion of pupils gaining five A to C grades.

I want to highlight the performance of Beverley high school, which is the top performing state school in the East Riding at GCSE—some 80 per cent. of its students achieve five A to C grades. We are talking about a comprehensive school achieving that high level. Indeed, 15 of the East Riding's 18 secondary schools achieved improved GCSE results in 2005.

At A-level, East Riding schools were 56th in the national league tables in 2005. The improvement over recent years in the East Riding, despite the lack of funding, has been enormous, and it is gratifying to comment on it. I congratulate the head teachers and staff of the schools in the East Riding on their performance. I also pay tribute to the inspirational leadership in the local authority of John Mager, who is the director of education. I am unsure whether he is leaving the local authority today, but some time soon he will do so. He has done an excellent job. The political leadership of Councillor Penny Peacock has also made a big contribution.

Great improvements have been made, but what could the schools in the East Riding of Yorkshire have achieved if they had received a fairer share? There could have been more teachers, support staff, textbooks and equipment. East Riding schools have consistently received funding that falls behind both the national average and that given to the best-funded authorities.

The Minister will know all about the F40 group of poorly-funded local education authorities, of which the East Riding is a member. Those authorities represent almost 16 million people in more than 200 parliamentary constituencies. Research on the national funding arrangements over the past years reveals some stark facts concerning the funding allocations to the F40 authorities. I hope the Minister will respond on that. Between 1997–98 and 2005–06, there has been no real change in the spread among the F40 group of authorities in respect of the difference among that group between the amounts that the highest and lowest-allocated authorities receive.

As the Minister will be aware, during the past eight years, the cash gap between the best and worst authorities nationally has widened. The figure is £620 per pupil, even though most commentators already felt that the disparity was too great between the best-funded and the worst-funded authorities. And yet, the effect of Government policy and formulation has been to exacerbate that situation.

Let us consider how schools in neighbouring Hull compare with those in Holderness in my constituency in 2005–06. Bilton primary school received £2,458 per pupil whereas Wansbeck primary received £2,922 per pupil. Those schools are less than a mile apart. I hope that the Minister will respond favourably on those questions today and suggest that he, at least, shares my ambition, and that of many other MPs who represent F40 authorities, that the gap should be closed.

Parents and pupils in the East Riding had high hopes for the new funding arrangements for 2006–07 and 2007–08, but the dedicated schools grant, which comes into effect next month, has not been kind to them. The two-year settlement, beginning in April, has a baseline figure for the East Riding of Yorkshire of £3,117 per pupil. In 2006–07, the figure will be £3,322, which represents a 6.6 per cent. increase. Some 6.9 per cent. of that figure will be allocated on the basis of deprivation.

The East Riding of Yorkshire is the fourth-worst-funded education authority in the country. In 2006–07, Hull will receive £3,738 per pupil whereas the City of London will receive £6,708 per pupil, which is more than double the East Riding of Yorkshire's allocation.

The situation is indefensible and should already have been addressed, yet it is getting worse. In 2007–08, the East Riding will receive £3,535 per pupil, which represents an increase of 6.4 per cent. Such increases are below the national and regional averages. Unbelievably, the national increase in 2006–07 will be 6.8 per cent., but the East Riding will receive less than that, and in the following year the gap will further widen between the East Riding of Yorkshire and the national average.

The East Riding local education authority has not stood idly by while this has happened. Led by John Mager, it has helped to devise the F40 pupil entitlement model. It is a new funding model for determining the needs of individual education authorities and schools, and it is targeted on the pupil. The calculations are based on needs-based funding—what it costs to run a school.

I am sure that the Minister and his colleagues know all about the F40 group and the funding model. The group was pleased that civil servants came to examine the model and found that it was not designed primarily to address overall funding. It is not a completely different model of funding across the UK, but it shows that by using index of multiple deprivation data and education data it is possible, within the education management system, to attach a deprivation score to each child using a home postcode.

Using that model, it is possible to pick up in particular the current injustice whereby thousands of pupils leave Hull to come to the East Riding to be educated. Many of them come from some of the most deprived wards in the country. When they come to be educated in the East Riding and East Riding schools seek to provide them with the additional support that they rightly expect, the money does not transfer with them. The F40 model would allow that.

The East Riding spends more on schools than the amount allocated to it by the Government. It is rare among local authorities to have that happen, but, despite low funding overall, such is the commitment of the political leadership of the East Riding that it has found extra money to put into schools and, as I have explained, shown that that extra money converts into improvement and genuine delivery for pupils across the area.

The East Riding is suffering because multiple aspects of the system put it at a disadvantage. Although it is right that deprivation funding should go to those in the most deprived areas, the truth is that rural areas rarely manage to command the statistical basis for that much support. The allocation of funding according to where pupils live, rather than where they are educated, compounds the injustice. There are 2,665 pupils in residence at schools in the East Riding who live in other local authorities. As John Mager said:

"One secondary school in the East Riding of Yorkshire receives 30 per cent. of its intake from one of the most deprived and disadvantaged estates in Hull. They will be expected to provide the personalised learning which many of these children will require but the proposals for deprivation funding will not provide the East Riding with the funds to support the school."

Funding allocated to the East Riding for deprivation is below the national average. Hull is allocated 14.7 per cent. of funding for deprivation. It has problems with social deprivation and it is right that additional funding is allocated to its schools, but the East Riding has deprivation of its own. The Ofsted report on the local education authority of January 2004 said:

"Pockets of social deprivation, the steadily rising inward migration from neighbouring urban districts, the remoteness of some parts of the region and relatively low funding levels all pose a challenge."

Bridlington South, Bridlington Old Town, Bridlington North, Goole and South-East Holderness are among the 33 per cent. most deprived wards in the country. Household income is below the national average.

Tellingly, a recent survey undertaken for an obesity project in the East Riding revealed that 70 per cent. of children in Withernsea had a low body mass index, indicating under-nourishment. That highlights the unfairness of funding based on a local authority border rather than on the child.

Rural areas are losing out and Government cash has been targeted on cities. John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said:

"This Government has put a large amount of additional funding into deprived areas and I give them credit for that. But in the way that grants are distributed, there are inbuilt inefficiencies because they are targeted in big areas, such as Manchester and Birmingham, and not on the individual schools and individual pupils where the need is greatest. There are pupils losing out and this is particularly the case for disadvantaged pupils in rural areas."

That quotation, which is recent, sums up the injustice of the system.

John Wilson, head teacher of Market Weighton school in the East Riding, said:

"The modest improvements in funding, though welcome, will not allow schools in the East Riding to progress as quickly as they would like. East Riding schools will be forced to make do and mend while schools in better-funded authorities are able to provide a wider range of opportunities for their students. Whether anyone will be looking at their staffing I don't know at the moment. What we would really like is a fairer system of funding."

The East Riding of Yorkshire council has brought significant improvements to its education, thanks to the hard work of many people, the pupils, the support of their parents and all the staff throughout the local authority. None the less, the gap between the East Riding and the best-funded authorities in the country continues to grow. In the F40 entitlement model, even before the reassessment of the overall funding, we have a tool that can allow money to follow the pupil, allow parents to exercise choice and ensure that support is provided to the most deprived in our society.

I urge the Minister to acknowledge that the East Riding has performed extraordinarily well on limited resources. I also urge him to consider carefully the situation in the East Riding and other poorly-funded local authorities, and to take that on board when reviewing the arrangements that are in place for 2006–07 and 2007–08 before deciding on a permanent model from 2008 onwards. I hope that we get a sympathetic response from him today.

Mr. Cummings, may I say first what a pleasure it is to be under your stewardship for the first time as a Minister? I am glad to have that opportunity.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) on securing this important debate and very much welcome his description of the educational success in the East Riding of Yorkshire. I note his concerns about education funding—I shall say more about that in a moment—and thank him very much for his comments on the F40 model and the work the Department is doing in talking to that group of authorities about their proposals.

I would like to respond to the hon. Gentleman by putting on record my gratitude for the work of teachers and pupils in the East Riding, who have been responsible, as he so eloquently described, for significant improvements in the quality of education in the county. I have a few of my own notes to add to the statistics he cited. At key stages 1 to 3, East Riding is exceeding the national average in all subjects, which is quite an achievement. For example, the number of pupils achieving level 5 in key stage 3 science and English is five percentage points above the national average.

The improvement since 1997, when the Government came to power, is impressive. For example, the number of pupils achieving level 4 or above in key stage 2 English is up 17 percentage points to 83 per cent., which the hon. Gentleman mentioned. The number of 15-year-old pupils in the East Riding achieving five or more A* to C grades at GCSE or equivalent is up by nearly 17 percentage points since 1997. Those quite impressive changes have happened during the past eight or nine years.

The changes genuinely reflect the hard work of teachers in the county. I am pleased to say that East Riding has nearly 12 per cent. more teachers than in January 1997 and almost 160 per cent. more teaching assistants. In both cases, the increase is well above the national average of 8 and 142 per cent. respectively.

Those statistics are indeed extremely positive, but why is it necessary for the East Riding of Yorkshire council to find additional sums itself from very limited funds? The political leadership locally is the prime cause of those increased standards.

The hon. Gentleman's intervention takes me on to the exact point I was going to discuss: the funding of education in the East Riding of Yorkshire. It is worth reflecting on the increases in funding in the East Riding since the Government came to power. The tremendous achievement that he and I have described today has happened because of, not despite, the record investment in education funding in the East Riding of Yorkshire.

If you will forgive me, Mr. Cummings, I have to say that that funding stands in stark contrast to the investment made by the Conservative party when it was in power, and in stark contrast to the platform that the hon. Gentleman stood on less than 10 months ago, which would have cut public spending by £30 billion.

Since 1997–98, revenue funding in the East Riding has increased in real terms by £1,080 per pupil—an increase of 40 per cent. in real terms, which equals the national average percentage increase. That record 40 per cent. real-terms increase might also have had something to do with the record achievements by teachers and pupils in the East Riding.

I want to take issue with the Minister's introducing party politics to the debate, and particularly his producing a completely specious figure of £30 billion in cuts, which he knows was not in the Conservative manifesto. New Labour's continual desire to say things that it knows to be untrue does not greatly credit the Minister or the Government whose members he serves.

We may have to agree to disagree, but the hon. Gentleman has come to the House on behalf of his party to plead for more resources for his constituency—an entirely understandable and appropriate thing to do. It is also appropriate and entirely right for a Minister to point out that when the hon. Gentleman does so, he contradicts the platform on which he stood.

That is not true.

Order.

Capital spending on school buildings in the county has also increased dramatically from £1.3 million in 1997–98 to almost £15 million in 2007–08. That is a more than elevenfold increase.

I listened carefully to the concerns that the hon. Gentleman raised about funding for the East Riding compared with that for other areas of the country. Whether we wish to agree or disagree about the overall funding of education as between his party and mine, we recognise that there are concerns about the allocation of that funding. Some argue that funding per pupil should be more or less the same across the country, and I got that feeling from the hon. Gentleman's contribution. I want to explain why it is not the same.

The Government aim to give all pupils an equal opportunity in life. Pupils from more deprived backgrounds are likely to have additional educational needs and to require additional help if they are to have an equal chance to succeed. That is why in the current formula funding system, on top of the basic entitlement, we provide additional funding to authorities with higher numbers of pupils from deprived backgrounds. If I heard the hon. Gentleman right, he said that he understands and supports the principle that those pupils in greatest need should be given the greatest support.

The main reason for the East Riding receiving less funding per pupil than other areas is that it has fewer pupils from deprived backgrounds than many other authorities. The hon. Gentleman referred to Hull, the neighbouring authority to his own. Just below 12 per cent. of pupils in the East Riding come from families on income support. The national average is about 19 per cent.

There is also extra funding for authorities in high-cost areas, because schools in those areas find it more difficult to recruit and retain teachers and other school staff. It is worth noting that the teacher vacancy rate in the East Riding is 0.3 per cent. compared with the average of 0.6 per cent. The council's own website says:

"Quality of life in the East Riding is exceptionally high—housing is plentiful and prices are lower than in many other parts of the country".

That is why the formula works as it does.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the rural nature of his county and constituency, and the formula funding arrangements give extra funding to sparsely populated authorities such as the East Riding, where there are many small village schools that are more expensive to run. The formula recognises the circumstances that he describes.

That is the situation, but the hon. Gentleman might know that, from the beginning of April, we are making some important changes to the school funding arrangements. They are designed to ensure that the money meant for schools reaches them in every area of the country and gives head teachers and governors funding stability and certainty, so that they can make better plans. Those key benefits will be delivered through multi-year budgets for schools, backed by the dedicated schools grant, or DSG. The DSG is a new ring-fenced grant from the Department for Education and Skills to each local authority, covering funding for schools and other provision for pupils.

In spring last year, we consulted widely on the new school funding arrangements, including our proposals for distributing the DSG between authorities, but schools and authorities in areas that spend more than their formula funding allocation—a situation that the hon. Gentleman described in relation to the East Riding of Yorkshire—told us of their concerns about our proposals.

Those schools and authorities were worried that, were we to pursue that course of action, over time their relative funding would be reduced. The East Riding is such an area, demonstrating, as the hon. Gentleman said, the priority that the council, as well as the Government, gives to schools in his area.

We listened carefully to those concerns, and during the summer last year we consulted again on a modified DSG distribution method that put stability at the heart of local authority funding allocations. A majority of the people who responded to the new consultation supported the modified method, as did the East Riding of Yorkshire council, I am pleased to say. That is what we will use to distribute the DSG in 2006–07 and 2007–08.

I shall describe how the DSG distribution will work for the next two years. We will take each authority's existing spending on the schools' budget as the starting point, give every authority an increase of at least 5 per cent. per pupil over the current spending in each year, and then distribute the remaining grant according to the Government's priorities for education.

Those priorities include personalised learning at key stage 3 and in primary schools; the provision of more practical learning options for pupils in key stage 4; the full-year cost of implementing time for PPA—planning, preparation and assessment—in primary schools; and the cost of the increased entitlement to free early years provision, from 33 to 38 weeks.

I want to stress that, although we have earmarked sums for those priorities within each authority's DSG allocation for each year, decisions about the distribution of funding between schools continue to be for local authorities, in consultation with their school forums.

What does the school funding settlement mean for the schools of the East Riding of Yorkshire? I am pleased to say that the county can expect an increase in DSG over current spending of no less than 6.6 per cent. per pupil in 2006–07, with a further increase in 2007–08 of 6.4 per cent. per pupil. Over the two years, that represents an increase of 13.4 per cent. per pupil. The hon. Gentleman described that as modest; I would describe it as generous.

Will the Minister be so kind as to deal with a direct point? The difference between the highest and lowest-funded authorities in the country is growing. Does he really support that? Some local authorities have very high school balances and do not use the money that they are allocated. There is no difficulty between us on the principle of supporting deprived areas, but the gap between the highest and lowest-funded is growing, and rurality and other issues are not being covered properly.

I understand the hon. Gentleman's point; he has made it before. All I pointed out to him was the fact that, whatever his views on how much other authorities receive—I understand his concerns about that—his authority will receive, over two years, a 13.4 per cent. per pupil increase. As I said, that is hardly modest. It builds on the spectacular increase in revenue and capital investment during the past eight or nine years, which has led to the spectacular results and achievements on which we have remarked in this debate.

The settlement is good for East Riding schools and good for schools throughout the country. It combines clarity on the Government's priorities for school funding with flexibility for local authorities and school forums over how they respond to those priorities. Most importantly, however, it means that, for the first time, schools throughout the country will know their budgets for more than one year ahead, enabling them to plan with confidence in support of school improvement.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the F40 group, which relates to the funding model that the East Riding of Yorkshire council is developing, supported by the wider F40 group of authorities. During recent months, the group has made useful presentations on the model to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Schools, 14–19 Learning and officials from my Department. We will continue to listen to the F40 group's views on school funding and we will be interested to see how the F40 funding model develops. Indeed, our joint head of school funding spoke at the F40 group's national conference earlier this month.

The F40 model is designed in particular to help in the distribution of funding between schools. One issue when considering it is whether it could be successfully adapted for national distribution between local authorities. That is the discussion we will have.

We have heard about the record number of teaching and support staff in the East Riding of Yorkshire and about the record investment in education. That has led to record achievement. I repeat my thanks to the hon. Gentleman for raising these issues and congratulate the teachers and pupils in his constituency who are doing so much to improve the quality of life for families and people in his area.

First, I thank Mr. Speaker for making this debate available to me at such short notice. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister and his Department for the communications between us on some of the facts of the case that I am about to present. I am also grateful to the sheriff clerk and the procurator fiscal at Kilmarnock sheriff court.

On 9 February 2006, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions made a statement to the House on the future of the Child Support Agency. I welcomed that announcement to terminate the agency, believing it to run a shambolic system that works only at times in relation to those in pay-as-you-earn schemes and which does not work in relation to many other people, particularly those in business, who seem to employ smart accountants to get out of their parental responsibilities.

The Secretary of State announced that a new system would be devised by the chief executive of Liverpool city council, Sir David Henshaw, and that the House could expect a further announcement in the latter part of July 2006. My first question to the Minister is, when does he expect that change to be implemented? I believe that it must be done sooner rather than later, given my experiences over the great many years during which I have represented constituents on the issue of the agency. As the Minister will see from the case that I will highlight, the Government need to act now to help individuals who have become trapped by the system and have lost heavily as a result of incompetence in the agency and in the law.

Dawn Rennie of Prestwick has been fighting for more than 13 years to get her former partner—Patrick Clancy of Irvine, who also happens to be a constituent of mine—to pay maintenance for their now 14-year-old son. Throughout that time, Mr. Clancy has managed to build up arrears of nearly £16,000. He has given pocket money to his son of some £20 a week, but he has persistently failed to meet his responsibility and liability to pay his child maintenance.

Liability orders were sanctioned by the court in Scotland—one on 14 August 1995 for £4,897.21 plus costs, and a second on 17 October 2002 for £12,298.15 plus costs—but little of that money, if any, has been paid. In fact, £15,725.51 is outstanding in respect of those two orders alone. Subsequently, Mr. Clancy offered a mediocre £5,000 payment to cancel out the £16,000 of debt. Dawn Rennie declined that as derisory, and I agree that the offer was derisory.

It took 13 years of persistence by Dawn Rennie before the CSA finally got Mr. Clancy to court, on the ground that if he did not pay what he owed he should be sent to jail. I hold no personal malice towards Mr. Clancy, but I feel strongly that the CSA has been totally hopeless in pursuing the case timeously.

I have to tell the Minister that when the word "timeously" is put through a spell check, it comes out as "timorously". That may be more appropriate to the CSA than "timeously". At this time of year, when we have just gone through the Burns period, the word "timorous" has a particular meaning—I am sure everybody knows about the little mouse.

The trial eventually took place on 15 December 2005, when Sheriff Ruth Anderson ruled that Mr. Clancy did not have the money to pay the arrears because of his drink and gambling addictions. It seems almost bizarre that the sheriff would rule in that way, but that is exactly what she did.

My hon. Friend has hit on a point that is very interesting and serious, because many of us have come across cases like this. The question, which is really for my hon. Friend the Minister, is why did it take so long—13 or 14 years—to get the case to the court. Why has action not been taken before now?

I think that is a question for the courts. As my hon. Friend says, the Minister needs to answer the point, and I am sure that he will.

As I said, a decision on the case was taken on 15 December, when Sheriff Ruth Anderson ruled that Mr. Clancy did not have the money. Obviously, because of that, the matter was never pursued. Dawn Rennie was neither informed of that hearing nor given any opportunity to stand as what would be described as a prosecution witness. That fundamental flaw in the system must be addressed. She has since been informed that the court's decision is final and that there is no right of appeal—a decision that I do not accept and which I do not think anyone could accept. I therefore want the Minister to consider overturning the decision. That is the second reason why I want the debate to give me some answers.

To say that I find the position that I have described totally unacceptable would be a major understatement. However, this debate is not in connection with the failure of the justice system, which should perhaps be the subject of a debate on another day. Today, I must place it on the record that, having knowledge of the Clancy family, who are well known in the Irvine area, I am convinced that Patrick Clancy will not be working for the £80 a week he claims to be. Consequently, he is making a complete mockery of the system.

My hon. Friend is going down a trail that I have trodden for quite a while. Will he ask my hon. Friend the Minister why—when self-employed absent parents can prove conclusively to the tax man that they are making only £10,000 a year, but they are living in rather a large house, with a nice sports car in the drive, and they have holidays abroad—we do not use the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 to get the revenue off those individuals? Why is the CSA not asking itself questions about why it is not chasing those people up? It should not walk away from the difficult cases.

I could not agree more. The situation is clear on the basis of my experience and that of my hon. Friend and other hon. Members. I am sure that the Minister is aware of dozens of cases similar to the one that I am describing.

Time and again, I have come across similar situations, which is why I made the point about the person on PAYE being caught, quite correctly, although it is almost impossible on occasion for the CSA to do much about the person who is self-employed. I encountered one case of an individual who I and everyone else knew full well was a second-hand car salesman. He was selling more than 60 cars a week, yet he said that his income was less than £70 a week. That cannot be right, and the problem must be corrected at some point.

I want to reinforce what my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Mr. Jenkins) said. The situation that he described has been well known to the CSA for many years. I have raised it on a number of occasions, as have other hon. Members. I sometimes wonder whether those on the Government Front Bench listen and look into the issues that Back Benchers raise. The phenomenon is not new—it has been around a long time—but no one has done anything to tackle it. Now we know why the CSA gets itself into a mess from time to time.

There must be a way to bring to book the people who are dodging the system. On the one hand, someone who works in a factory can get clobbered; on the other, someone who owns their own business can get away with blue murder. It is about time that that loophole was plugged.

My hon. Friend is right, and this is why Sir David Henshaw has a job on his hands. He will have to convince me and my hon. Friends, as well as colleagues across the House, that a system will come into being that covers the points made by my hon. Friend and by my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Mr. Jenkins). This issue needs to be examined and we need some ideas from David Henshaw long before the end of the year.

I welcome the proposal to revisit the legislation and hope to have the opportunity of making some input to it. I am sure that my hon. Friends also want some input. Again, I ask the Minister what consultation is taking place to allow hon. Members with first-hand experience to have some input so that we can have a transparent system, which we must have. The system that operates just now is neither transparent nor fair.

In the first instance, I am here to seek justice—that is the only word for it—for my constituent from a system that has consistently let her down every step of the way. I fully accept that the individual has responsibility, and that is the case that has to be made, but the state equally has responsibility. It must be shown clearly that there is some form of state responsibility. That is the third issue on which I ask for clarification and comment from the Minister.

While I accept that liability orders were put in place, it took 13 years for the agency finally to take the case to a full court hearing. As I explained, when it came to court, Dawn Rennie was not given the opportunity either to attend or to defend her family. That is plainly wrong, and it must be addressed and resolved by the Minister and the Department.

It must be said—there is no other way to put it—that the CSA has been a charter for disaster since its inception. My constituent has received neither a formal apology nor any hint of meaningful compensation. She was offered £150 as a good-will gesture when my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne) took the case up some seven years ago. I hope the Minister can rectify that either today or in the near future.

No doubt the Minister has had to face difficulties, but they are minuscule compared with the grief of those caught in the net of a bungling, inept system that has been accepted as such by the Secretary of State himself. The Government must face their responsibilities and acknowledge that the system is inept. They must address the problem immediately, not at some time in the future.

The Government have been quick enough to compensate farmers time and again—the latest occasion was after the foot and mouth outbreak. It seems that people would be better off if they were animals, because compensation is so quickly offered to farmers, but it is not offered, and there is no proposal to do so, for all the mistakes that have been made by the CSA over the years. I look forward to the Minister's response.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Donohoe) on securing this debate on a subject that is obviously important to one of his constituents. I appreciate that he feels strongly about the agency, as do other hon. Members who intervened.

I shall speak first about the specific case, on which the agency has fully briefed me. It is a difficult one and I am sure that hon. Members appreciate that I am constrained in the comments that I can make on specific cases. However, I always welcome the opportunity to discuss child support issues and to lay out the steps that the Government are now embarked upon to address in the long term the current performance shortcomings to which my hon. Friend referred.

The case illustrates the complex and lengthy processes that are often involved in securing maintenance for children. Miss Rennie has been seeking maintenance for her child through the CSA since its inception in the early 1990s. She has experienced a number of problems that have thwarted progress in the agency's attempt to secure maintenance.

The complex system for calculating maintenance that was in place when Miss Rennie first made her claim has led to a number of different maintenance assessments. However, the two individuals involved have also played a part. Claims and counterclaims by Miss Rennie and her ex-partner, mainly in relation to his income, also led to a number of revisions of both the weekly assessment and the level of outstanding debt.

Although I acknowledge that Miss Rennie has not received from the agency the level of service that she had a right to expect, it is clear that the agency has tried a number of different ways to secure the money owed by the non-resident parent. Two liability orders have been obtained in respect of maintenance owed, the first in August 1995 for more than £4,000 and the second in October 2002 for more than £12,000, and a range of enforcement measures have been used or attempted. They include a charge for payment in January 2003, the registration of letters of inhibition in May 2003, an attachment to attempt to seize a vehicle in June 2003, arrestment to freeze a bank account in August 2003 and orders for deduction of earnings in December 1993, in November 1994, which was revised in February 1995, and August 2001. All those attempts took place before the recent sheriff's judgment on further enforcement action.

Although there have been a few brief periods when maintenance was paid—mainly in September 1998 and between January and March 2003—in addition to the informal payment of pocket money to the child, it is clear that overall Miss Rennie has not achieved the outcome that she was looking for. The question is: why has that happened? It is clear to me that the agency could have acted more quickly, but I do not believe that it can be held solely responsible for failure to obtain maintenance.

When looking at individual cases, we must first consider whether parents are facing up to their responsibilities. It is not the responsibility of the CSA to provide maintenance to children. That responsibility lies with the non-resident parent. If non-resident parents met all their financial responsibilities, there would be no need for the agency to exist. Too often, debates about child support cases focus on the poor performance of the agency when the underlying issue is whether the non-resident parent is meeting their obligations. In the most recent sheriff court judgment in this case, the sheriff found that Miss Rennie's ex-partner had

"neither wilfully refused nor been culpably negligent in not paying the sum due".

The implication of that is that Miss Rennie's ex-partner has not been avoiding his obligations, but has been unable to meet them due to his financial position.

It is not the normal procedure for the parent with care to be called at the court hearing because the action is taken on behalf of the agency. Information was being gathered continuously from her and the agency case was presented by a specialist solicitor, but the sheriff accepted that the witnesses who spoke on behalf of the non-resident parent in ascertaining his income level were credible. As the judgment stands, the agency is unable to enforce the recovery of the outstanding debt.

I am sure that Miss Rennie has a view about the sheriff's ruling, as does my hon. Friend. I sense that their dissatisfaction may now be directed more at aspects of the Scottish legal process than at the agency, but I am sure that my hon. Friend will appreciate that it would be inappropriate for me to comment on that.

Surely it is common sense to say that the person who is best versed in the case was Miss Rennie. It is clear that there is a serious fault in the system. Would it not be better when an application is made to the sheriff court or High court that the individual who is most aggrieved is present in court and, at the very least, asked to make some comment?

I should not stray into the realm of how legal systems operate because that would be inappropriate. I have read through all the details of Miss Rennie's case and reviewed others as well. It is not the normal practice for the parent with care to attend court. However, it is the practice that the solicitor representing the agency in such hearings is usually in regular contact with them to collect the relevant information to pursue the case in the court. After all, the agency goes to court to take action because it wants to act on behalf of that parent. It usually gets to that point because it has exhausted all other attempts to obtain money from the non-resident parent.

I should like to take the Minister back about two and a half minutes. I cannot believe that he made the statement that he made then. He said that many people were critical of the CSA but that it was not the CSA's fault—it is the fault of the absent parent who is not a law-abiding, upstanding, righteous individual. That is almost like the Home Secretary standing up in the Chamber and saying that we would not need the police, prisons, enforcement or legislation if there were more honourable, law-abiding citizens who obeyed rules and regulations. Of course, we do have the police service, prisons and laws because we do not have such a situation. The Minister cannot come here and pretend that the problem is not with the CSA but with that difficult bunch out there. You were set up to deal with that difficult bunch.

Order. I am not dealing with anything.

I entirely understand my hon. Friend's strength of feeling. I can answer as a Minister, but I am also a constituency Member of Parliament with my own CSA case load, and I am as aware as he is of the pressures. My point was that there would not be a requirement for an agency if parents always met their responsibilities when they split up or a relationship ended. He is right: the agency exists because some parents will not face up to their responsibility, and intervention is needed to make them do so. The agency has an enforcement role.

My hon. Friend and others will know from their case load of the extraordinary lengths to which some non-resident parents will go to evade responsibility. The agency has a certain armoury of powers to go after non-compliant, non-resident parents, but whether it has enough powers or uses them to the fullest possible extent are questions that must be answered. In a recent statement in the House, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said that the CSA is not fit for purpose—we all accept that. One of the areas where it has failed and let down parents is by not having a sufficiently successful record in ensuring enforcement on the non-resident parent. I shall explain in a moment what action we are taking to try to improve the agency's performance in respect of enforcement and what we can do in the longer term with the successor agency or body to strengthen that role and ensure compliance of non-resident parents.

In replying to my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Mr. Jenkins), the Minister indicated that the CSA depended very much on the responsibility of the absent parent. The absent parent in Miss Rennie's case has been served notices at five different addresses but has not responded to any of them. It is clear that that person is not normal, as one might suggest. It is obvious that he is trying to evade any responsibility as a parent, and that is surely the difficulty that must be addressed when we consider what alternatives to put in place.

That is why the agency resorted to going to court in that case. It is not for me to comment on the sheriff's judgment—that is for others to comment on, and I am aware that they have. The agency can take the action to court, but it cannot determine the conclusion that the sheriff might reach.

The case that my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire raises illustrates one of the many reasons why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State concluded that the present system was not fit for purpose. The CSA was set up to replace a court system that was slow and complex, and which did not deliver for parents caring for children. Unfortunately, most of those complaints have also been levelled at the agency.

Throughout the agency's history, there has been an endless stream of negative stories and a constant flow of letters and calls from the public to the agency and to MPs pointing out its manifest failings. I have asked my officials to consider whether anything further can be done in this specific case, and I shall write to my hon. Friend when I have had a response.

Turning to the broader issues that my hon. Friend and others have raised, last year we asked the newly appointed chief executive of the agency, Stephen Geraghty, to conduct a root-and-branch review of the agency's operations. From his findings, we concluded that the current system was incapable of delivering the outcomes that we all desire from a child support agency. The problems are not just in how the agency operates, but in the policy and legislative framework that is supposed to support it. We therefore asked Sir David Henshaw to redesign the system. The terms of reference for the redesign have been drawn as widely as possible to allow all options for reform to be considered fully.

My hon. Friend asked about involvement of and consultation with other people. Sir David has already written to all Members of the House asking for their views. If my hon. Friends have not received the letter, I encourage them to give their views to Sir David Henshaw if they wish. He has also already formally been in touch with Opposition spokespersons for Department for Work and Pensions matters, and is expected to report to Ministers later this year.

In addition, we recently published an operational improvement plan that sets out how the agency will turn around its performance over the next three years. The £90 million investment will support the recruitment of more staff and the deployment of more staff to processing work, particularly enforcement. We will quadruple the number of staff who are dedicated to enforcement activity from just over 500 to 2,000 by 2009, with an aim to raise compliance from the 65 per cent. that is achieved at present to 80 per cent. by March 2009. We shall also consider the use of data from credit reference agencies and from Revenue and Customs.

A further £30 million will be invested in using private debt collection agencies to recover more than £100 million of historic debt during the three years of the plan. That will also allow us to draw on the expertise of the private sector. Work has already begun on introducing those improvements and will continue while Sir David is producing his redesign of the whole agency.

In conclusion, I believe that all Members of the House continue to support the original objectives of the CSA. The measures that we have announced are an important step towards improving the present arrangements and, critically, putting in place the foundations for a child support system that will have a better chance of meeting those objectives in the long run.

Will the Minister give some indication of how he intends to address the issue of the self-employed?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding me of that. I believe that in his experience and that of every Member of the House, myself included, some of the most intractable cases that present in our surgeries are of exactly that nature. The non-resident parent, who may have been in employment, voluntarily goes into self-employment and then uses all manner of devices to conceal their income level. My hon. Friend will know that parents with care who have evidence of that can ask the agency to revisit and investigate if there is evidence that living circumstances do not equate to declared income, but that is difficult for the agency, and we all know that there are plenty of devices that people in self-employment can use in an attempt to evade responsibility. We have specifically asked Sir David, in reviewing how a future agency might work, to reflect on what can be done to give us more leverage against people who are trying to evade their responsibility. It is part of the wider enforcement issue.

The present system is not working, but it is time to learn the lessons from the past and to look to a new system to ensure that parents meet their responsibilities to support their children.

As we are all aware, 2005 witnessed the unprecedented Make Poverty History campaign, with global calls to take action on debt relief, increased aid and trade justice. As my hon. Friend the Minister will no doubt mention, substantial progress was made on the first two of those demands, and the Government should rightly take credit for that. However, the issue of trade justice still waits to be resolved.

Those developments have created new opportunities to tackle global poverty, but the debate has moved on this year to the question of the best ways of achieving a sustainable route out of poverty. The Department for International Development's current policy review, which will lead to the anticipated White Paper this summer, should look at three macro-economic priorities: economic growth to create real employment for local populations; durable and sustainable tax systems to achieve a route out of aid dependency; and social protection systems to ensure that the most vulnerable in society can benefit from development progress. Those are weighty issues so I shall focus on the latter, although it is not unconnected to the other two or, for that matter, to the thorny issue of fairer world trade.

As the Minister will be aware, I visited Malawi with fellow members of the Select Committee on International Development a few weeks ago. One of our first visits was to a food aid programme that had been set up to cope with last year's partial failure of the maize crop, which forms a staple part of the country's diet. The system was being run—fairly efficiently, I might say—by a non-governmental organisation, with financial assistance from our Government. Indeed, almost 5 million people in Malawi currently benefit from such schemes, and famine has been prevented. However, I was reminded of a comment that Professor Jeffrey Sachs made when he visited Westminster last November. He said that people who visit Africa frequently comment that they can see little evidence of progress on the ground. According to Professor Sachs's figures, $38 per person was spent on development assistance to Africa in 2003. However, the cash flow that is released and which reaches the ground in sectoral investment is much lower than that figure suggests. Of that $38, $4 goes on emergency aid for food, $10 goes on what Professor Sachs terms debt relief accountancy and another $6 goes on technical co-operation, which he believes does relatively little for the developing world. On that basis, the real figure is reduced to $17 or $18 per person per annum for investment. That stands in contrast to the $70 per capita that Professor Sachs calculates is necessary to pull Africa out of poverty.

It is very likely that all the people we met on that food programme in Malawi faced malnourishment consistently and regularly, as did those who just failed to qualify for such schemes. Crop failures are nothing new, and with increasing signs of global warming they are likely to increase. However, we still appear to rely on methods that were considered outdated in our own country by the 19th century and which work on the underlying theory that we cannot trust the poor with cash. That is not to say that the current aid spending priorities are not important. Improving Government capacity at the upper levels is vital, and investment in major infrastructure and economic development is essential. Improving agricultural production in countries such as Malawi is a key long-term objective, while tackling corruption and inefficiencies in regulation must be a main priority. However, many people are falling behind and have witnessed precious little progress throughout their lifespan.

In its recent practice paper on social transfers, which was printed last October, DFID states that the number of people living on less than $1 a day is projected to rise in sub-Saharan Africa from 314 million to 366 million. Deaths from AIDS continue to rise over the next 10 years, leading to an increase in the number of orphans from the present level of 43 million. Only yesterday, Save the Children highlighted the fact that among 15 to 24-year-olds in sub-Saharan Africa, young women are six times more likely than men to be infected with HIV/AIDS.

Although change at the top of Government and in state institutions is essential, we also need to refocus our efforts on the ground to provide protection for the elderly, the disabled and children if we are to achieve the first millennium development goal of reducing the number of people living on less than $1 a day. There is growing evidence that the use of cash transfers as part of comprehensive social protection systems, which are grounded not in simple charity but in a human rights approach, can play a key role in reducing poverty and vulnerability.

In its report "Age and security", which was published in 2004, Help Age International showed how poverty in old age impacted on the whole family. In South Africa, one in three households is headed by an older person. In 66 per cent. of those households, older people care for children. The impact of AIDS means that the role of older people is changing rapidly. Many are acting as the main family breadwinner and caring for sick adult children and orphaned grandchildren. Some of the older people I met in Malawi also informally adopt orphan children when they have no children of their own.

The social pension scheme in South Africa has reduced older people's poverty by an astonishing 94 per cent. and the poverty of the population as a whole by 12.5 per cent. Research shows that even very low social pensions are extremely valuable to poor, older people. The fact that the payments are consistent and regular allows households to put money aside for emergencies and to invest in their children's health and education. That reduces their vulnerability in the event of a crisis and significantly reduces the risk of their remaining permanently stuck in absolute poverty.

A further report, which was commissioned by Help Age International, Save the Children and the Institute of Development Studies and issued last year, reviewed cash transfer schemes in 15 countries across east and southern Africa. It showed that most of the schemes had transparent eligibility criteria and were accepted as fair by community members. Those who support vulnerable children and community members are often poor themselves, so social transfers can help to reduce the burden of care. The study showed that, rather than creating dependency, cash transfer schemes are a crucial response to rising dependency ratios in the context of high HIV prevalence.

For children, specific payments that are dependent on school attendance or health care have proved successful in many south American countries. In Mexico, for example, the Opportunidades programme has showed impressive results, with improved health care for under-fives and increased school enrolment for girls, and the growth rate for 12 to 36-month-old infants has risen by 16 per cent. That last statistic is important because infant malnutrition often has an irreversible effect on life expectancy, and targeting vulnerable children, particularly in that age group, is key not only to their own long-term survival, but to that of future generations.

Clearly, many political and financial decisions will shape the size and type of social protection. However, it should always be remembered, as Plan UK noted in its report "Ending Child Poverty and Securing Child Rights", which it released last October, that

"the most marginalised and the chronically poor typically lack a voice, organisation and political capital."

All too frequently, the voices of women and, to an even greater extent, children are undervalued in decision-making processes. Donors, including DFID, need to play a part in bringing the solutions that I have outlined into the poverty reduction debate. Such schemes not only give poor people dignity and choice in their everyday lives, but form an important social contract with Government that helps to improve state accountability.

Schemes also need to suit a country's individual circumstances. For example, payments dependent on children's school attendance or on attending health facilities have not been as successful in Africa as in south America, perhaps owing to the lack of adequate facilities, which have not been able to cope with increases in demand. Identifying the vulnerable children can be difficult in countries where births are not registered, or where there are urban street children or child-headed households.

Cash transfer schemes need to be integrated into a comprehensive package of social protection measures that involve scaling up pilot projects, providing the necessary capacity to achieve effective delivery and institutionalising those measures within Government structures. The social contract between citizen and Government must be upheld and cannot be viewed just as a donor-driven experiment that can be abandoned when the project cycle ends.

Securing sustainable funding for such systems is obviously crucial, but evidence that DFID presented last year shows that although the costs are not insignificant, they are affordable if the political will exists, even for many of the poorest nations. The cost of scaling up the Kalomo pilot cash transfer programme in Zambia to the national level, to provide the poorest 10 per cent. of households with around 50 cents a day, would be about $20 million a year, or just less than 1 per cent. of the 2005 Zambian Government budget. Similar schemes in sub-Saharan Africa could be achieved in most cases with less then 5 per cent. of existing development assistance.

The current increases in donor aid, which are based on much longer-term and predictable commitments, now allow Governments in sub-Saharan Africa and other poor parts of the world seriously to consider such initiatives on a wider scale. Obviously such schemes need to be linked with policies to increase taxable income streams, so that in the long term they can provide funds from their own resources.

I mentioned the link between social transfers and trade justice. Sadly, in the current trade discussions there is far too little debate about how trade should link with labour policies. Increasing globalisation and industrialisation lead inevitably to more "churning" of jobs. If we are to encourage workers in emerging economies to take risks, we must also consider the need to provide basic social protection during periods of unemployment, so that they are less vulnerable to financial disaster and better able to make use of new opportunities created in the labour markets.

In the approach to the White Paper, the Secretary of State for International Development has placed emphasis in his speeches on the need to look at fundamental rights, such as social payments. I very much welcome his thinking on that. I hope that we can use the principles of social protection that we developed to such success in the 20th century in our new policy approach. I should be interested to hear from my hon. Friend the Minister how his Department hopes to take such initiatives forward in the coming years.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North (Ann McKechin) on securing the debate and more generally on her work on the International Development Committee and as chair of the all-party group on debt, aid and trade. I share her view that we made substantial progress on debt and aid last year. We saw important progress for the very poorest nations of the world at Hong Kong. However, like her, I hope that we shall see more substantial progress on securing the outcome from the Doha development round of World Trade Organisation talks that we all want.

I have been interested in social transfers ever since I visited the Germiston township just outside Johannesburg to see a project that DFID was funding and which Christian Aid ran. The project supported a number of women in the township and provided support to those living with HIV/AIDS. The scheme helped to ensure that orphans got into school and—crucial to this debate—that elders in the community were provided with support to access the pensions that are available in South Africa. Those pensions make a fundamental difference to the lives of elderly people in that community helping to look after those who have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS.

My hon. Friend's contribution in this debate is particularly timely, building on the attention generated by the Department's paper on social transfers, which was published in October 2005, and on what was more recently expressed in the UNICEF and DFID-hosted global partners forum on AIDS-affected children, which also considered how social transfers might best help those orphaned by AIDS.

As my hon. Friend rightly said, the Department is preparing a new White Paper on international development. We are exploring a range of options and I shall take her comments about meaningful work on economic growth, tax systems and social protection systems as a contribution to the consultation process on that White Paper. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has already made it clear that further work on economic growth will be a key part of DFID's work going forward. I accept my hon. Friend's point about the need to support developing countries to do more work on tax systems—I would see that as part of the broader work on governance—and social protection systems. There is a debate going on in the Department, and more generally with NGOs, parliamentarians and so on, about the role that social protection and social transfers can play.

My hon. Friend drew attention to a number of countries where social transfer systems are already in place. Bangladesh and Nepal have social pensions, and Mozambique has had a social transfer programme since the early 1990s. There is no question in my mind or the Department's but that social transfer schemes have a role to play. The idea that poor people cannot be trusted with money, which my hon. Friend described, certainly has no traction in DFID or on the Labour side of the House generally. If there were any doubt, the appetite for micro finance and the success of micro-finance institutions around the world should have put that to bed. The success of social transfer programmes also provides powerful evidence of that point.

There is an issue, however, about the speed at which social transfers are introduced. If it happens too fast, it can overwhelm local capacity and often undermine broader civil service reform initiatives. A gradual expansion, from smaller initiatives and pilot projects, has proved to be effective, not least in Brazil and Mexico, which are two of the examples that I think my hon. Friend mentioned. We see our role as providing finance and helping to build the capacity of the developing country Government to put in place social transfer schemes.

My hon. Friend will be familiar with the Commission for Africa, which recommended in its final document that donors should commit to long-term predictable funding of national social protection strategies with some $2 billion a year immediately, rising to $5 billion to $6 billion by 2015. We are seeking to build a consensus on the adoption of such commitments. As part of our work following last year's publication of the social transfers paper, we are developing a handbook to provide guidance and advice for developing country Governments and for our staff who work on such projects on the setting up of social transfer programmes, drawing on good and bad experiences from around the world. I hope that that will be ready towards the end of May and that my hon. Friend will see it as a tangible demonstration of the fact that the Department wants to take such work forward.

My hon. Friend is also right to highlight the scale of the challenges that face us in tackling poverty, which is demonstrated by many statistics, not least that half of Africa's children live in absolute poverty. A daily reality for many of the families wherein those children live is the constant worry as to whether the children will go to bed hungry or have to miss school because they cannot afford the user fees, and whether they can afford to go to the clinic and access the necessary medicines when they are ill.

Hundreds of millions of families worldwide live with those uncertainties, and are unable to care properly for their children or plan properly for their future. They cannot access the fundamental human rights to social security and an adequate standard of living. In that context, social transfers have a huge potential role to play in helping to reach poor families with regular and predictable grants of cash or food over a period of years.

My hon. Friend rightly pointed out that social transfers are not new. In the UK, our poverty rate would probably be three times higher if we did not have a national, tax-funded system of social transfers. In the past 10 to 15 years, middle-income countries such as Brazil, Mexico and South Africa have put in place national social transfer programmes. The most common schemes are non-contributory old-age pensions and programmes that provide cash transfers to support children and their families. In Brazil, the Bolsa Familia cash transfer programme aims to reach a quarter of the population by the end of this year.

Evaluations of existing social transfer programmes suggest that their impact has been pretty impressive to date. They have transformed the lives of millions of households and increased the incomes of poor households—significantly, in some cases. The evaluations show that in South Africa and Mexico there have been major impacts on early childhood development, with young children being significantly taller than they would have been. Clearly, the health and education of the poorest families has improved as a result of the programmes.

Evaluations of the effects of such programmes in Mexico, Brazil, and South Africa show that people are healthier as a result of their improved nutrition and greater ability to travel to and access health services and buy medicines. School attendance among those who benefit from social transfer programmes has also risen as families use the cash to send their children to school. Given the success of such programmes in middle-income countries, it is clear that well-implemented social transfers have a role to play and could have a similar impact in the world's poorest countries.

My hon. Friend might know that last October I travelled with the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton), to Zambia and then Malawi. We were in Zambia at the start of a small pilot scheme, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North referred, that provides 1,000 households with up to $8 a month, which is beginning to demonstrate the potential of social transfers in the world's poorest countries. The early results of that scheme show that families are eating more meals, fewer people are dying, health has improved and there has been a significant increase in school attendance.

In Bangladesh, a social transfer programme that we fund has resulted in a 70 per cent. reduction in the number of families without enough to eat.

My hon. Friend talked about children who are affected by AIDS, and the potential for support to carers. Given the severe challenge that HIV/AIDS poses in sub-Saharan Africa, where the number of AIDS orphans is projected to rise to 18 million by 2010, we certainly believe that social transfers have a huge potential role to play.

Let me give a personal example of the difference that social transfers make. In Zambia, a 50-year-old widow called Jesinaya Kambanje, who cares for eight children who have been orphaned as a result of HIV/AIDS, has been able to access the social transfer pilot programme. The children used to go hungry and she was often forced to beg from her neighbours. Now, as a result of the pilot, she can buy maize and vegetables for the children, and when one of them was ill she was able to take her to hospital and buy medicine to support her.

Social transfers can provide millions of children with a future. They are an investment by the state in its poorest citizens. I agree with my hon. Friend's point that by sharing wealth, the state creates wealth. As a result, children can grow up free from hunger, better educated, and healthy enough to become more productive members of society, in turn providing poor countries with more competitive work forces. By directly channelling cash to poor people, the state is recognising that poor people know best how to care for their families. The evidence suggests that they spend that cash well. As my hon. Friend says, they can be trusted to spend money appropriately and in a way that suits their needs.

Supporting human development is not the only way in which social transfers contribute to economic growth. As well as providing poor people with security and the knowledge that they can provide their children with the essentials for life for the foreseeable future, social transfers encourage adults to invest in new business opportunities. In Mexico, beneficiaries of the Progresa programme—to which my hon. Friend referred—spend, on average, a quarter of their social transfer payment on investment in micro-enterprises, giving, on the basis of the evaluation that we have seen, high returns up to 50 per cent. In Zambia, Jesinaya used her transfer to buy two chickens to invest in production, and is planning to purchase a pig. My hon. Friend will recognise that there is potential for Jesinaya to make more money as a result of those investments.

The criticism that social transfers create dependency is not a valid argument. In South Africa and Brazil, recipients of social transfers are more likely to be in work than those without a transfer. That might be partly because the extra cash means that poor people are better able to cover the costs of finding work and more likely to keep their jobs due to their improved health. There is also evidence that cash transfers help to stimulate local economic activity by increasing purchasing power, particularly in areas where the economy is weak.

Does my hon. Friend agree that social payments establish—for the first time in many cases—a direct relationship between the poorest citizens and the state because they act as a contract of payment, and that that helps to strengthen the democratic accountability of the state to its citizens?

I certainly agree that it helps to encourage the relationship between the citizen and the state. One hopes that it is not the first time that there is evidence of that relationship, and that direct democracy provides that first opportunity. However, I accept my hon. Friend's point that it helps to cement the relationship and give the poorest citizens confidence in the ability of the state to help them, and that it helps to build social cohesion in the poorest communities in that way.

Another argument that is often made about social transfers is that they cost too much and cannot be afforded. My hon. Friend referred to studies on this issue. A recent study conducted in seven African countries suggests that most countries could already afford a minimum package of social security, if it were a political priority. In all but one of the countries, a transfer equivalent to half a dollar a day to 20 per cent. of the population could be financed by less than 10 per cent. of donor assistance. A study by the International Labour Organisation suggests that if that initiative were rolled out across sub-Saharan Africa, it would cost $1.5 billion annually, which is a relatively small sum when set against the commitments made last year to scale up donor assistance.

It is not easy to implement social transfer programmes, because many countries have weak capacity, but it is clear from the experience across a range of middle and low-income countries that it is possible—

It being Two o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the sitting lapsed, without Question put.