My objective today is perfectly straightforward —to discourage energy companies from using the fluctuations in wholesale prices as an excuse for unacceptably high domestic energy bills. The issue affects every household in my constituency, particularly pensioners and families on low incomes with young children, and it causes financial misery to consumers. Today, I shall focus on two key themes: the lag between wholesale prices and retail prices, and low-income families suffering high energy costs, including families in which there are disabled adults or disabled children.

It is my intention to explore every avenue with all relevant bodies. I have written to Ofgem—the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets—which has a duty to consumers, and to the Office of Fair Trading, which has a duty to ensure that, frankly, a cartel is not operating against the public interest. The problem that I am discussing will not simply go away, and my activity will continue until pressure is brought to bear on energy suppliers to reduce the inflated prices unfairly charged to all households. In that spirit, I very much welcome the debate and the presence of my hon. Friend the Minister.

Last summer, as I travelled around my constituency, the issue uppermost in the minds of constituents was the rocketing prices for gas and electricity. The price of both had gone up substantially, leaving those consumers helpless or in debt from dealing with the problem. Of course, they had the option of moving from one supplier to another, but they were not exactly imbued with confidence in doing so. No sooner had they moved supplier than they discovered that the price had gone up again. That was a recurring story.

I carried out some research on the industry and discovered that energy companies were simply leapfrogging one another with increases. The information available to me at the time showed that average annual gas bills had risen by 63.3 per cent. and average annual electricity bills had risen by 44.2 per cent. since 2003. No other product or commodity has risen in price so steeply during that period, and energy is not a luxury; it is a necessity.

At the time, I was completely focused on how to achieve the lowest possible gas and electricity prices for all households in my constituency. I was to conclude that there was more likelihood of achieving something much more meaningful on a Lanarkshire-wide basis than in one parliamentary constituency. I contacted all my Lanarkshire MP colleagues on 13 June, seeking their agreement that the matter should be further explored, with the possibility of producing a broad strategic approach that would benefit every household throughout Lanarkshire. Only a couple of weeks after the consultations began with my colleagues, Scottish Power announced higher prices effective from 10 July 2006, which saw electricity prices rise by an average of 10 per cent., while gas prices rose by a staggering average of 17 per cent. I shall return to the current figures later; at this point, I want to develop my remarks on the outstanding role played by my parliamentary colleagues in Lanarkshire.

Numerous factors motivated us to write to all energy suppliers. Domestic energy costs are a consumer issue, and we had received complaints from constituents. There had been intolerable increases in gas and electricity bills between 2003 and 2006. Last but not least, we wanted the best consumer energy price for our constituents in Lanarkshire.

When my right hon. Friend wrote to the energy companies, did he ask them about back charging, which is the most scandalous aspect of the problem in that it affects the poorest in our society and in our constituencies? Although British Gas has capitulated to the pressure on that issue, three companies—npower, Powergen and Scottish Power—are still not complying and are continuing that scandalous practice.

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I discussed it with Energywatch yesterday and it is clearly ongoing. I hope to refer to it later, but my hon. Friend is right to be as concerned as he is. Again, the issue will not simply go away, and nor should it.

I am proud to state that the winter fuel payment was introduced by a Labour Government. Last winter, about 11.5 million people in more than 8 million households benefited from that payment, and the total expenditure was estimated at £1.994 billion. Total expenditure this winter is forecast to be more than £2 billion. There was a considerable sum for our constituent in Lanarkshire; it was just short of £20 million. The effort involved in providing such outstanding financial assistance to households has, however, become increasingly futile in the face of the extraordinary energy cost increases being imposed on consumers. There are genuine concerns about households on low incomes. Again, despite benefits such as pension credit, working tax credit, income support and jobseeker’s allowance, real poverty is now being inflicted on families with medium to low incomes.

It was agreed by my parliamentary colleagues that the aim of the Lanarkshire project was to encourage the lowest possible gas and electricity prices for all households in Lanarkshire. Lanarkshire is an interesting microcosm of the Scottish market. The area falls neatly under the control of two local authorities and contains 10 per cent. of the households in Scotland. Its economy is a representative mix of service and manufacturing, urban and rural. Poverty levels are broadly in line with Scottish averages.

In the event, we decided to write to the key energy suppliers and request each of them to submit proposals on how they could start providing lower energy prices. The timing of our letter, which was dated 23 October 2006, coincided with further sharp reductions in wholesale prices. In fact, wholesale gas prices had fallen by 25 per cent. and electricity prices by 30 per cent., so there could be no excuses for the energy companies’ failure to respond reasonably or to pass on their savings to consumers. All we asked was that they should compete on lower prices just as keenly as they had been competing in raising prices. Our role as MPs was to facilitate a transparent process. The stakeholder representatives of the people of Lanarkshire would make the decision and recommend the best offer. As MPs, we would have backed their decision on the marketing, and we were committed to an energetically pursued campaign to encourage householders to sign up to any company that was willing to make its customers a fairer offer.

However, the energy companies refused to consider our proposals or to come up with any of their own—the truth is that they simply did not want to know about price reductions. Allow me briefly to run through the responses that we received, starting with the most positive. Scottish and Southern Energy said:

“It is a well known fact that our company has made fewer price increases than all the major energy suppliers over the past 3 years. Moreover we have made it clear that if falls in wholesale energy continue and are sustained we will move as quickly as we can to reverse the price rises of recent years”.

Scottish Power’s representative said:

“I acknowledge the gravity of the concerns you and your Parliamentary colleagues have raised.”

EDF Energy said:

“As you rightly point out energy prices have risen significantly since 2003 and the main driver behind this has been the wholesale gas price”.

Powergen’s representative said:

“I understand and share your concerns about the effect price increases can have on lower income groups”.

Centrica said:

“The biggest share of customer bills is the cost of buying the gas and it is inevitable therefore that wholesale and retail price will track each other.”

It added that

“The correlation is not perfect”.

Well, we had certainly noticed that, had we not? Those replies are all very similar and depend on blaming wholesale prices for tying companies’ hands and preventing them from demonstrating any convincing social concern, despite their warm words for the less well-off.

Today, I can reveal the up-to-date figures, which have been provided courtesy of Energywatch. They show that domestic electricity prices have risen by a further 16 per cent. since the summer of last year and that gas prices have risen by 27 per cent. That means that, since 2003, the price of electricity has risen by a staggering 60 per cent. and the price of gas has risen by an outrageous 94 per cent. The problem by no means affects only my constituency, and worries across Britain are reflected by the fact that 64 of my colleagues have signed an EDM that I tabled on the issue only last week.

While I am on the subject, let me turn to the detail of wholesale and retail prices. Wholesale gas prices declined for most of 2006, beginning in March and April, and there was a dramatic drop in September, which led to a front-page article in the Financial Times. Ofgem, the industry regulator, said that it expected price cuts to be passed on to consumers six to 12 months after wholesale prices started coming down. Obviously, we are now into that time frame, but still nothing has been done.

On 15 November 2006, the Daily Record's front page screamed: “Watt an outrage”. It continued:

“Power profits up 77 per cent., their costs fall by 24 per cent., but your bill rises 44 per cent.”

The article continued:

“The energy giant’s chief executive Philip Bowman described their £483 million profit for just six months as ‘excellent’ business.”

Writing to us as MPs, Philip Bowman then berated the Government by suggesting that we should encourage the further use of public money to prop up those profits. He blamed the lack of take-up of benefits and

“the UK’s poor housing stock”

for the fact that people were struggling to meet his company’s high bills.

At the time, Karen Darby, spokesperson for the energy comparison website, uSwitch.com, said:

“Now wholesale prices are falling and supply is more certain, we urge energy companies to take a long-term view and pass on any savings sooner rather than later.”

The Scotland spokesman of consumer watchdog Energywatch, Graham Kerr, said:

“What customers care about is their ability to pay bills that, in Scottish Power’s case, have risen by 95 per cent. for gas and 50 per cent. for electricity in the last three years.”

A spokesman for Age Concern said:

“While these profits are very good news for shareholders, it will be news that is hard to bear for Scottish pensioners—particularly those struggling to put food on the table and pay their fuel bills.”

On 6 January, a headline article in The Times said: “Spending power is squeezed as bills bite”. It continued:

“Britons are in the grip of the tightest squeeze on their disposable income for nearly half a century, data from the Office for National Statistics reveals.”

It added that the

“soaring cost of gas and electricity was a contributing factor”.

A few weeks ago, on 31 December, The Sunday Telegraph reported that Ofgem, the energy regulator, had warned Britain’s gas suppliers about failing to pass on to consumers the recent drop in the cost of wholesale gas. Its chief executive, Alistair Buchanan, said:

“Going forward, as prices are falling and we have this uncomfortable lag between the wholesale price and the retail price”,

Ofgem was warning companies that

“if we start to feel through 2007 that you are wanting to keep some of the jam on your fingers, then we have very stringent powers under the Competition Act”.

He added:

“If found guilty, they get penalised 10 per cent of their sales."

I have to say that the expression “jam on their fingers” is far too polite and does not reflect the fuel poverty suffered by low-income pensioners, low-income families with children and people with special needs.

Does my right hon. Friend accept that the £103 more for gas and electricity supplies paid by those on pre-payment meters is additional jam on the fingers of a number of electricity companies? That is despite the security of payment implied by such meters and despite the fact that the users of such meters are predominantly people in the lower income brackets. Does my right hon. Friend accept that action should also be taken to deal with that jam on the fingers of energy companies and that such charges should be equalised?

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, and the point has been drawn to my notice again and again. By the nature of things, those with pre-payment meters are probably the most impoverished and the least able to pay, but they are being asked to pay more. We must focus on that, and I hope to do so later. My hon. Friend is right to raise the issue.

Like my colleagues here this morning, I am in constant touch with ordinary decent people in my constituency who are struggling against extraordinary energy price increases. Consumers need energy to keep themselves warm and to cook meals, and they need hot water. Despite the fact that the wholesale price has fallen, consumers are still faced with the sheer brutality of the power that is exercised by energy companies. If my finger is on the pulse of the public mood, as I believe, I am right to go further than Ofgem’s comment about energy companies having jam on their fingers: it is far more appropriate to accuse them of draining the lifeblood of every low-income household in Britain. Indeed, it is worse than that given the facts on hypothermia in Britain. It is wholly unacceptable that lives are being put at risk as people are forced to choose between eating and heating.

Wholesale price fluctuations have largely been blamed on the energy supply from the continent. A European Commission investigation recently found that customers in the UK and Europe are suffering because of a lack of competition between the large European energy companies that control the supply. In a recent statement, the EU’s Commissioner for Competition, Neelie Kroes, said that the report would make “uncomfortable reading” for some firms, and suggested that she will use her powers under anti-competition legislation to act against them. That threat means that certain companies may face large fines.

Ofgem welcomed the Commission’s report. Alistair Buchanan said:

“The Commission’s tough proposals today are good news for Britain’s energy consumers who, for too long, have paid the price for a lack of real competition in continental Europe.”

Of course, I welcome measures that will ease the strain on customers’ back pockets, but I believe that the role of wholesale prices in domestic energy bills is being enormously overplayed. One company tried to tell us how generous it is because its prices have been only doubled while the wholesale price has tripled, but wholesale prices do not make up the whole of companies’ costs despite what they would have us believe. The entire strain of that increase is being borne by the consumer. Indeed, it would not surprise me if the increases demanded of consumers peak even higher than the costs faced by companies. That is why their profits have rocketed unacceptably despite the increased costs that they have faced in the past few years.

Clearly, we need to ask whether competition is working as it should. Are companies becoming too comfortable in this small sector in which the price-setter, British Gas, seems more keen to keep up its prices than keep its customers? I am not especially concerned with the profits that those companies are making—obscene though they are. Nor am I concerned whether they should face competition inquiries or fines, because fines will be of no use whatever to low-income families in my constituency. My concern is that those people should get a fairer deal.

So, what can be done? In their blustering replies to us companies claim to be aware of their social responsibilities, but for the most part they show no signs of following their words with actions. The Government have made huge strides to combat fuel poverty through the winter fuel payment and other measures such as the pension credit. The tragedy is that those efforts are being undermined and devalued by the scandalous energy prices that consumers are being charged. I welcome the Chancellor’s recent efforts to encourage companies to give discounts to elderly customers and people on low incomes. I welcome also the suggestion that some form of social tariff might be included in the Government’s forthcoming energy White Paper.

Energywatch published a document on these matters last November. I hope that some of its ideas will be accommodated, particularly the one about streamlining proposals with existing Government initiatives such as Fuel Direct and Warm Front, while remaining aware that some of the low-income consumers who most need assistance might be in low-paid work. There might also be potential to extend winter fuel payments to the non-elderly poor. That was suggested in a report by MPs last October, for which I was the Chairman, on families caring for disabled children.

Another area that I would dearly like to be resolved is the increased charges that customers with pre-payment meters often pay. Those people are often among the most disadvantaged in our society, and it is deeply unfair to expect them to pay more than everybody else. There are similar problems with disconnections and back-charging. I am pleased that this point has already been raised, quite eloquently. Will the Government consider my arguments about social responsibility and include a raft of measures such as those that I have suggested—or, as I am sure the Minister will, propose even more effective ones—in the soon-to-be-published energy White Paper?

What I seek to achieve through today’s debate is fairness for low-income pensioners and families with young children—indeed, fairness for all consumers. I have produced evidence that proves beyond doubt that consumers are being treated completely unfairly and unacceptably, and I have exposed the role of energy companies’ excessive and indefensible pricing policies. I have also demonstrated that the Government have made a tremendous commitment towards tackling fuel poverty, which should continue. When I started working on this issue, I was driven by the urge to help my constituents, and that is still my aim, but this issue affects every household in Britain. I therefore look forward to the rest of the debate and to the action that I am sure will follow it.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) on securing the debate. He has a distinguished career as a parliamentarian in championing causes that matter very much to the poor and disadvantaged. I am thinking particularly of his private Member’s Bills that became the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986 and the International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Act 2006. Those causes are important to us all, but particularly to the poor and disadvantaged. It is therefore no surprise that he has secured this debate to which I am delighted to make a short contribution.

According to Ofgem, since 2003, gas bills have risen by 71 per cent. and electricity bills by 45 per cent., yet wholesale gas prices have fallen by 25 per cent. and wholesale electricity prices by 30 per cent. The problem is that wholesale price reductions have not yet been passed on to consumers. I understand that supply companies try to even out fluctuations in market price so that consumer rates do not fluctuate confusingly and become difficult to administer, but I suspect that while increases in wholesale prices are passed on to consumers, decreases are not so readily passed on.

The background to the debate is that there were sharp wholesale price rises in the summer of 2005 that fed through quickly to higher industrial prices and rather more slowly, as I expect the Minister will tell us, to higher domestic prices. The reasons for the price rise are well known: they are high oil prices and, to some extent, declining United Kingdom gas supplies. Gas-fired power stations generate about one third of our electricity. We are now a net importer of gas through the European interconnector, so we are part of the European gas market. What happens to continental gas prices will be reflected in the domestic market, and gas prices are inextricably linked to oil prices.

There are other pressures on energy prices, such as our desire to cut carbon emissions. Carbon emissions are the greatest, most significant and most intractable problem that the world faces. It must be taken seriously, and the pressure to cut emissions must intensify. That will impact on investment in power generation among other things.

It is hard in such debates, but we must remind ourselves that the most effective constraint on consumption is probably price. It is a difficult argument, but we cannot ignore it. Nor can we overlook the need for renewed investment in energy generation, including investment in more environmentally friendly forms. In the short to medium term, we also need to invest in our aging energy distribution infrastructure. The pressures will not go away; they are with us and they are bound to impact on price.

My right hon. Friend pointed out the main focus of today’s debate. We, as parliamentarians, must consider the consequences of all those issues. In particular we must consider the impact of rising energy prices—for whatever reason—on the incomes of the least prosperous in our society, such as pensioners, lone parents, students and others on low and fixed incomes. I do not really have to say that to the Minister, because he is well aware of it. It is a cause close to his heart.

My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) intervened on my right hon. Friend to make a well judged point about pre-payment meters. We are asked to control our energy consumption, and the pre-payment meter is one way of exercising tighter control over energy bills. However, that method of receiving energy is more expensive than others, such as direct debit—the obvious example.

It is telling that one quarter of all customers with pre-payment meters are on incomes of less than £10,000 a year. When energy prices change, the meter needs to be recalibrated manually. There have been delays in carrying out that necessary task, and because customers are responsible for back-charging, the delays can push people into debt that they did not realise they were incurring. Ofgem tells us that energy companies are not doing all that they can to help customers who have accrued debt while awaiting recalibration. We must remember that the wait is not the customer’s fault. Ofgem must examine even more sternly than it has done the fact that some companies have barred customers with debt on their meter from switching. It is an anti-competitive practice, and Ofgem should look into it.

I do not want to complain and then say nothing else. Such debates are an opportunity to explore the remedies as well as to describe the problem. One remedy would be for supply companies to consider the possibility of equalising the tariff between pre-payment meters and other methods of paying for energy. I also urge the replacement of outdated pre-pay meters with smarter pre-pay meters. The technology exists, but it requires up-front investment. Companies could also consider debt write-off. It is easier to advocate than to do, but they could consider it in cases of hardship, and they could also be far more proactive in recalibrating meters when prices change.

We have debated other remedies before. I have debated with the Minister home insulation, driving up building standards, education on energy use so that people understand how to keep their bills low, encouraging renewable energy production, and doing precisely what the Government and industry are doing, which is to increase UK gas supplies and to expand storage capacity.

When the energy market was liberalised, the hope was that competition would encourage people to switch. Indeed, about 4 million customers did so in the first 10 months of 2006. The figure suggests that our fellow citizens are trying to make use of the market. However, we are discussing companies that provide the function of utility, and a competition policy will take us only so far. Parliamentarians must be alert to the ever-present dangers of collusion, not necessarily unlawful but parallel action to ensure that energy company profits stay high at the expense of the consumer. The industry still has many features of a monopoly, but it produces something that people must consume.

I congratulate the Government on the steps that they have taken, but there is a further danger. The more they endeavour to help the poor and the disadvantaged with energy costs, the more tempting it will be for energy companies to put the contribution in their back pocket, rather than to accept that the Government have endeavoured to help the poor and the disadvantaged, not the energy companies. The Minister is alert to the problem, but parliamentarians must be alert to it, too. As a Labour Member of Parliament, my job is to stand up for the poor, the disadvantaged and those people who have no power. On the face of it, price reductions in the wholesale market have not been passed on to consumers, whereas price increases—and we understand why—have been readily passed on.

My right hon. Friend has made a characteristically good case in a good cause. I urge the Minister to take the issue seriously, as I know he will, and to do what he can to bring comfort to the elderly, the poor and, indeed, the students who struggle to pay such costs. They are, in the main, unavoidable.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) on securing this crucial debate. He thinks that he has his finger on the pulse of ordinary people and those less fortunate than ourselves, and I know that he does. He has a distinguished career of campaigning for those less fortunate than ourselves.

I am delighted that all the major parties are represented here today. Unfortunately, once again, the nationalists—in particular, the Scottish National party—have failed to turn up to a debate on what is an increasingly important issue, not just for those in Scotland but for the whole of the United Kingdom. I wish that at times like this they would turn up and speak up for Scotland, as they profess to do.

I begin with the issue of fuel poverty. The UK has a higher number of winter deaths than comparable European countries. Last winter, according to the Office for National Statistics, 31,000 people over the age of 65 died as a direct result of the cold in England and Wales. In Scotland, research undertaken in conjunction with Energy Action Scotland identified a clear link with poverty, cold living conditions and premature deaths.

Fuel poverty is usually described as 10 per cent. of income being spent on energy costs to warm a home. The UK Government and the Scottish Executive have made significant strides to reduce fuel poverty through a number of initiatives including the winter fuel allowance. However, we are still concerned that action is being substantially undermined by increasing energy prices, as described by my right hon. Friend.

The massive rises in costs at a time when energy production companies have seen massive profit increases has led to calls for a windfall tax to ameliorate the cost of living for pensioners. We believe that such redistribution to assist the most vulnerable in our society is both equitable and affordable given the massive profits of companies such as BP, which makes £30 million per day, and Shell, which makes £45 million per day. We need a fairer distribution of the cost of energy to tackle the scourge of fuel poverty within the UK.

I apologise for mentioning again token pre-payment meters, because I know that several colleagues have covered the issue, but I genuinely believe that if more parliamentarians were to speak this language and talk to the energy companies, the issue would become more important and they would take heed. I shall expand on what my colleagues have already said about token pre-payment meters.

Pre-payment meters are marketed to consumers as a pay-as-you-go budgeting tool. I am sure that few, if any, of our colleagues here today would use token pre-payment meters because such meters are designed for the more vulnerable and those less well-off than ourselves. Certainly, pre-payment tariffs are often the supplier’s most expensive tariff option. All token pre-payment meter consumers have a card containing their account details and transactions, which is used to buy credit at PayPoint outlets. In return, consumers receive paper tokens to insert into their meters.

Unlike smartcard or key pre-payment meters, token meters need to be manually adjusted after every price rise. Consumers will continue to buy tokens unaware that they are no longer paying the correct price for their electricity. Around 700,000 consumers of npower, Powergen and Scottish Power who use token electricity pre-payment meters to pay for their electricity are already in debt, or at risk of falling into debt, simply because their supplier does not adjust meters quickly enough to take account of price rises.

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech and he has reached an extremely important point. Does he agree that one of the reasons why organisations such as citizens advice bureaux tell us that they are extremely worried about this matter is that the people who have such meters are often those with learning disabilities, frail, elderly people or even those with mental illnesses? They are the people least able to adjust to the circumstances they face. I think that we would both agree that that situation represents an additional exploitation.

As usual, my right hon. Friend makes an extremely valuable point. At this juncture, I would like to give credit to citizens advice bureaux for the advice they give consumers on energy prices and other issues. One of life’s imponderables for me is what would happen to those people if organisations such as the citizens advice bureaux were not there to help them. My right hon. Friend has made an absolutely valid point.

Many consumers are already having trouble paying for their energy costs as a result of the 60 per cent. increase in the cost of an average electricity bill since January 2003. Most pre-payment meter customers do not receive frequent—that is, quarterly—statements of account, so they will be unaware they are building up significant debts. Although suppliers have plans to replace their token meters with smarter key or card meters over the next one to five years, 700,000 of their customers are still at risk of falling further into debt over the next few years.

Consumers with token pre-payment meters have already experienced, or are set to experience, an overnight price shock which may amount to a 138 per cent. increase in their weekly energy bill. The limitations of token meters were less visible when energy prices were more stable or—if anyone can remember this—decreasing. Price increases since have exposed the clear deficiencies of meters. For example, electricity prices have increased by 60 per cent. since January 2003 with each supplier raising its prices one, two or even three times a year during this period.

The problem with token meters is that suppliers’ recalibration processes have not been keeping track with the price rises, which means that consumers using those meters may not be paying the correct price for their electricity. That problem may push large numbers of consumers into debt. Furthermore, when the meters are eventually recalibrated a consumer may get hit with a substantial price shock, especially if their meter has not been recalibrated for a year or two, on top of the debts that had built up over the period. Energywatch are calling on the three suppliers who continue this practice to follow the lead of the other big three and end it.

I shall now give hon. Members a short case study. A token meter consumer in Glasgow contacted Energywatch after receiving a statement from her supplier stating that she owed £245, which had accrued since 2001. The consumer did not understand how the debt had been built up as she uses a pre-payment meter. The supplier had attempted to collect the debt at £6 a week, which the consumer could not afford as she is on benefits. After Energywatch, to its credit, took up her complaint the supplier agreed to write off the debt.

Consumers paying for their energy through pre-payment meters pay on average £173 more a year for gas and £113 more a year for electricity compared with someone paying by quarterly bill. For someone on benefits, as many of our constituents are, or on low incomes, this is money they cannot afford. Suppliers have done little to ease the hardship of pre-payment meter users, a third of whom are single parents with dependent children, and a third of whom are unemployed and in receipt of benefits. Citizens Advice Scotland recommends that suppliers should equalise tariffs between PPMs and other payment methods for both gas and electricity, as this would make a real difference to many of the most vulnerable people. Citizens Advice has joined forces with Energywatch to campaign to end the practice of back charging. We urge the suppliers that are still back charging—Scottish Power, npower and Powergen—to follow the good practice of the other suppliers and act responsibly towards their customers, by implementing price increases only when they manually reset meters.

As has already been said, the Government have done a great deal to help with winter fuel costs, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill said, the more that they do to help people less fortunate than ourselves, the more the major energy suppliers seem to exploit that situation.

I join others in congratulating the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) on securing this debate on such a crucial issue. With the cold snap that we have experienced over the past couple of days, hon. Members will be conscious that some people have decided not to turn the heat up to the level at which it should be for their health and security, because they are exceedingly worried about the energy bills that will result.

The energy market is one in which there seems to be precious little transparency. As hon. Members have said, some suppliers still plead the need to keep consumer prices high, when the wholesale price for gas has been in sharp decline for months. From March 2006 to December 2006, domestic gas bills rose by about 30 per cent., while wholesale prices fell by 40 per cent. Given that evidence, there is a prima facie case for arguing that the energy suppliers have sticky or jammy fingers, so we need a coherent response from Ofgem about the issue.

There are underlying problems with energy supply. Both Conservative and Labour Governments have been pretty complacent following the discovery of North sea oil some 40 years ago. We have lacked long-term investment in pipelines and in gas storage, and even more so in renewables and in conservation, and we are now paying the price of that. However, to stick with the immediate present, according to Alistair Buchanan of Ofgem, many of the current gas supply constraints have been dealt with. The Langeled pipeline and the Balgzand Bacton line are completed, open and functioning. The rough gas storage facility in Yorkshire that was damaged by fire has been restored and is back up and running, while the interconnector gas pipeline between the UK and Belgium has been upgraded. With all those projects, the UK will, at least from February onwards, receive an additional 140 cu m of gas a day, as compared with last summer. If we add to that the absence of severe weather disruptions such as last year’s hurricane in the United States, it becomes even harder to understand the current pattern of consumer pricing for gas and—as that gas flows through—electricity bills.

One hears a variety numbers—it is a soul-destroying fact that, as far as I can see, every organisation measures things differently. However, the average household now faces a bill of some £1,000 a year for its energy. Energywatch estimates that the standard credit energy bill in Britain is £642 for gas and £388 for electricity, giving a total of £1,030. For many people that is about to get worse. British Gas, with its most exquisite sense of timing, has announced that it will charge £5 for late payments of bills. The company says that it will not charge the most vulnerable, but I am always curious about the definition of “vulnerable”.

Many people have been surviving because bills have been capped under various schemes from the energy companies, although such capping is offset in the financial markets, so it is not a gift horse from the companies. Powergen and Scottish Power’s deals rolled off at the end of 2006, and British Gas’s deal rolls off in April. Some households will experience a 70 per cent. increase in their bills as the capping programmes come to a close. We all recognise that new investment in infrastructure is vital, but Ofgem has allowed an increase in the return on capital to the energy suppliers, which will rise from 4.2 per cent. to 4.4 per cent. It is estimated that that will mean a further £10 on gas bills and £2 to £3 on electricity bills. In a time of rising prices, all that is compounding an already unacceptable situation.

The consumer is worse hit than that, because prices roll through into the inflation figures. Energy prices are a key component of inflation pressure through the consumer prices index and the retail prices index, with the resulting fear that increases will lead to higher wage demands and wage pressure. Indeed, that was a major part of the Bank of England’s decision to raise interest rates to 5.25 per cent. earlier this month. Many people think that they will rise to 5.5 per cent. next month, which will also hit both the poor and the well-off consumer.

The right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend (Mr. Brown) and the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, North (Jim Sheridan) talked about fuel poverty. The number of vulnerable households in fuel poverty has doubled in the past two years, as the Minister will be well aware, to about 2 million. I should be interested to hear whether the Minister thinks that the Government target of eliminating fuel poverty by 2010 is now even feasible, given the recent rise in prices and the behaviour of the energy companies.

We have also had an extensive and helpful discussion about meters and the problems in recalibration. There are about 1 million token meters in the UK. I asked Energywatch what it thought the differential was between the typical householder paying by token and those paying by direct debit, and the answer was £180 a year, which is a rather different figure. That means that the winter fuel allowance for some is gone in one fell swoop. That is a huge differential. I struggle to think of any other retail industry that charges its highest prices to the least well-off and its lowest prices to the better-off. That is a complete reversal.

The programme for smart metering, which could resolve the problem and put the energy companies in a position to charge the most vulnerable the same prices as the better-off, has been moving at a snail’s pace. That issue must be tackled. I have written to British Gas, Scottish Power, npower and Powergen, which are the four companies that are charging back charges for deferred recalibration, to ask why on earth they are following that practice. The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, North was eloquent in discussing those issues. Scottish and Southern Energy Group and EDF Energy do not feel the need to impose those back charges on people.

Just to clarify, my understanding is that as a result of political pressure British Gas has come round and is refusing to implement back charges.

I very much thank the hon. Gentleman for that. He is more up-to-date on the issue than I am, and I bow to his more pertinent knowledge.

Three companies are still engaging in back charging, however. As the hon. Gentleman said earlier, for many people, choosing the meter is a way of managing their budget—it is a responsible act to take, not an act of carelessness or something that they do because they cannot be bothered. Choosing a meter is an attempt to budget and manage properly on a small income. It is completely unacceptable then to find that a debt is accrued because of that, through no fault of one’s own. The companies ought to end the practice immediately. I can see absolutely no justification for it. Smart metering should be rolled out as a priority. That topic is essential, so I hope that we shall hear a great deal more about it when the energy White Paper comes forward. I shall be interested, too, to see what the companies will say when one day they get round to responding to my letters.

The right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend raised the issue of the environment, which is important in the context of energy pricing. We all recognise that energy from high-carbon sources is a key element of climate change. Prices for such energy will rise in the future, but that ought to be in the context of declining energy bills. Sometimes we confuse those two. British homes are exceedingly inefficient in the way that they use fossil fuels. If we had the same levels of home energy efficiency as for example Sweden—which is a far colder country, so we cannot say that the difference is caused by climate—the typical household would save £770 a year on its fuel bills and we would not be having this discussion at all. Domestic energy use accounts for about 20 per cent. of the UK’s total carbon emissions. If price rises were accompanied by bills that were reducing because of funding for a major conservation programme, major new efficiencies and safety nets for the most vulnerable and because of a surge of investment into renewables and new technologies, we would be responding differently today.

As consumers see energy price rises as a way for companies to take advantage and become wealthy at their expense, my great fear is that they will have a cynical reaction to all proposals that would lead to energy price rises and regard all such proposals as a cover for increased profitability, rather than part of a coherent climate change strategy and a mechanism that could lead to lower bills, even if energy prices rose on a cubic metre basis.

As we are well aware, energy suppliers have a regulatory requirement to promote energy efficiency. However, the conundrum is that they still make far more money from increasing energy prices than from trying to persuade people to be more efficient.

A great deal has been said about the European Union. Last winter, imports from Belgium were extremely scarce, despite the lure of high prices in the UK. The European Commission expressed serious concern about Governments who hoard or divert supplies of liquefied natural gas and we have all welcomed its dramatic action, which included raiding the offices of European gas suppliers. That made clear how serious the Commission is about the issue. It also launched anti-trust investigations. I welcome its strongly worded statements that consumers and businesses are losing out because of inefficient and expensive gas and electricity markets.

However, it is important to say that in the UK we should not be complacent. Continental Europe is managing many of its markets inefficiently, but that does not mean that the UK market is satisfactory. I asked Energywatch whether I could see in graph form, which I sometimes find easier to understand, the pattern of wholesale and retail energy price rises for the past few years, the one charted against the other. I know, Mr. Amess, that we cannot show exhibits in these debates, but a visual scan shows something remarkable. As we know, energy companies buy ahead in the market, and that is an argument for the lag in reducing prices. However, when wholesale prices are rising, the lag on those graphs looks exceedingly small. In fact, the companies sometimes seem to be leading, rather than lagging. It is a curious pattern. Yet as wholesale prices decline, the lag looks very long; there seems to be very little balance between the two.

More worrying, however, is that the energy companies are moving in lock step. The companies have different capital structures. There are different degrees of vertical or horizontal integration in the industry, and different customer mixes. Prima facie, I would expect a variety in the pattern of energy purchases and pricing strategies, but I do not. There are six companies in the UK market today, down from 22 only a few years ago; not a single one of those consolidations was examined by the Competition Commission. Now the pricing patterns seem rather unexpected.

Comparing our situation with that of continental Europe is comparing worse with bad. Ofgem has the power to fine companies 10 per cent. of global revenues if they are pricing inappropriately or lack competitiveness, or it can refer companies to the Competition Commission. It strikes me that it is extremely shy of taking such action. Ofgem’s typical answer is to tell consumers to switch to another supplier. However, as others have said, the gains made from doing so tend to be extremely short-term: one switches to another company because it projects that it will provide a lower price next year, but price changes follow. To expect consumers to be checking and switching virtually on a monthly basis is completely unrealistic.

When looking at the graphs that I described a moment ago, it is easy to see that the whole industry pretty much realigns itself according to the patterns of British Gas. That was certainly true last March. British Gas has promised that it will cut prices some time this year, but that strikes me as a soft statement—not one on which I, as a consumer, would wish to hang my hat.

I have asked the Minister to consider a number of things, particularly the vulnerability of those in fuel poverty, issues of metering, the potential for smart meters and better ways to increase household efficiency across the field of energy. He should also look again at his powers to refer companies to the Competition Commission. If Ofgem will not act, the Minister can. I recommend that he looks at the detail that Energywatch allowed me to look at. He should look at those pricing patterns and consider whether we need to act far more strongly. I ask him to take that into consideration.

It is a great pleasure to take part in a debate in which all who have spoken have made extremely constructive and thoughtful contributions. Like others, I congratulate the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) on his speech and particularly on how he has worked with his colleagues in Lanarkshire to ensure that they have the maximum joint impact on behalf of their constituencies. That is a lesson to us all on how to achieve more by working together.

The problems that we are addressing would have been much worse had it not been for the mild period in the run-up to Christmas. Given the climate today, it may seem a long time ago, but December was extraordinarily mild. Had it not been, people’s bills would have been higher and the problems worse.

I listened with care and interest to the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East and Wallsend (Mr. Brown), who made some extremely valid points. At times, we all see him as the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s representative on planet earth. Perhaps underlying his comments was a hint that when the Chancellor eventually takes over, he will introduce a windfall tax, a commitment explicitly called for by the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, North (Jim Sheridan); I am not sure why Scottish constituencies have such long names.

However, I would exercise caution. The hon. Gentleman talked about taxing BP on its global profits for what is essentially a British issue. We have to be very careful with global companies, which can move elsewhere. I think that one of the first things that BP would do would be to stop its investment into seeing whether carbon capture and storage can be made to work. Policies such as the hon. Gentleman’s can often have unintended consequences, so we need to exercise significant caution.

We have heard that the DTI has set targets for eliminating fuel poverty in vulnerable households and also that we have moved further away from that in recent years. It has been estimated that the total number of vulnerable households in fuel poverty will have risen by about 1 million between 2003 and 2006. The biggest contribution has not been Government measures but the era of lower, sometimes falling, fuel costs. That took many people out of fuel poverty. In exactly the same way, prices have been rising sharply and that has brought many more people back into fuel poverty.

The DTI estimates that for every 1 per cent. of fuel price increase, 40,000 homes are pushed into fuel poverty. Energywatch estimates that the number of fuel-poor households in Britain will soon top 4 million and the Government look set to miss their target of eliminating fuel poverty in all vulnerable households by 2010. Those increases mean that people on an average income are feeling the pinch, as average household energy bills now top £1,000 a year. However, without any doubt the biggest effect of the price rises is still on consumers on lower and fixed incomes and those who do not have the financial flexibility to accommodate large hikes in the bills. It always strikes me as rather peculiar that the more energy one uses the lower one’s bills become. The first few units are charged at a higher price than the subsequent units, which means that those who are in single households or trying to be cautious about the amount of fuel that they use end up paying a higher price per unit than those who are more profligate with electricity or gas.

The debate has focused clearly on the significant increases that have taken place: a 94 per cent. increase in household gas bills and a 60 per cent. increase in electricity bills between 2003 and 2007. Those are huge increases, and understandably an issue of great concern to us all. I also understand the concerns that have been expressed about pre-payment meters and I am certainly concerned that several companies, particularly those that have been mentioned in the debate—npower, Powergen and Scottish Power—are continuing the practice.

I am disappointed to hear that the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) has not had a reply to her letters. I wrote before Christmas and had a reply almost by return, so maybe she wrote only yesterday and the companies have not had a chance to reply. I received a comprehensive response to the concerns that I raised and was left in no doubt that the companies want to end the practice. However, they say that it will take time. The meters need to be replaced, and we need to have more effective smart metering and meters that can be read or changed automatically without access to the properties. In some cases, people have been left for years without a visit to correct the calibration of their meters. That is simply unacceptable. Something the Minister might consider discussing with Ofgem is whether there should be a cut-off period for back-charging. If the companies have not addressed the issues within a period of some weeks, they should not be able to back-charge for anything beyond that period. The companies clearly have the ability to bring the practice to an end and they must do so as quickly as they can.

Liberalised energy markets have provided the UK with some of the cheapest energy in Europe for much of the past decade. However, that has changed in recent years as the UK system is much more open to changes in pricing on the international market than, say, France or Germany. We have seen markets where prices have gone up, and previously they have gone down, too. That is the way in which the market works. Ofgem has strong powers in this area, and it must use its powers to intervene if it feels that there is an unacceptable time lag between the price on the wholesale market going down and the reflection of that in the prices charged to consumers.

We have seen a remarkable amount of flexibility and we need to understand why that has happened. The issue in this country is often that the gas is bought on the spot market or the wholesale market many months before it is used, so there will inevitably be a time lag. Our concern is about how long that time lag should be rather than if it takes place at all. That links into the issue of storage. Historically, we have needed less storage than other countries because when we had all the gas that we needed domestically we could simply pull it out of the North sea and use it as required on demand. As we have now become a net importer of gas, we need more storage facilities.

The Government have been slow to deal with some of the issues, although they are now getting the situation more on track. Until recently, the UK had only about 11 days’ storage for gas compared to an average of 55 days’ storage in Europe. Connections such as the Langeled pipeline and some of the new facilities that have been brought on stream will address those issues before long. This winter will certainly be less tight on gas than last winter, and when Langeled is operating in full capacity in the course of this year the problems should significantly be addressed. I dare say that it will be some time before any Minister says again that we are awash with gas, as the Minister said last year.

The debate is set against a background of rising energy prices, and that is a global issue, but mention has also been made of the importance of tackling climate change. We must understand that some green means of generation will be more expensive than some of the cheap sources of energy that we have had in the past. If coal is to have a future, it has to be dealt with in a different way through carbon capture and storage. That will significantly push up the cost of generating electricity using coal. If, as we do, we all want to see new, green forms of electricity generation coming on stream, we have to accept that some of them will be more expensive than the forms that we have traditionally been used to.

Oil prices doubled between 2004 and 2005 as global demand increased and peaked at more than $75 a barrel in August last year. The price of gas is a critical factor in determining the price paid by the grid for electricity generation, as gas contracts are often linked to oil prices. Rapid increases in the oil price thus have an immediate effect on gas and electricity bills.

A number of factors are involved, but at the heart of addressing the problem to achieve a long-term solution is liberalisation. Disproportionate pressure has been put on the liberalised markets, particularly in the UK, because of the lack of action by some of our European colleagues. Indeed, the lack of effective liberalisation in continental gas markets could cost end users of gas as much as £10 billion a year, as estimated by Global Insight in August 2005.

We wait with interest to learn what the European Commission has to say about the large European so-called national champions and what it intends to do about those over the coming year. Energywatch has said that it believes that the root of the problem lies in uncompetitive wholesale gas markets, and has called for action to deliver liberalised European energy markets and greater import and storage capacity. We welcome the work of the European Commission to investigate the need for liberalisation in the European energy market. There are significant problems with the arrangements in Europe, including a high degree of market concentration and vertical foreclosure and a lack of transparency and market integration. Those are terms that will not be widely understood, but the issues need to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

A major factor behind the increasing cost of fuel and energy for the domestic user is a dwindling supply of North sea gas and oil. The Government have estimated that the UK will be a net importer of oil on a sustained annual basis by 2010. Now, more than ever, we rely on gas and oil from abroad and must act wisely when satisfying the balance between price and reliability of source. Without policy changes, investment in future energy policy will be in new gas-fired power stations, but just because a new gas-fired power station is built that does not mean that there will be the gas to fuel it. Indeed, some estimates suggest that there will be a demand for four times as much gas as will be available.

We have heard about the impact of the prices on individual households and people. The points have been well made and they are issues that we all understand. I wanted to make more points, but it is important that the Minister is given a significant amount of time to respond to those points and to explain what additional steps the Government can take to address them.

I thank the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) for giving me the time that is required to respond to this important debate. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) on securing the debate at a timely moment. My right hon. Friend has an unrivalled reputation in this House for his concern about care in the community—I use that term to refer to social services and social work issues and also more generically to refer to his concern about his constituents and the most vulnerable in our countries. I want to emphasise that the Government take that concern very seriously. It has been of personal concern to me throughout my career, and this is an important opportunity for us to discuss the range of issues that contribute to those difficulties.

We need to put the subject in a global context. There is a huge global hunger for energy. The emerging economies about which we hear so much—China, India and the others—need fuel to fuel their economies. That is why worldwide prices have increased, often quite dramatically. In the last calendar year we saw the price of a barrel of oil sky-rocketing to record levels. That price has now eased. It is a reasonable prediction to say that the era of cheap energy has gone for ever.

Last winter, gas supply was tight due to the faster than expected decline in North sea production and the gap between the new import projects that were being put in place. That led to high gas prices and in turn to high electricity prices.

I said that we were awash with gas because I felt that it was my duty to report accurately to the House that we were indeed awash at the time. I seem to recall certain people—not the hon. Gentleman but outsiders—saying that we were heading for a three-day week because of energy shortages. I do not think that I have heard any apology for their acting as Jeremiahs last winter; it was totally inappropriate.

The market has responded and is responding to expected tight supply by delivering new import infrastructures. As has been noted, they include the Langeled pipeline with supplies from Norway, which is hugely significant, the Balgzand Bacton pipeline with supplies from the Netherlands, and a further upgrade to the Belgian interconnector. The Teesside liquefied natural gas importation project is also due to commission shortly. Also significant is that long-term gas storage at the so-called Rough storage facility has, after a disastrous fire, returned to use. I had the opportunity to visit it at the end of last year, and I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the workers who, in difficult and hazardous circumstances got that storage facility back into action, to the benefit of the British public and our economy.

The gas supply situation is therefore easier than it was last winter. That, combined with lower demand due to relatively mild weather so far—although it is colder this week—has resulted in significantly lower wholesale gas prices than we had last winter. However, as we heard, many customers still face high energy bills. The United Kingdom has an independent regulator and competitive markets in order to ensure that consumers get a good deal. In addition, the Government make special provision to help vulnerable customers.

Britain's energy market is regulated by the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, the independent regulator. Ofgem’s key role is to ensure competitive energy prices for consumers. Ofgem has wide-ranging powers to act if need be. It can fine companies up to 10 per cent. of annual turnover if it finds evidence of anti-competitive behaviour. It can also refer the market to the Competition Commission if it finds evidence that competition is not working. Ofgem has said that it will be keeping a close eye on suppliers in order to ensure there is no undue delay in passing on substantial reductions in wholesale prices. I very much welcome that.

However, Ofgem has indicated that there is typically a six to nine month lag between changes to the wholesale price, both up and down, and changes to the domestic price. As has been noted, that is because energy companies buy their gas several months in advance in order to ensure they have enough to meet customers’ needs. Evidence shows a lag between increases in the wholesale price of gas and increases in domestic retail prices. For example, wholesale gas prices rose sharply in November 2005 and remained high for several months. There was no immediate or concurrent increase in domestic tariffs at the time, although domestic prices did rise during 2006. I am pleased to note that one or two suppliers have already announced their intention to reduce their prices as soon as possible. I would expect, in our competitive energy market, that others will follow suit. In the light of this important debate, and given the strength of feeling, early announcements from other companies would be welcome.

We should remember that we have one of the most competitive energy markets in the world. Until fairly recently, UK consumers had benefited, over a sustained period, from the lowest energy prices in Europe. Even with the latest price rises, UK domestic electricity prices, including taxes, are below the EU median level; and domestic gas prices remain the lowest in Europe. I am not sure that many will believe me when I say that, but those are the facts as we understand them. However, we recognise the impact of gas and electricity prices at their current levels—and they differ considerably from one household to another. How can we minimise the impact of those prices, and what are the Government doing to help those least able to afford them?

Customers may be able to reduce their energy costs by switching supplier. We strongly encourage that in a competitive market. It may also be possible to reduce energy costs by implementing energy efficiency measures. That is good for the environment as well as for our wallets or purses. Affordable heating is of key importance, particularly for the more vulnerable in our communities, and we have taken a number of important measures, which were acknowledged by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill.

Warm Front—its equivalent in Scotland is the Central Heating Programme and Warm Deal; in Wales, it is the Home Energy Efficiency scheme; and in Northern Ireland, it is the Warm Homes scheme—is the Government's key programme. All those programmes provide free central heating and insulation measures to qualifying households. Although Warm Front provides help for individual homes, in his pre-Budget Report, the Chancellor announced an additional £7.5 million to help develop and deliver more concentrated local initiatives such as Warm Zones. Those are co-funded by regional development agencies’ community interest companies. Delivery of those programmes is being piloted in the north-east and in Yorkshire and Humberside.

We also heard about winter fuel payments. I know from my constituents how welcome it is to receive £200—for those over 80, it is £300—in that rather critical period just before the winter. Other benefits have been acknowledged. I highlight the importance of pension credits, which successfully give a great deal more money to the older elderly, many of whom are women, vulnerable and live alone.

We heard a good deal, understandably, about back-charging this morning. The delay by suppliers in recalibrating pre-payment meters that use tokens rather than keys can cause problems for customers who are suddenly faced with sharply rising payments. I welcome the fact that Scottish and Southern Energy Group and British Gas have agreed to waive any rises until the meters are physically recalibrated. I know that Ofgem is working with other suppliers on that issue and that suppliers are phasing out token meters. I am sure that companies will want to listen to what has been said today.

In March, we will publish the energy White Paper. It will expand and take forward the themes and issues outlined in our Energy Review. It will include the question of allowing everyone to be confident of being able to heat their home properly. The House will appreciate that I cannot pre-empt the content of the White Paper on fuel poverty or other issues, but I have heard and absorbed what has been said about corporate social responsibility and social tariffs.

There has been much discussion about European Union liberalisation. All that I would say on that important issue is that we are pleased by the progress being made by the Commission. The lack of gas flowing through the interconnector last winter, when the British economy and the British public needed it, was a matter of concern. We are pleased by the tough action being taken by the Commission, which includes the seizure of documents in dawn raids on the offices of big European energy companies. Although there is much to be done, the Commission is now moving in the right direction.

It has been a significant debate. Understandably, much of our energy policy focuses on energy security—the supplies that we need in the energy environment of a difficult and challenging world. A complementary debate is taking place on global warming and climate change. However, a third issue is of great importance—namely, that our constituents, particularly the most vulnerable, the elderly and others in difficult circumstances, should have their energy supplied at a not unreasonable cost, with the right to live in warm homes.

Once again, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill, given his great track record, on securing this important debate. The issue is vital to many of the most vulnerable in our society.

I was delighted to discover that I was successful in securing this debate on the funding of Greater Manchester police. I feel certain that all hon. Members will agree that police funding is important, even if hon. Members from different parties have varying opinions on how much funding is required, how many police officers are needed and how to strike the correct balance between police officers and police community support officers on our streets.

I pay tribute to the work of the local police in Manchester, particularly in my area of south Manchester where Chief Superintendent Alan Cooper has an excellent team of police officers and staff who are committed to protecting local people. I give a special mention to Sergeant Paul Kinrade, Sergeant Brian Ogilvie, Police Constable Alan Dean and the crime reduction adviser Steve Hobson, all of whom show a real commitment to community policing in south Manchester.

There is significant good will among local people towards the police, but unfortunately that good will is running thin, not because the police are not doing their job properly, but because they are struggling to deal with the increasing workload. Nearly all the complaints that I have received about Greater Manchester police concern the time that it takes to respond to an incident, which is sometimes several days for a burglary or a low priority incident. In addition, people have not seen police officers or community support officers on the streets in their area for a long time.

Last week, representatives from the 43 police forces in England and Wales warned of a looming cash shortage. The Police Federation has claimed that 999 calls will take longer to answer and that the number of fully trained officers will be reduced. That predicted crisis is due to a curb on spending that is keeping increases down to inflation levels following previous increases in police funding.

Jan Berry, chair of the Police Federation, said:

“If you're going to increase police numbers you have to make sure you've got the money to maintain that.”

The Association of Chief Police Officers and the Association of Police Authorities point out that the effective freeze on funding will not cover the increased demands on service and have argued that an annual increase of at least 5 per cent. is required just to stand still. That is simply because of the increasing demands on our police, such as the additional 3,000 new offences since 1997.

Michael Todd, the chief constable of Greater Manchester, said that Manchester needs at least 8,000 officers to police the streets effectively, and that ideally he would like more than 10,000. In the current financial year, around the Christmas period the number of police officers stood at 7,849. That is more than 100 fewer than the number quoted to the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) in response to a parliamentary question, in which the figure was 7,959. The actual number, 7,849, is much lower than the figure that Michael Todd has said he requires. In fact, numbers are more than 100 below what the Government have set as the minimum level of policing in Greater Manchester. According to the chairman of the police authority, Greater Manchester police could be fined around £27,000 per officer for each officer below that minimum number. I hope that the Minister will give hon. Members an assurance that that will not be the case.

During the last set of local elections in May 2006, the Labour party in my constituency dishonestly claimed on leaflets that the number of police officers would increase this year by 143. In the council chamber, Labour councillors claimed that the reduction in police numbers was not really a cut because Greater Manchester police would simply not replace officers that were leaving or retiring. That is new Labour spin worthy of the Minister himself or any other competent Minister.

On 21 December, along with my three Greater Manchester Liberal Democrat colleagues—my hon. Friends the Members for Rochdale (Paul Rowen), Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell) and Cheadle (Mark Hunter), who I am glad to see are in the Chamber—I met the independent chairman of the police authority, Derek Osbaldestin, to discuss the looming budget crisis. He admitted that we are facing a deficit of £1.3 million for the coming financial year, but that there is a projected shortfall of £25.9 million for 2008-09 and £12.2 million for 2009-10.

Will the hon. Gentleman accept the figures that I recently received from the Greater Manchester police authority on the 2007-08 budget? Although, as he rightly says, a gap of £1.3 million was identified at the time of the briefing that he has, funding from the neighbourhood policing review delivered £1 million of additional funds and the council tax base adjustment delivered an additional £300,000. The gap has been closed and the budget is balanced for next year.

It is certainly the case that the chairman suggested that the budget deficit for the next financial year would not be a problem. However, he categorically stated that there would be a significant problem for the following year, 2008-09.

Does the hon. Gentleman accept what Greater Manchester police said about the budget of 2008-09, which is that changes to Government policy relating to the crime fighting fund adjustment, counter-terrorism and police community support officers funding has enabled the delivery of significant savings compared with that predicted and has significantly reduced potential shortfalls? The Greater Manchester police authority chair is very happy that the Government have listened to APA and ACPO and changed the policy to the benefit of police authorities and Greater Manchester police.

When we met the independent chairman, he made it clear that the figures were incredibly high and related to a work in progress. However, he did not see any way that the full shortfall proposed for 2008-09 could be met.

The figures are here in black and white. It is not the chief constable crying wolf; the figures relate to the resources required to maintain the service. For example, £1.5 million is needed for the tactical fire arms unit to ensure appropriate support in dealing with volume crime reduction, major events and counter-terrorism. There will be a £2.4 million loss of funding for mandatory drug testing and an additional £100,000 is required for the gang unit to address the increase in gang activity and shootings. Some £500,000 more will be needed for intelligence officers to maintain the excellent and improving grading from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary.

The Liberal Democrats in Greater Manchester have been fighting the case for our underfunded police force and I draw hon. Members’ attention to the early-day motion in my name, and the names of my hon. Friends and other hon. Members, which highlights the projected shortfall and calls on the Government to stop financially penalising Manchester to the tune of £14 million this year and £35 million in total.

My early-day motion states:

“That this House is concerned that the Greater Manchester Police Authority Independent Chairman has confirmed that Greater Manchester faces a projected budget shortfall of £1.3 million for 2007-08, of £25.9 million for 2008-09 and of £12.2 million for 2009-10; notes that Greater Manchester Police has already made reductions of more than 200 police officers in 2006-07 and that further cuts may be necessary in the future unless more resources are made available from Government; further notes with concern that it is estimated that £35 million of funding has been withheld by the Government as part of its ‘damping mechanism', despite payment being fully justified on the Home Office's objective needs basis; and therefore calls on the Government to put an end to this inequity and provide the necessary funds to police the streets of Greater Manchester properly.”

I urge hon. Members from Greater Manchester on all sides of the political divide to support that early-day motion and reject the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey). I am pleased that she has turned up to take part in the debate, but it is unfortunate that her amendment is supported by a number of Labour Members in Greater Manchester. The amendment would remove the concern surrounding the proposed shortfall mentioned in my early-day motion.

The amendment states that the House

“notes that Government funding for Greater Manchester Police was £315.6 million in 1996-97 and will be £498.4 million in 2007-08, an increase of £183 million; further notes that in March 2006 there were 1,037 more police officer numbers and 714 more police support staff than in…1997; further notes that Greater Manchester Police had 251 police community support officers on 31st March 2006 with a target for April 2007 of 828; and looks forward to continuing improvement of police performance in reducing crime.”

Perhaps if the hon. Lady had spent some time consulting her own constituents in Stockport on their opinion of recent reductions in police numbers and increases in crime, she might have thought twice before tabling such an amendment. Its self-congratulatory tone just shows how complacent Labour has become.

I do not mind the hon. Gentleman disagreeing with me about the facts, but he is erring on the side of personal abuse and I do not think that that is acceptable.

Forgive me if I have caused offence, Mr. Amess. My remarks were certainly not intended as personal abuse. I was merely suggesting that the hon. Lady should perhaps have consulted some of her local residents to see what they thought about cuts in police numbers and increases in crime.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Home Office’s own assessment is that Greater Manchester police should have more funding and they are prevented from getting it only by the crazy grant and damping rules, which mean that money is being withheld?

I completely agree. The addition of the money that we are not receiving as a result of the damping mechanism would almost eliminate our budget deficits.

Before the hon. Gentleman moves on from police manpower, does he agree that the problem is in some ways even worse than he has suggested because after a period of years of very tight settlements for Greater Manchester police, there has already been a degree of backfilling, whereby uniformed officers are now doing jobs that previously would have been done by civilian officers? That is taking more police off our streets than sometimes appears to be the case.

I agree, but one of the problems stems from significant underfunding of the police force while the Conservatives were in power before 1997.

On the crime figures, the hon. Member for Stockport suggests in her amendment that she

“looks forward to continuing improvement of police performance in reducing crime.”

Unfortunately, total crimes in Greater Manchester were up by 4.5 per cent. in the period from December 2005 until November 2006 compared with the previous year. Violent crimes are up by 9.4 per cent. and robberies increased by 11.7 per cent. in the same period.

Only last Friday I attended a meeting of my local action partnership in Chorlton, at which the local police sergeant reported further rises in burglaries and robberies in the Chorlton area in just the past six months. It is true to say, and the hon. Lady’s amendment points out, that the number of police community support officers should rise to 828 by 30 April 2007. More PCSOs are a useful additional—I say “additional”—resource for the police, but they are no substitute for police officers. However, even these PCSO increases are being axed following the Government’s decision to scrap plans to fund an increase in numbers to 1,238.

Nationwide, the 24,000 figure that was a commitment in Labour’s manifesto at the last general election has been dropped. That will save about £105 million, £70 million of which will be retained by the Home Office, while only £35 million will be distributed to local forces. Of that £35 million, only £1 million will come back to Manchester, while a whopping £20 million will go to the Met. The police authority is facing a significant deficit in the funding of PCSOs and the independent chairman has provided me with the figures of £6.5 million for 2007-08 and £8.4 million for 2008-09, rising to £9.2 million in 2009-10. Although the GMP should welcome increased flexibility in deciding how the money is best spent, the fact that the overall resources will be significantly less than they anticipated will affect their flexibility to achieve the best mix of police, PCSOs and other police staff.

It is time for the Home Office to accept that Manchester is getting a raw deal. It is not acceptable for the Minister to hide behind increases since 1997 to justify cuts now. In the information pack put together by the Library, a Home Office spokesperson suggests that forces should be able to make efficiency savings. The hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) made the point that they have been making efficiency savings over a long period and there comes a time when they cannot do any more. I do not regard losing more than 200 police officers this year as efficiency savings. I see it as cuts and I am sure that a number of hon. Members will too.

The spokesman went on to say that if police forces feel that they need additional funding they should contact the Home Office. That is what we are doing: we are contacting the Home Office and asking the Minister to give Greater Manchester a fair deal. I hope that the Department will reconsider the funding given to Greater Manchester police to avoid further cuts in the future.

I thank the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Leech) for quoting so extensively from my amendment to his early-day motion. I shall not repeat it because he has already put it on the record.

It is easy to look on the down side of things. Part of the hon. Gentleman’s responsibility as an Opposition Member is to point out all the things that go wrong and can go wrong in policy. I assure him that I am assiduous in contacting my constituents and listening to them.

I want to clarify that I was not suggesting for one second that the hon. Lady did not contact her constituents, but that she ought to go back and contact them again to see what they think about police cuts and increases in crime.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for clarifying his position, but he is still saying that I do not listen to my constituents and that I am not aware of what they feel about what goes on in their streets. I assure him that I contact them regularly and listen to what they say. That is partly why I want to put some of their comments about their experiences on the record. I shall leave the Minister to deal with the issues about funding.

One reason why I tabled the amendment was to make it clear that there had been a considerable increase in community support officers, police officers and background support in Greater Manchester police, so that anybody listening to the debate would know that although the increases were not as much as the hon. Gentleman wanted, there had certainly been increased funding which had delivered increased policing in the Greater Manchester area. I am sure that we would all want to support Greater Manchester police in the huge improvements that they have made in their performance and in their reorganisation to deliver the neighbourhood policing policy, which has been well received by my constituents and I am sure by his, too.

I travelled back to Stockport last Thursday. Stockport station is next to a complex known as Grand Central, which has caused considerable problems over the years with antisocial behaviour and has consumed much police time. When a taxi picked me up outside the station, I asked the driver what he thought about Grand Central. One complaint drivers have is that they do not like going there late at night to pick up people because of the state that they are in. He is not the first driver to say that. However, he also said that the situation at Grand Central had improved greatly and that the whole town centre was much quieter.

There are three contributory factors. The first is the visible officer presence in the centre of the town, which has helped, and I saw four community support officers that Thursday. Secondly, a drinking ban has been introduced, and I have no problem crediting it to the local council. It is not of my political persuasion, but the introduction of a drinking ban was a good idea and it has worked well. Thirdly, the change in licensing hours means that not everybody is out on the street at 11 o’clock at night, carrying on the arguments that they had in the pub and beating each other up on the pavements.

We cannot think of policing only in terms of the job of the police. There is effective policing in Stockport because of an effective local crime partnership involving the police and other agencies, including the council. I am sure that those hon. Members who represent the Stockport area would claim that locally the partnership has been successful and that we do not expect the police to police by themselves.

I have another example for the hon. Gentleman. I was fortunate to be elected to the House in 1992. During those years, we were in opposition and the Conservatives were in power. I lived in Heaton Moor, as I do now, and it was not unusual to find young people out on the streets, creating problems that sometimes got out of hand because of drink. In those days the only action I could take was to summon police to a meeting, which I did on occasion. They would explain that it was difficult because they were underfunded, that they did not have enough officers and that if only the Government would give them enough money, the situation would be fine. They none the less agreed to caution some of the young people concerned.

A few weeks ago a similar incident occurred. I asked the local antisocial behaviour area co-ordinator team to visit the people who made the complaint. It identified the young people who were causing the problem, gathered information with the local police to find out who they were, visited their homes, talked to them, put them on an acceptable behaviour contract, identified their problems, and asked other agencies to intervene, such as the school if they had a school problem, and the local drug addiction team if they had a drug problem, and it referred them to the proper agencies if they had the beginnings of a drink problem. That would have been impossible 10 or 15 years ago.

There has been a great change in the concept of policing. It is about handing the problem not simply to the police, but to a local partnership that can come up with preventive measures as well as control measures. It has been successful in Stockport, and I have no problem saying that. The council has also played an effective role in the partnership.

Communication between the police and the public is also improving. One of the great issues that constituents used to raise with me, often at public meetings, was that if the police were doing something, constituents did not feel that they knew about it. The neighbourhood policing model has been introduced in Stockport and in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. The police are trying to achieve area-based policing, whereby people know who their police officers are and have their numbers to ring. More importantly, when people leave messages the police are getting much better at ringing them back to tell them what has and has not happened. That model, together with the closer relationship between the local police and council, has created a strong partnership.

Last week I received a letter which I am sure other hon. Members representing constituencies in the Stockport area received, too. It said that the council will establish a dedicated telephone number for people to report low-level antisocial behaviour. The hon. Gentleman referred to the 999 line, which receives some very inappropriate calls. That ordinary number for Greater Manchester gets jammed and people get frustrated. However, the council has put out the new number, which people can ring to have their problems dealt with. It will also help communication with the public.

The council did that as part of the crime partnership. We should bear that in mind when we argue about funding, because funding to set up those initiatives has also come to the council from the Government. We cannot consider police funding simply in terms of the grant to Greater Manchester police. I am sure that all Members of Parliament with constituencies in Greater Manchester will lobby on behalf of the police there, because that is what we want to do for our area. However, I ask for some acknowledgment of other good initiatives, particularly the very effective local crime and disorder partnerships.

I am delighted to congratulate the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Leech) on securing the debate and am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey). I happily acknowledge that she is an assiduous constituency Member of Parliament; we are all doing our jobs and our best for Greater Manchester.

The hon. Lady rightly pointed out that the issue is a work in progress; the budget is not final and work is still going on. This is exactly the time to apply some pressure, and the hon. Gentleman was right to have secured the debate. Only when we have debates, raise the profile and get the case across about the things that need to be done for Greater Manchester police can we hope to be sure that we will get the right budget settlement. I am sure that the Minister has been listening and is keen to help.

Many of the problems and difficulties, such as the gap between the budget at the outset and the money that Greater Manchester police and the police authority think they need, have been predictable and created by new policies. I do not necessarily criticise those policies, a good example of which is the introduction of community support officers. As has been said, they can be a significant help in policing an area. However, as many of us pointed out when they were introduced, they will help only if the funding is provided not only when they are introduced, but on an ongoing basis.

Some of the problems coming home to roost arise from the fact that the new officers were funded for a fixed period, leaving Greater Manchester police and other forces to fund them on an ongoing basis from their future revenues. In part, that has resulted in the problems to which I referred in my intervention on the hon. Gentleman. For years there has been an ongoing need for efficiency savings, so there have been cutbacks in civilian staff in many parts of Greater Manchester police. That has resulted in the need for front-line officers to backfill the losses.

Hon. Members on both sides of the House always say that the public want front-line officers, preferably as visible as possible. The last thing they want is for police officers who should be policing the streets to return to offices to do jobs that could be done less expensively by less highly trained civilian staff. That is a significant problem.

It is also fair to point out that the Government have not necessarily honoured all their pledges on the numbers of community support officers. At the last election, the Labour party manifesto pledged 24,000 more police community support officers, and the share for Greater Manchester would have been 1,238. Now that the pledge has been cut back to an additional 16,000 PCSOs, the share for Greater Manchester will be 828. There is therefore a net loss of 410 CSOs from the number that we were promised. Obviously, it would be a significant advantage to Greater Manchester police to have those officers, as long as proper ongoing funding was provided to ensure that their jobs were sustainable.

I am sure that the pressures of recent years have resulted in cuts and difficulties in civilian staffing across Greater Manchester. In my area, Trafford borough had to reduce its civilian staff by five last autumn, which meant that five police officers were needed to backfill that loss. Trafford has particular policing needs that are not always recognised even within Greater Manchester. With the building of the Trafford Centre a few years ago, a whole new town was effectively built, but the additional policing burden that that introduced still has not been recognised. There has been no increase in resources or police numbers.

Any hon. Member who reflects on the possibility of a new town being built in their borough, local authority area or policing division without any additional resources being allocated will realise what a significant challenge that would present. Our local police have met that challenge well alongside the other, long-existing, differences and challenges to policing the borough that come as a result of the sporting venues at Old Trafford and the proximity of the airport, which funds its own policing but none the less gives rise to additional pressures.

The hon. Gentleman rightly raised the wider issue of the local government finance settlement and the application of the damping measures. I do not expect the Minister, either as a member of the Government or as a London MP, to agree with me openly, but many of us have concluded that the way in which that system was introduced had a certain amount to do with the importance that was accorded to the local elections in London last year, although it did not necessarily deliver the results that the Labour party wanted. Now that the elections are out of the way, we need to rebalance the settlement more fairly, in a way that properly recognises the needs of other areas. The disproportionate funding of PCSOs in the Metropolitan police area compared with those in other parts of the country is particularly ironic.

I emphasise that Greater Manchester’s particular policing needs and the pressures on police there are not sufficiently recognised by the Government. Some well-known, long-standing difficulties are coming to the fore, such as the pension burden that falls on a force that was created with the establishment of Greater Manchester about 30 years ago.

Other considerations accrue to what is really Britain’s second city—Manchester is increasingly taking on that role. We have particular problems with gun crime, which is difficult and expensive to tackle. When we consider the distribution of the threat of terrorism and the challenge of policing it, we find that all too frequently it is one or two of the major cities outside London that face the most significant challenge or threat. That is not always recognised, and I notice that the Minister is grumbling quietly.

It is a purely and utterly functional point. The hon. Gentleman’s point about pensions is totally erroneous. There are new systems in place, which mean that the net pension payments fall on central Government, not the force. Whatever else the force of his argument is—with no pun intended—that simply cannot be part of it because the system has changed.

I am glad that the Minister grumbled loudly instead of quietly. What he outlines does not affect the period during the past few years when efficiency savings or backfilling have been needed. I am sure he recognises that. I look forward to his response and very much look forward to a continuing process of budget negotiations, which I hope will result in the closure of the gap and a full recognition of the policing pressures in Greater Manchester.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Leech) on securing the debate. The hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) is absolutely right: it is surely the job of local Members to stick up for the provision of local services, and there is no service more vital to my constituents than the police service. I also want to thank the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), with whom I like to think I have a good relationship, for her acknowledgment of the joint work being done by the council and other agencies with the police on the anti-crime partnership in Stockport. She was right in many of the things that she said about the effectiveness of that process.

The metropolitan borough of Stockport is covered by J division of the Greater Manchester police, and it is commanded by Chief Superintendent Neil Wain. I would like to acknowledge his work, and within my constituency, the work put in by Inspector Morrisey and his team of officers and community support officers to maintain a police presence. However, I have told them that the police presence in my constituency is not sufficient, and the hon. Lady explained why that might be: they are all in her constituency at Grand Central, and my suburban outback is left denuded—[Interruption.] One person’s success is another’s disappointment.

Whatever benchmark might be set, the benchmark my constituents expect is a reasonably visible police presence in the area, and they would point out that there is a significant level of antisocial behaviour and low-level crime that no longer even gets reported because of that lack of a visible police presence.

The story of Greater Manchester police is that during the past year it has been gradually recovering from significant cutbacks that took place before 1997. I remind the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West that they happened during a period of Conservative Government, when police numbers in Greater Manchester went down. Things did not get better immediately after the 1997 general election, and for three years there was a financial freeze that meant practically no progress was made on many services. The fall in police numbers also continued.

I know that the hon. Gentleman is a fair-minded man, and am sure that he would want to admit that police numbers rose considerably in Greater Manchester and elsewhere during the period of Conservative Government from 1979 to 1997.

We could trade graphs and numbers until we got to the end of the debate, but of course the hon. Gentleman is right: by their standards, the Conservative Government tried to do their best, but the reality was that there were nothing like enough police. Police numbers fell in Greater Manchester in the run-up to 1997. From 2000 onwards, once the Treasury could be persuaded to release some money, the number of police officers in Greater Manchester rose.

A couple of years after that, in an effort to accelerate the process, the police authority asked every metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester to make a special increase in the police precept, so that extra police could be recruited. Stockport metropolitan borough agreed that it would do that, along with all the other boroughs, and an additional precept led to the recruitment of extra police officers. There is a feeling—I am sure that it cannot possibly be justified—that, with local funding having been raised to recruit extra police, the Treasury, the Home Office or somebody else has decided that the national funding can be throttled back a bit, and therefore that we will end up back where we started.

My hon. Friend set out the facts, but I should point out that when he and I went with our Liberal Democrat colleagues to see the chair of the police authority, we did so at his invitation. He wanted to explain to us the circumstances that the police authority faced. Among those circumstances is the fact that, owing to a shortage of money, the authority is not filling police vacancies, which means that the total number of police officers at the end of this financial year will be 216 fewer than at the beginning of the financial year. Because of the Home Office’s funding system, if the police authority is below the magic benchmark number, it will be penalised some more—by £27,000 for each police officer by which it is below the level, as my hon. Friend mentioned.

I was going to save my response to that point until my winding-up speech, but I cannot let this proceed. The hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Leech) was wrong when he suggested that there was a £27,000 penalty, and the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell) has just repeated that. When the crime fighting fund was lifted and the flexibility afforded forces was given—that was on 18 or 19 December, whenever the announcement was made—it was clearly implicit that the penalties that went with the crime fighting fund had also gone. The hon. Gentleman needs to understand funding and how the crime fighting fund works. That £27,000 penalty is not on the table and has not been since the announcement in December.

I am delighted to hear that. I certainly did not want to mislead anybody intentionally; rather, I was repeating the information that the chairman of the police authority gave me shortly before Christmas. To the extent that I am out of date or that information is wrong, I am happy for the Minister to correct it.

The Home Office assumes the possibility of achieving 3 per cent. efficiency savings. Again, one of the paradoxes of the situation is that that has resulted in some de-civilianisation in Manchester, where backroom jobs are being taken by police officers who, in my judgment, should be on the front line. Fortunately, my constituents do not live in an area where gun crime is a big problem. On the whole, we do not have serious organised crime. What damages the quality of life of my constituents is low-level crime and antisocial behaviour. What enrages them is when they cannot get through on the police telephone number or, if they do get through, when they get no response. Even when my constituents get a response, they are treated not exactly casually, but not as a major priority. Of course the police force has to concentrate on the major priorities, but those are all signs of a force that is not addressing the things that are so important for my constituents. I hope that the Minister will assure us that the police will have the resources they need to deliver the service that my constituents want.

I apologise to you, Mr. Amess, and to the House, but I have to leave before the debate is concluded.

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Leech) on securing this important debate; and I congratulate those who have spoken on their contributions. As has been said, all of us are constituency MPs representing seats in Greater Manchester.

I begin by paying tribute to acting chief superintendent David Hull, Inspector Wright, who is responsible for the Rochdale township, and the officers who serve with them. For a long time in Rochdale, there has been a good partnership between the council and the police on tackling crime. Indeed, the town set up its crime partnership scheme back in 1995, before the Government had invented the idea; and we were pursuing the idea of community policing—what we called township policing—at the same time. The word “township” seems to have been banned in Greater Manchester, but we still use it.

During the past few years, crime has fallen in Rochdale. Apart from serious crime, we have seen reductions in burglary, car crime and so on. We have also seen new investment—in the new police stations at Littleborough and Milnrow and the refurbishment now taking place in Rochdale police station.

I do not want members of the Labour party to claim that we say that everything that has happened in the past few years has been bad. That is not the case. We are doing what the Government have enabled us to do when they rightly gave councils and other statutory bodies the three-year funding formula. That was supposed to enable authorities to plan ahead and to ensure that there are no sudden changes from year to year. However, at our meeting with the independent chair just before Christmas, it was found that over the three-year period Greater Manchester would be £26 million short of what it needed to deliver the services. That set alarm bells ringing, given that we had already had a tight situation over the previous 12 months. What I call the thin blue line is being stretched.

The improvements that we have seen have been hard-fought for over the last few years. My hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell) said that councils agreed four years ago to a 36 per cent. increase in the precept to enable new officers to take up post, but their numbers are now dropping back. The current chief constable of Greater Manchester has done a fantastic job in shaping and setting the priorities for the force, but those aspirations about having enough police on the beat in order to deliver a community policing model are now seriously at risk. It is not the serious crime—the murders and the robberies—that suffers. As my hon. Friend said, it is the sort of low-level crime that people increasingly do not bother to report.

I give an example of the sort of problem faced by people in my constituency. It occurred in Littleborough between Christmas and the new year. Littleborough is part of the Pennine township. Many people think of Rochdale as being quite urban, but at least a third of it is rural. Gangs of youths from central Manchester came into Littleborough via the railway station and caused havoc there, in the shopping centre and out towards Todmorden. Shop windows were smashed, and one quite well-known local artist, Walter Kershaw, came out and tried to tackle the youths, but they threw stones through both his shop windows and then assaulted him. Thirty-five youths were involved in that attack. The police were called, and they came out, but only three officers were available at the time to deal with the problem. That is what I mean by the thin blue line. Thankfully, one of the people who assaulted Walter has been arrested, but people in Littleborough now feel threatened and frightened by what is happening. They feel that the problem has arisen because they are not in the centre, where all the action is. Unless police officers are on the beat in our townships, as the community model dictates, we shall not be able to deal with such issues. Indeed, that is why there are delays in answering the phone and responding to low-level issues. People are becoming increasingly disillusioned, and the good will that has been built up over the past few years is seriously at risk.

What is behind all this? As I said, the problem is the three-year funding formula. Greater Manchester is not asking for anything extra. Indeed, the Government produced a formula to say how much money Greater Manchester police should have, and if they applied it as it should be applied—without the damping—the majority of the funding problems would disappear. Police stations would not, for example, be shut for huge parts of the day. What is the point of spending a fortune on a brand-new police station at Littleborough if it is not open for much of the day? I went to the opening last year, but the reality on the ground is that the officers are not there and the station is not open. There is no point having it there, because people cannot use it.

The issue is the funding formula. The Minister needs to tell us why an area such as Greater Manchester, which has the largest force outside London, is not receiving the money that it deserves. It has serious problems, including serious gun crime. A few months ago, a gang from Manchester turned up at a nightclub in my area, and guns were shown. There are therefore serious problems, which must be dealt with, and we need to know why the formula will not be applied and why Greater Manchester is not being given the funding that it deserves. Otherwise, the good will, hard work and improvements of the past few years will be rolled back. I do not want to see that happen, and that is why this debate is timely and important. I hope that the Minister will give us the answers, because the people of Greater Manchester are also listening.

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to contribute to this important debate under your chairmanship, Mr. Amess. I compliment my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Leech) on securing it and on the diligent and industrious way in which he goes about representing the interests of his constituents. We have also had very worthwhile contributions from several other hon. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell) and for Rochdale (Paul Rowen), as well as the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), who is a neighbour of mine in a constituency sense, and the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady).

Let me start by making it clear, as several hon. Members have sought to do already, that the purpose of the debate is certainly not to be critical of the Greater Manchester police authority, Greater Manchester police, their chief constable or anybody else involved in trying to do the job on the ground. On the contrary, I should like to compliment the police authority on the open way in which it has gone about ensuring that all Members in the Greater Manchester conurbation are precisely aware of the problems that it faces. The chairman, in particular, is to be given credit for inviting Members in just before Christmas to hear what the problems were. Put simply, the issue is that Greater Manchester police face a funding crisis, and that is what today’s debate is intended to deal with. As the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West said, this is precisely the time when we should be applying pressure to ensure that the Government understand Greater Manchester’s needs and, I hope, why we feel hard done by in comparison with other areas.

I happen to have in front of me the report that was given to those of us who attended the meeting with the chair of the police authority, and it gives a clear breakdown of the deficits for each of the next three years. For 2007-08, the shortfall will be £1.3 million. As we heard from the hon. Member for Stockport, moves are already being made to address that deficit; indeed, the police authority chairman told us that when we met just before Christmas. However, the £25.9 million figure for 2008-09 and the £12.2 million figure for 2009-10 will require an awful lot of tweaking if they are to be manageable in any way, shape or form.

Put simply, however, our contention is that those shortfalls will not be manageable unless there is a fundamental change in the funding formula, and we will see a greater diminution of the service to the people of Greater Manchester. Let us not forget that that will be in addition to the loss of 216 officers that we have already seen in Greater Manchester. The report makes it clear that those officers are lost for good, and none of the budget projections will lead to a recovery of the previous position. We have already lost 216 officers, but the police authority’s documentation makes it clear that, in addition, the budget shortfall will be £27 million over the next two years or £39 million over the next three years.

The hon. Member for Stockport talked about community policing. She was gracious enough to accept that Stockport, which is run by the Liberal Democrats, as opposed to the Labour party or the Conservatives, has seen a number of first-rate partnership initiatives with the police. As she rightly said, those have contributed to improved working, more joined-up thinking and a better all-round approach to crime and antisocial behaviour issues.

The hon. Lady talked in some detail about the strategy behind neighbourhood policing or community policing—whichever term hon. Members prefer. Again, all of us buy into that strategy, and there is no disagreement about it across the political spectrum. However, there is disagreement about whether it is being implemented. I appreciate that the hon. Lady, like me, is a glass-half-full, not a glass-half-empty person, but I do not recognise her description of responses, general attitudes or, indeed, the allocation of resources—perhaps she is just very fortunate to have more policemen in her constituency than I have in neighbouring Cheadle. However, although the theory of neighbourhood or community policing is first rate, the reaction of most of my constituents, and those of other hon. Members, is, “Frankly, it would be difficult for us to tell how good it is, because we don’t see much of it.”

I make that point in the context of a meeting that I attended last year with the head of the Metropolitan police, Sir Ian Blair. He told me and several colleagues—the Minister will of course know this in his capacity not only as a Minister, but as a London Member—about the wonderful way in which community policing in London means that there is a dedicated team of six police officers in every local government ward. That team includes a sergeant, two police constables and three PCSOs—wonderful! In a constituency such as mine, that would mean the equivalent of 42 dedicated officers working within the boundaries of the parliamentary constituency. My guess is that the reality is a handful of officers at any one moment.

Neither the borough commander, Neil Wain—for whom I have tremendous respect—nor the chief constable, Michael Todd, has tried to pretend to me that Stockport is getting anything like the community policing resources that other areas, particularly the capital, might have. I met the chief constable last autumn, and he told me—I am paraphrasing his words, but he has also made this claim publicly—that as long as Greater Manchester police continue to subsidise the Met to the tune of £14 million or £15 million a year, he does not see the situation changing.

I know full well that the Minister will be his usual robust self in answering these criticisms, but I hope that he will understand that most of the key facts and figures that we have repeated today have not been dreamed up by Liberal Democrat campaigners or Members of Parliament; they have come from the chief constable, the borough commander and the police authority. If the Minister wants to take the line of arguing with the facts and figures that we have presented, it is important that we make clear where they have come from.

Recorded crime is up by 3.6 per cent. The lack of police presence on our streets is a major worry. Hon. Members have made it clear that in our constituencies the concern is not so much organised crime or high-level crime; it is low-level, antisocial behaviour and petty vandalism—the kind of crime that makes people’s lives a misery. It affects not only constituencies that are largely socially deprived; it affects middle-class and affluent constituencies in just the same way.

People do not believe that there is an adequate police presence any longer. People say to me, “Mark, it’s getting more and more like the fire brigade. The police will come out if you ring 999, but you never see them on beat patrol.” I say again that I do not blame Greater Manchester police for that. I do not say that the Stockport borough commander has got his priorities wrong or anything like that. I simply say that the police are doing the best they can with insufficient resources. People are not satisfied with the lack of police presence on our streets. They do not feel safe to go about their business, particularly in the evenings, and they are, I think, increasingly disillusioned about the point of telephoning and reporting such incidents to the police, because they do not think that their calls will be followed up. Neighbourhood and community policing is a fine aspiration. We are all signed up to it, but the reality is that in too many of our areas there are very serious concerns about the lack of police presence and about the low-key petty vandalism and antisocial behaviour that blight too many lives.

I hope that the Minister will address our concerns seriously. The early-day motion that was referred to and today’s debate are part of our genuine efforts to focus attention on the concerns, which I am sure are shared by all Greater Manchester Members. It is perhaps slightly disappointing that that is not reflected in their attendance today, with one or two honourable exceptions, but the concerns are widespread and genuine and I hope that the Minister will address them in the spirit in which we have raised them, which is that we all want to work together to bring crime levels down and to help people to feel safe in their communities again. The issue is not only that we are far, far away from that situation at the moment. Given the funding crisis that is outlined in the report from the police authority, which we have heard so much about already today, the great danger is that the problem, unless it is tackled by the Government, will continue to get worse, rather than get better. That would be unacceptable to all our constituents.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Leech) on securing the debate. I shall not detain hon. Members long, because I am interested to hear what the Minister has to say, but plainly the background to the concerns set out by hon. Members from all parts of the Chamber is the forthcoming financial plan that the Home Office is introducing for the police—as well as what has already happened up to this point. The Home Office said that the police can expect a budget increase of 2.7 per cent. from 2008-09 to 2010-11, but we all know that police costs, as with other public services, run ahead of inflation. That effectively means that, in real terms, the budget, according to the head of finance at the Association of Chief Police Officers—the chief constable of Gloucestershire, Tim Brain—is not just frozen, but is being cut because police costs are projected to increase by more than 3 per cent. a year. That is at a time when council precepts are likely to be capped. We have heard the implications that that has for the Greater Manchester police and, according to the police authority, there are projected budget shortfalls over the years ahead. According to the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Association of Police Authorities in their submission to the comprehensive spending review—“Sustainable Policing”—that will translate nationally into a funding gap that by 2010-11 could be nearly £1 billion.

The Government will no doubt tell us that that means that police forces must make greater efficiencies and it is absolutely right that this House should demand efficiencies and value for money from all public services. The Treasury, in a paper published last year on delivering a step change in police productivity, said that

“Cashable efficiencies will need to be at least double”—

that is double the level in 2004—and that they would have to be

“offset directly against pressures in the funding settlement”.

The Treasury admits that there are pressures in the funding settlement. However, as is the case in many other public services, the lion’s share of the budget for policing is taken up with people costs. In the case of the Greater Manchester police, 86 per cent. of the budget is taken up by those costs. The force made efficiency gains between 2002 and 2005, which resulted in a total of more than £50 million in efficiency savings—£15 million of which was cashable and £34 million of which was non-cashable.

The Association of Chief Police Officers and the Association of Police Authorities warn that they are

“concerned about the expectation that increasing amounts of both cashable and non-cashable efficiencies will be achieved year on year, when many forces have already made great strides in this area”—

as we have just heard in relation to the GMP. They go on to say that

“instead of efficiency gains being able to be recycled to meet new demands and pressures, it is increasingly expected”—

by the Government—

“that efficiency gains will be used as a means of balancing budgets. If efficiency gains cannot continue to be made, this will have a major impact on police resources, and ultimately service provision”.

In relation to the GMP, we have already seen—as previously referred to—that to balance a £14 million budget shortfall last year, the force has made cuts of 200 police officer posts and 48 police staff posts. It has also cut the mounted section, the dog section, the £1 million budget used to fight street crime and robbery, and the number of officers trained to deal with public disorder. It has civilianised a variety of posts and made other cuts to overtime and non-staff budgets. In the previous year, it made more than £7 million of cuts in police, staff, overtime, buildings and equipment.

The Treasury says that on top of the cuts and efficiencies that the GMP has made, it and other forces will have to make further efficiencies. The Treasury says that nationally £250 million could be saved by better overtime and sickness management and that there could be further savings from improved processes and so on.

The Minister will have to tell us and reassure us that forces will be capable of making those savings. He needs to spell out how those efficiencies can be made and what the Treasury and the Home Office are demanding of forces. The force leaders are telling us that their people will feel the impact. The head of finance for the Association of Chief Police Officers has said:

“If you start pinching back on your income then you are going to have to cut back on your expenditure. Given the fact that we are a very people-intensive service, that inevitably means the people who deliver the job on the frontline. So, really, it’s quite serious.”

As my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) mentioned, we have already seen what has happened with police community support officers in the GMP and the promises that the Government made in their manifesto. In the respect action plan that was published a year ago, the Government promised 24,000 police community support officers nationally. The consequence of their reneging on that pledge is that the GMP will receive 410 fewer police community support officers than were promised, as my hon. Friend said.

The Minister will say, “Ah, well the police asked us for flexibility”, and so they did. However, if the decision were just about flexibility and allowing chief officers to decide how to deploy their resources, that could be supported. The chief of the GMP might well decide that he would prefer to recruit police officers than police community support officers. That should surely be his decision, but what happened is that the resources were taken away. The head of ACPO has pointed out that

“only £35 million of the £105 million”

that should have been returned—along with the flexibility for forces to recruit as they wanted to—has in fact been returned, so there is a gap of £70 million. Perhaps the Minister can tell us where that money has gone. Of the £35 million that was returned, £20 million went to the Metropolitan Police Service, so the provincial forces have lost out. As the head of ACPO said:

“Being given the flexibility to manage decline is not a position we have sought”.

The hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell) mentioned the crime fighting fund and the Minister berated him for not knowing of the changes that had been made three days before Christmas. There is a clear reason why the hon. Gentleman did not know that those changes had been made: the Minister has not revealed them. They have not been published to the House or to the press. Indeed, there was an instruction from the Association of Police Authorities to its members not to publicise the changes. The police and police authorities sought those flexibilities, but again the concern is that flexibilities against a tight financial climate will result in a cut in the head count, not only of police staff but, potentially, of officers. As the head of finance at ACPO has predicted:

“Most forces will lose some officers or police staff. There will be fewer people working in police forces in the future.”

If we are to have a sensible debate about the merits of the crime fighting fund, the Government should publish what they have done. That information has been given to the police and the police authorities, so why has it not been given to the House? Perhaps the Government will publish those figures before next week’s debate on police finance, but in the meantime it would be good if the Minister did not berate hon. Members who do not know about the changes that have been made.

The public have paid heavily for the increases in police numbers that the Minister will no doubt tell us about. The amount of police expenditure that is financed through council tax has doubled in real terms between 2001 and 2006-07. Council tax now accounts for more than 21 per cent. of police force expenditure nationally, as compared with 12 per cent. in 2001-02. I expect that that situation is almost certainly replicated in the GMP.

In conclusion, the public have paid for increases in policing. They are entitled to see that those increases are maintained. As hon. Members in all parts of the Chamber have said, people want a visible, reassuring police presence on the streets, whether that is through police officers or PCSOs. The Minister needs to tell us more about what kind of efficiencies he expects from the police over the next few years, given the financial background, which they are alarmed about. As the chief constable of the GMP said in 2004:

“We do need more police officers and I am constantly arguing to get more officers and also to ensure that we get the very best from those that we have.”

It is right that he should say that, and that he should expect to make efficiencies in his force. He has done so and he is a very good chief constable. I hope that the Minister will respond constructively to the concerns that have been raised about how the GMP and other forces are to make the kind of efficiencies that are expected of them in future.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Leech) on securing the debate. The hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) suggested that now is the right time for the debate, and I have absolutely no problem with that. It is right and proper and in the interests of all Members to debate such matters before or after the budgetary spending review. I have no difficulty with that at all, and I shall not hide behind—I think that was the phrase—the increases in police funding since 1997. I am proud of those increases and of the innovation of police community support officers. Let us be clear: whatever their numbers, they simply would not exist had any other Government been in control. This Government conceived and delivered them.

By way of introduction and before I come to the specifics of the debate, there were some interesting themes underlying hon. Members’ suggestions, and that is where the wider and larger debate should be. It is in part, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) said, about the nature of policing, neighbourhood policing and the multi-agency partnership approach that we must use to deal with much of what happens at the lower level—lower in terms of the hierarchy of crime, not the communities on which such behaviour impacts.

Another fair and reasonable debate would be about how we, collectively, through a range of agencies, deal preventively as well as actively with much on that continuum of low-level crime and antisocial behaviour. The police are up for that debate, and they are keen to get involved with crime and disorder reduction partnerships and others. If my hon. Friend says that Stockport does such work very well, I am more than happy to agree with her. It is done well throughout the country, too.

The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) touched on the following point in his closing remarks. It is right and proper to debate what we want our police officers to do, and what the balance should be between police officers, police staff, police community support officers and other specialists. In specific terms, the debate is the domain of the local chief constable, but placing the debate in the national domain is worth while. It is also appropriate to debate the—I think euphemistically entitled, because it is not quite the right phrase—“work force modernisation” programme and other measures to analyse how the police do what they do.

I said when I first entered this ministerial role that it is terribly nice of me as Minister with responsibility for police to say that there are 142,500 police officers—a record number—in this country, but if I cannot guarantee at any one time 138,000 officers out there policing, it is not much use. One of my officials said that actually, in some circumstances, there are probably more like 125,000 to 130,000 officers—or fewer—out there policing. Everyone agrees that accountable, visible, on-the-street policing is what all communities want, and that is what we aspire to.

I am glad that for everyone apart from a few unreconstructed people, the debate has moved on from the notion that PCSOs are anything other than supplementary to, complementary to and supportive of police. They are neither substitute police, nor plastic police as they are sometimes referred to rather disparagingly, and they have carved out a real and distinctive role that adds to Manchester’s policing needs and to those of every other community. They are here to stay.

I could do the “line-to-take” stuff and tell everyone what has happened since 1997 and which trajectories have been on the up. The trajectories for spending and for police numbers are on the up, and PCSOs have been introduced. Of course, one can pull out selective areas, so I was careful to note the period quoted for the rise in recorded crime in Manchester. Overall trends are the other way around, however. Trends go up and down, up and down, and we will see what has happened to crime statistics nationally when they are published on Thursday.

I do take two points, however, so as not to deeply offend anyone. The trajectory is rightly down both nationally and locally, but I accept the point made by hon. Members, including my hon. Friend, about people’s perceptions of albeit low-level crime. If those elements of crime are high or remain stubbornly at levels that we cannot shift despite what we do with antisocial behaviour, and the broad perception is that that domain is troublesome to people, then that is troublesome to me as the Police Minister. However, that does not equate with the absolute doom and gloom cast by the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington, from which the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale, West and my hon. Friend drew back.

It is worth repeating that Greater Manchester is very well served by its police force, which has come on in leaps and bounds in the past 10 years. The police there have been hugely innovative in some areas, although by their own lights they would say that there is some way to go in some areas. I will not and cannot accept the notion that the time for reviewing, speculating on and trying to reassess and recalibrate how our police forces work is suddenly over and that despite the efficiencies that have been gained in recent years, there is no more to be squeezed out of the lemon.

In order to respond to communities, policing has to be dynamic and constantly reinventing itself. I take issue with the notion of police work force modernisation, because it rather implies that there is currently stasis in those work forces, which is far from the case. They constantly innovate, re-energise, recalibrate, refocus, restructure and rebalance all elements of the police family. That must prevail if we are to deliver the policing that we want in each of our communities, including Greater Manchester. It is rather simplistic to draw a line and say, “Well, we can’t get any more efficiencies out of anything; we can’t look again at how we do what we do in each of our component parts.” That attitude is almost the politics of despair.

None of that is to say that hon. Members’ specific comments about Manchester were not well made and of some concern. I thought it most generous of the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington to say that the budget deficit for the next year is less of a problem. That is because, as my hon. Friend pointed out to him, there is not one.

I move to the general points that were made about the comprehensive spending review, on which we are starting to make decisions. I must say in all candour that the wider concerns for forces and authorities up and down the country are about 2008-09, 2009-10 and 2010-11. There are a lot of discussions to be had and a lot of policy development to be done—across parties, I hope, and certainly up and down the country—about how to deal with policing in that next round once we know the broader parameters. The notion of moving to a three-year deal instead of a two-year deal must be right for Manchester and elsewhere. As someone said, that would take the kinks out so that people would be able to plan broadly, at least, and to know what the various scenarios are.

However, one cannot accept a three-year plan for Manchester without accepting that when we divide up the national cake, some elements will have to be taken out of that process. There will have to be a raw redistribution through the formula and then adjustments precisely to give forces some degree of certainty. Money has not been withdrawn from Manchester; it has been redistributed to other forces. The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs got a bit of the Manchester money because Surrey happened to be a net recipient rather than contributor—[Hon. Members: “Sussex.”] I do apologise; of course, the hon. Gentleman is from Sussex. Anyway, he has more money than Surrey, so there we are.

Interestingly, I suppose, the Liberal Democrat Members’ near neighbour—not that near because Lancashire is in between—in Cumbria will be a huge recipient rather than a contributor. I can go through the list, but it will simply show up where the odd Liberal MPs are. Cumbria, Devon and Cornwall, which is pretty well a redoubt for Liberal Democrats, benefit, as do Dorset, Durham, Lancashire, Norfolk, North Yorkshire, Sussex—they have the odd one down there; they have to be very odd down there, the Sussex Liberal Democrats—West Mercia, Northumbria, the GLA area and others. There has to be a sense of equity in the equation. I do not accept the premise that in that national picture with that national resource the GMP should somehow be treated differently from all other forces. There has to be that equity, not least to get some notion of planning and contingency into the equation.

I sense that the Minister might well be coming towards the end of his remarks. Before he does, will he address the specific concern about neighbourhood policing? Does he agree that it is right that every local government ward in London should have a dedicated police team of six officers whereas Greater Manchester and other areas have nothing like that amount?

I do not say that it is right or wrong. I am a happy beneficiary of it, but I make the simple point as a London MP and as a policing Minister that London has paid for it over successive police precepts over successive years, not least because London has the benefit under the capping regime of two or three precepts to play with for transport and other elements, too. London decided through those involved in its political process—the Mayor of London, the Metropolitan police authority, the Greater London authority and the commissioner—that it wanted that model of neighbourhood policing. They went to the electorate and said, “If you want this, it will cost this much. Do you fancy it?” and London overwhelmingly said yes. This is not about whether I think as policing Minister that it is right or wrong, but as a constituency MP and in the context of the operational decisions made by the commissioner in conjunction with the Mayor, I think that it is right for London.

Will the Minister confirm that when the flexibilities were introduced in relation to police community support officers, two thirds of the money returned to the forces was returned to the Met and only a third to provincial forces and that those were central funds?

Slightly less than that, in the sense that it was 20 out of 35 rather than 20 out of 30—so that would be about 63 per cent. However, at least part of the additional funding that went above and beyond the price of 16,000 PCSOs was about consolidating the success of the PCSOs who are already there. There is no point in simply doling out that additional money if there has already been discussion in some areas—London included—about the sustainability of those who are already in place. That was part of the logic behind the formula.

I take on board the points that have been made and defend the right of every individual MP to lobby about the specific police grant for their area. The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs alluded to the fact that an will be opportunity afforded for debate again, if hon. Members listen carefully to the Leader of the House when he makes business statements, when the time comes in the appropriate order for the police grant report. That is potentially due soon. If I was being unkind, I would say that rather than the rather stilted and juvenile introduction made by the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington—although the debate collectively got far better—it is right that there should be a substantive local and national debate on the nature of policing, how to fund it and on the balance between the assorted elements. I want that debate—this is becoming more characteristic—to be held on a cross-party basis so we can reach a consensus on how to achieve what we need for our communities.

One final point. I have been to see neighbourhood policing three or four times as it is slowly implemented in Greater Manchester. I would be interested to understand why my recognition of it from those visits is closer to that of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport than that of other hon. Members, although I take the point that antisocial behaviour and the other elements are not, sadly, the domain only of deprived areas. Antisocial behaviour is a blight that affects many of our areas, affluent and less affluent, and policing in response to that needs to be tailored to reflect those differences.

It is a great delight to have this debate, and I am grateful to the Clerks of the House for providing me with robust advice on how to frame the issue. At one point, their robust advice was that I could not have the debate, but I have now been allowed to do so, so it is a great delight to be here. It is also a great delight to be here because I think, although some historian may correct me, that this is the first time that the House of Commons has debated the royal warrant system since 1628. Of course, the Commons did not have a very warm relationship with the royal family in 1628.

The royal warrant system is very old. The first King of England to issue a warrant of appointment for people to provide him with services was Henry II, who granted one to the Weavers Company in 1155. Several other companies were given warrants over the succeeding decade and a half, but not until 1300 was the splendidly named Reginald de Thunderley made Purveyor of Cloths to the Great Wardrobe for Edward I’s second wife, Queen Margaret. He provided 14 kinds of striped cloth for her valets.

Many senior and important figures in Britain’s history have held royal warrants of appointment. William Caxton was appointed printer to Henry VII in 1476. The poets laureate and the Masters of the Queen’s Music have also come under the royal warrant system of appointment historically. Henry VIII appointed Thomas Hewytt, the first person to supply food to the royal household under a royal warrant. He was to supply “Swannes and Cranes” and “all kinds of Wildfoule”. When Charles II was restored, he set about doling out royal warrants fairly assiduously and had given them to a wide range of people by 1684, including a sword cutter and a golf-club maker.

Of course, the system has changed dramatically over the years. In the earlier period of Britain’s, and particularly England’s, history, a major distinction was drawn between tradesmen and purveyors: tradesmen were those who provided things for the royal household above stairs and were ruled by the writ of the Lord Chamberlain; purveyors were those who provided things to the royal household below stairs, and were organised by the Lord Steward, who chaired the Board of Green Cloth. Those who dislike the Government for having dismantled some of their most ancient elements might find it is interesting to note that the Board of Green Cloth existed up until the introduction of the Licensing Act 2003, when it still had a role in licensing the sale and provision of alcohol in royal palaces.

There have been other changes. Throughout the 18th century, a fee was charged to people who wanted a royal warrant. It was already a sign of distinction, and many tradesmen and purveyors fought hard to get one. However, by 1837, when Queen Victoria started granting royal warrants, no fee was chargeable; indeed, it was determined that it was an important principle that no fee should be charged because there had been corruption in the granting of many royal warrants. Royal warrants were organised by the Lord Chamberlain, who has chaired the royal household’s tradesmen’s warrants committee from that time until today. In 1837, royal warrant holders had to swear an oath when they were first provided with their warrant.

The system has changed again in our day. Indeed, there have been significant changes under Her Majesty the Queen, as the system has been modernised. Currently, only three members of the royal household provide new warrants—Her Majesty the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales, although, by tradition, royal warrant holders who hold a warrant from Her Majesty the Queen Mother are allowed to retain it until five years after her death, and that period will obviously elapse later this year.

Royal warrants are now held for five years—they used to be held for 10—and can be renewed. They have to be renewed if the individual warrant holder who holds the warrant on behalf of the company leaves the company, dies, becomes bankrupt or is unable to continue holding the warrant for any reason. If the company changes ownership, there has to be a review of the royal warrant.

There is a single meeting of the royal household tradesmen’s warrants committee every year in November at which warrants are reviewed and decided on. The Lord Chamberlain, along with other members of the royal household and representatives of each of the households of the three warrant-granting members of the royal family, constitute the committee and they have established some minimal criteria whereby it is decided whether someone can hold a royal warrant. The first of these is that someone must have provided the good or service in question for at least three years, and that they must still be providing it. For instance, during the second world war, when an important printer in the east end of London was bombed by the Germans and was no longer able to provide the service, another warrant holder, who was also a printer, decided to assist them to maintain their royal warrant by dividing the work that they had in half and allowing them to operate out of another factory.

A person is not allowed to remain a warrant holder if they are bankrupt, but there are not many other distinctions beyond that. I can find only one case of the deliberate removal of a royal warrant from any company in the UK. Mohamed al-Fayed had his royal warrant from the Duke of Edinburgh removed in 2000, perhaps understandably considering the remarks that he had made about the royal family. The other area in which there is a guaranteed, additional criterion is the stipulation by the Prince of Wales that a company that wants his royal warrant must have a strong environmental policy.

I commend the hon. Gentleman on the deft way in which he has secured his debate. More importantly, he has hit on a crucial point. There is talk that Burberry production will be moved to China, so what does that mean in terms of air miles and so forth? What are the conditions under which those people will be working? He knows that there is a great deal of support for his campaign, and I hope that he succeeds at the end of the day.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that comment. Of course, the question of how a British company manages its environmental policy is important if it chooses to outsource to another country and is therefore effectively transporting large amounts of goods and services all around the globe. That is an important point, which I shall come to in relation to Burberry.

The list of present warrant holders is very long. There are 800 companies, which hold about 1,100 warrants, because it is possible to hold warrants from several members of the royal family. The list includes a taxidermist, a button maker and, of course, the providers of the vacuum cleaners. It is interesting to note that the royal family have purveyors of Angostura bitters, Martini and whisky, as well as several glass manufacturers, so they can make a good Manhattan.

Why should Parliament have anything to do with this at all? On the face of it, such decisions are purely for individual members of the royal family. I wholeheartedly support the system of having royal warrants of appointment. However, when someone walks down a street in Japan, where there are 62 Burberry shops, and sees the royal crest above each shop, or sees the crest and the words “By Appointment” on any of the shirts or other products made by a royal warrant holder, they may think of the royal family or the individual member of it in question, but they also think of the Britishness of that good. In a sense, a royal warrant is no longer just a royal warrant. It has been so successful around the world because of the prestige associated with our esteemed royal family and it has become effectively a national seal of approval. That is why it is important for us because it is one of the determining factors of what counts as Britishness in trade around the world.

Legislation exists that shows that Parliament has taken a role in the matter in the past. The Patents, Designs and Trade Marks Act 1883 and the Merchandise Marks Act 1887 both stipulate that it should be illegal for someone to pretend that they have a royal warrant when they do not have one, although the fine is still only £20, which seems rather paltry considering the significant value that a royal warrant provides to anyone who holds it.

It is significant that our current system is seen by many as secretive and self-perpetuating; most recommendations for new warrant holders come only from the Royal Warrant Holders Association, a body of people who already hold royal warrants. It is important that there should be no element of unfair competition and that new people coming into the market should have the opportunity to bear that royal and national seal of approval.

How should Parliament be involved? There should be a joint House of Commons and House of Lords Committee, which could be chaired by the Lord Chamberlain—who is, after all, a member of the House of Lords. There should be an annual report, laying out current holders and how they perform according to different criteria and making suggestions—I accept that they should be no more than suggestions and advice—to the Lord Chamberlain and his Committee. The final decision should be made by the individual member of the royal family.

There should also be new criteria for holding a royal warrant. As I said, the Prince of Wales has a strong environmental policy insistence for everybody who holds one of his warrants, and that stipulation should apply to all royal warrant holders. If we believe, as I do, that the environment and climate change are two of the most important issues facing Britain, and if Britain campaigns on them around the world, it must be right to say to those who hold a royal warrant, that national seal of approval, “You must adhere to a strong environmental policy.”

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on raising this topic, which is of great interest at the moment. During his research, has he made any assessment of the effect of the removal of a royal warrant on an organisation’s business? He mentioned Harrods. Does he know whether that business paid any financial penalty in losing the royal warrant? Has a royal warrant been removed from any other businesses? If so, have they suffered as a consequence?

It is remarkably difficult to find any instances of people from whom royal warrants have been removed—some have fallen into abeyance, so it is very difficult to tell. However, organisations clearly value their royal warrants because they make great use of them: they use the crest and the words “By Appointment” followed by the relevant member of the royal family. The warrant is a significant asset to them in particular markets—in China, Japan, the United States of America and parts of the middle east, it is an important element of marketing, although it is not the sum total of it.

Any company wanting to claim that it is a “great British” company should do so not only because it makes great profits—although obviously I am happy to celebrate the financial success of companies, including Burberry—but because it abides by British standards of fair play, one of which is a fair employment policy, which should be another criterion for being added to the list of royal warrants. For instance, a company should be able to guarantee that any goods in its name are not produced on the basis of slave wages or child labour. People would expect that. In fact, many who have outsourced to India and China have found it remarkably difficult to guarantee even that its goods will not be manufactured by children, because they do not set up their own factories there. Most in Britain would adhere to that important principle.

I come specifically to Burberry, which, as hon. Members may know, has two royal warrants—one from Her Majesty the Queen and another from the Prince of Wales. Burberry is an extremely successful company, which in the past few years has made significant improvements each quarter. I praise that economic success and want it to continue. However, it is outsourcing its polo shirt production, at present in Treorchy, to other parts of the world, and unless it can guarantee that it will not be doing so on the basis of slave wages or child labour, it should lose its royal warrant. Specifically, if Burberry chooses to withdraw from Wales, it could be argued strongly that it should lose the royal warrant from the Prince of Wales.

I do not oppose globalisation; it brings many benefits for British business and for some of the poorest parts of the world. I want to see a world in which free trade is successful, which is why I do not want to see tariffs created here or in other parts of the world. It is not for the Government to determine how Burberry should run its business, but it is for Parliament to consider how business is done by British companies that carry the national seal of approval—namely, the royal warrant.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on securing the debate. We find ourselves in somewhat unusual circumstances, because the nature of such debates is that no Minister has policy responsibility for the matter in question. I know that my hon. Friend has written to the Lord Chancellor, and I understand that he copied the letter to the Lord Chamberlain—he is certainly aware of it. However, he also copied it to the Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs as he clearly believes that it, too, has a remit.

Parliament does not scrutinise matters that are within the personal prerogative of the Crown. However, the wider prerogative powers that are exercised by Ministers can and must be scrutinised by Parliament. Ministers are thereby being held to account, as is right and proper. Today, we are talking about something quite different. I do not foresee Committees of the House of Commons seeing it as an immediate priority, although my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda may make representations. Indeed, towards the end of his remarks, he said that he thought that some Departments should have take responsibility for considering employment and other practices. That would, of course, be my former Department, the Department of Trade and Industry, and it would be for the departmental Select Committee to consider such matters.

My hon. Friend knows that Burberry is a significant company. It employs 2,000 people in Britain. He will therefore be aware of the potential consequences of it losing a royal warrant in respect of the factory in south Wales. I understand that that is the firm’s polo shirt factory, from which production is being shifted abroad. The Government always regret the loss of jobs that go abroad, but we remind ourselves that we are a major magnet, attracting incoming jobs to Europe; in particular, Asian companies want their headquarters to be here. My hon. Friend will pleased that Burberry’s headquarters are in London and that the company has about 600 manufacturing jobs elsewhere in Britain, and I know that he will want to think on the consequences of any action taken.

As for the criteria and rules for granting royal warrants, I understand that Earl Peel, the Lord Chamberlain, has stated that they are available. They are the Lord Chamberlain’s rules to be observed by holders of royal warrant of appointment. My hon. Friend may wish to take up those points with him.

The Minister said—I am sure that one cannot have a row with a parliamentary Clerk, but this is the row that I had with a parliamentary Clerk the other day—that because the Government do not have a responsibility for the matter, Parliament cannot debate it, but surely Parliament should have a life that is to some degree independent from the life of the Government. Parliament should be able to make the determination for itself, and the role of the Leader of the House is to enable Parliament to discuss what it wants to discuss.

Of course, and that is why we are discussing the issue, but the two points are not contradictory. My hon. Friend is saying that he was advised by the Table Office that an issue could be debated even if there was not parliamentary or Government responsibility for it. That is what I set out in my initial comments: there is no ministerial responsibility for this issue. It might surprise him to know that Ministers are not responsible for absolutely everything in the country, and this is one of those things. A flurry of hands did not go up from fellow Ministers to respond to the debate and to help my hon. Friend, as I hope I am doing, but as a former DTI Minister, I am happy to share with him my views on the welcome investment that there is in Britain. I caution him on giving any unfair impression or using any incautious language, which he avoided doing, in respect of a major firm that employs 2,000 people, because of the loss of particular jobs. However, he and other hon. Members are right to raise with the company their concerns and to seek assurances about the production that it is shifting abroad and what will happen in future.

My hon. Friend is being very generous, but I think that he is slightly missing the point. I have no desire to damage Burberry’s long-term success; I want it to be an enormous success. It has been a success in the past and it recently rescued itself from its previous destruction of its own brand. My concern is that if a company that markets itself around the world as a luxury, distinctively British brand withdraws substantially from British production, that will damage the brand for the future. We should all take an interest in that.

My understanding is that the distinctive Burberry brand, which attaches to its very successful rainwear more than anything else, continues to be manufactured here. The polo shirts, which are manufactured and have been manufactured, I think, for some time in Spain and Italy as well as here, are not perhaps what the public think of as Burberry. However, I am sure that the company will take to heart my hon. Friend’s comments and welcome his sober assessment of the situation and his appreciation of the work that the company does here.

I do not doubt that the attention of the Lord Chamberlain will be drawn to my hon. Friend’s comments, and I know that my hon. Friend will look forward to receiving any response that the Lord Chamberlain chooses to make. I do not believe that he has written to the Lord Chamberlain directly, although I might be wrong about that. If he does, he will be interested, I am sure, to share with other hon. Members the response that he receives to the points that he has raised.

I am grateful to you, Mr. Williams, for allowing me to respond to my hon. Friend’s debate and I thank him again for raising the issue.

I am most grateful to have secured this debate, which concerns the Gerrards Cross tunnel collapse. I applied for and was granted such a debate rather a long time ago by Mr. Speaker, but unfortunately the debate fell on the day after Sir Edward Heath died. The House adjourned in the morning, following tributes to him, and the debate, which was to take place in the afternoon, was therefore lost.

I rather took the view then that the necessity for the debate might evaporate with the passage of months. I regret to say, however, that the necessity for the debate has not gone at all. Now, at the beginning of 2007, my constituents in Gerrards Cross continue to face a nightmare situation, which has been brought about by the botched attempt to develop a Tesco store above the railway line, in the middle of their community.

It is worth briefly running over the history of the matter. Tesco purchased from British Rail as far back as the early 1990s the air rights to build a store over the railway line at Gerrards Cross where it lies in the cutting. However, Tesco submitted a planning application for the construction of the store only in 1997, the idea being that the railway line would be filled in with a tunnel. Fill would be placed on top, and a store and a car park placed on top of that.

That proposal went down extremely badly with the local community. Press coverage at the time, as well as an in-depth investigation, showed that 93 per cent. of the local community in Gerrards Cross were against the scheme, and they expressed their opposition vociferously. Even Tesco, having initially denied the level of opposition, subsequently had to admit that it was as high as that level.

When Tesco persisted in pursuing the planning application, I attended a public meeting at which, I recollect, the local community raised £14,000 in 20 minutes to pay for representation to resist the scheme. The matter went to a planning inquiry, at which the local community and the district council, which had turned down the application, united to try to persuade the planning inspector and the Deputy Prime Minister to turn the application down. Unfortunately, they were not successful. Even the Minister might agree that it was unfortunate that the application was not turned down in view of the history of what followed.

The application was granted in January 1998. The inspector accepted that the development would cause massive disruption to the centre of the community and a great disturbance for those living near it, and laid down a number of criteria for the manner in which it should take place. It was envisaged that the development, which would require massive amounts of fill material to be brought in by rail only in order to minimise lorry movements, should take place over a seven-month period, and that the clearing up and landscaping thereafter should take a further three months.

What in fact happened was that Tesco did not commence any of the work or do anything at all until the five-year period was nearly up. The consequence of Tesco’s actions was to create great uncertainty in the local community, particularly for the traders who were likely to be put out of business if Tesco opened the store. As a result, some well known local businesses were forced to close and decided to relocate. It was only at the very end of the period—eight days before the planning permission expired—that Tesco decided to proceed and started the works. That was after Tesco had applied unsuccessfully to increase the size of the store by 30 per cent. and, in fairness to Tesco, after it had also taken into account the need to change the dimensions of the tunnel, because of the possibility of Central Railway, the Deputy Prime Minister’s other interesting project, needing to run through the site.

Thereafter, far from the work being done in seven months, it proceeded at a snail’s pace. The result was to lengthen the disruption for the local community to the maximum possible extent. The development was in breach of the planning permission, but enforcing such matters was difficult and Tesco was given every allowance as the work proceeded. Finally, by June 2005, it seemed that the work of building the tunnel segments and putting the fill on top was at last coming to an end. Work was proceeding to tamp down the fill, which turned out to be bottom ash from the Edmonton and Rainham incinerators. That was not envisaged in the course of the original planning permission, but Tesco claimed that, as it was inert material, it was satisfactory to place it under the tarmac between the segments and the open air. I accept that the Environment Agency also thought that that was appropriate.

On 30 June at about 7 pm—a time of maximum commuter traffic—three units of the 16 segments making up the tunnel suddenly collapsed. It was only by a miracle that a train that had been passing through only a minute before was not covered with thousands of tonnes of debris. If it had, the matter of which we are now speaking would have been a major incident with many deaths.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way because he knows that this matter seriously affects my constituency as well. It would be good if he put on record that there was no loss of life because of the behaviour of two train drivers from Chiltern Railways who took immediate action on realising that something was wrong. They are to be commended for responding swiftly—on that occasion, they saved life and limb.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was about to add that the driver of another train that was about to enter the tunnel realised what had happened and sounded the alert to prevent any further trains from running into the obstruction. The miracle that no one was killed, which was celebrated in the local community, was soon replaced by the realisation that the extent of the collapse meant that the line would be blocked for many weeks. Indeed, it was not until 20 August that it was reopened. Massive disruption had been caused to the local community up and down the line from Banbury through to London. The line was one of the best and most efficient Chiltern lines in the country and was recognised as such.

Furthermore, as the site was cleared under emergency procedure, lorries went through Gerrards Cross because the railway could not be used. Those lorries carried the spoil material that should have been under the tarmac, and scattered dust in all directions until finally dumping a large quantity of it, without planning permission, at Coleshill in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan). Subsequent attempts by Tesco to obtain planning permission for that dump were turned down and enforcement proceedings were brought. The dump was removed only when my hon. Friend wrote to the chairman of Tesco and pointed out that members of the local community, particularly children, were complaining of health problems in relation to the dust coming from the tip.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for acknowledging the role that I played, but, in fact, a strong role was played by members of the local community. People were exceedingly worried about the bottom incinerator ash that was sitting in Coleshill and blowing around as it was not tamped down or damped down in any way. The ash was originally cleared only to the bottom of a site where it would be covered by other material. Does he agree that that situation was totally unsatisfactory and a dereliction of the company’s duty towards the local population?

I agree entirely. Indeed, it is a subject of great anxiety because bottom ash—a substance that I am rather familiar with having prosecuted in the past for the old inspectorate of pollution—inevitably contains heavy metals and dioxins. I accept that it may be suitable as fill material, but that does not mean that it is something people want blowing around their gardens, over their streets or across farm land. Yet that is the result of this collapse and the incompetence that underlies it.

As one would expect, there was a Health and Safety Executive investigation and, having in the past prosecuted for it, I know that such things take rather a long time. I am sure that the investigation is very thorough and I know that it is continuing. I have little doubt that at some point in the near future there will be prosecutions. The engineers on the project were White Young Green, and the contractors were Jacksons. It appears to be a combination of their activities that caused the tunnel to collapse. I am sure that the public will expect that those who are culpable to be held to account. However, we know little about the precise cause of the tunnel’s collapse.

I have been briefed that the view of the Health and Safety Executive is that the collapse was due not to the design but to the manner in which construction was carried out. However, it will be appreciated that no one has produced a definitive report to provide that assurance. After the collapse, part of the structure was allowed to stand. It is suggested that Tesco wishes to proceed with the scheme, although it remains far from clear whether that would entail demolishing what is left, with the skeleton of the store above it, or whether it is proposed to build new segments over the railway line and knit them to the existing structure.

That raises the first major concern, which I flag up for the Minister. Can he provide any indication as to how long the HSE investigatory process is likely to continue? Is there any means by which the findings can be made available to the public that would reassure them about the tunnel’s collapse and that would be sufficient to enable them to gauge whether the structure that remains is fit and proper to be part of a new development?

Secondly, and perhaps obviously, the site is a blight in the middle of an attractive community; where people were proud of the environment there is now a great mess. It is immediately obvious when one travels through by train or when one looks over the railway bridge. There is the continuing problem of dust and contamination that one would associate with any building site. One should bear in mind particularly that, when planning permission was granted, the inspector wanted to minimise the period that that problem would last.

The community of Gerrards Cross is articulate. It is full of retired engineers. Indeed, many people have been extremely proactive following the disaster. One of them, Mr. Neil Mathers, has become well known to me. He is exceptionally industrious and he took an early interest in the project—so early that on 15 May 2003, long before the tunnel collapsed, he wrote to Sir Terry Leahy. In that letter, he stated:

“It seems there has been a failure to address the major problems properly, and to ensure ALL construction drawings are received and approved”

and that

“the construction schedule, construction execution statement, crane rigging studies and specific safety procedures for the site”

appear to be absent. Prophetically, he asked:

“Is it worth the risk? Your vast tunnel at Gerrards Cross might well become a national scandal.”

Mr. Mathers highlighted his concern that the design of the building and the immensely large arch that it entailed would not prove to be sufficiently stable to hold the structure on top.

Mr. Mathers may have been wrong; he is an engineer of considerable standing, but he did not have the opportunity to see all the drawings. However, he took the opportunity to stand on the parapet and look at what was going on underneath. The Minister will realise that if someone of that distinction and with that previous career thinks there is something flawed with the plans and the design, the absence of a detailed report before further work is allowed to take place will cause the local community serious concern.

In fairness, although Network Rail does not have any control over Tesco, there is nothing to stop it being proactive in trying to highlight the problems. I am aware that it has indicated that it will not let the plan proceed unless or until it has the reassurance that it is safe. I press the Minister hard on the need to provide an explanation to the public in Gerrards Cross on the cause of the collapse before any new work takes place.

The other problem is that the time scale that I have been given suggests that, because of the difficulty of drawing up new plans, further work on the site may not be possible until the middle of 2008. As the Minister will appreciate, that means that we will have had 10 years of blight since planning permission was granted and that it will be a massive five years since the construction commenced.

Will my hon. Friend confirm that it is not only his constituents in Gerrards Cross who need the Minister’s assurances, but those who travel on the Chiltern line beyond his constituency? They need to know that they can travel in safety, but reinstating the plans without providing full access to the results of the health and safety inquiry would leave doubts in their mind.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend; that must be right. I would certainly be hesitant about taking a train through the tunnel when there was a reconstructed building on top, unless I was satisfied that the information was available that clearly indicated that it was safe. We know that Tesco has prepared detailed reports through its new engineers, Costain, but if it wants to give the public reassurance, it should publish them. At that stage, constituents such as Mr. Mathers, who are clearly people of intelligence capable of understanding such things, would be able to reassure the local community that everything was in order.

To conclude, the Competition Commission report on supermarkets was published this morning, and I glanced at it because it is rather relevant to the decisions that underlay the Tesco construction in the middle of Gerrards Cross and the granting of planning permission in the first place. I am beginning to think that had Tesco sought planning permission in another five or 10 years, it would probably not have been granted it at all, because its achievement of a monopoly position and its building up of a land bank have had serious adverse impacts on local businesses in a community that never desired the development in the first place.

The truth, I am afraid, is that the whole history of the development is a catalogue of failures. The project should never have had planning permission in the first place, it has been badly constructed and Tesco has shown remarkably little diligence or urgency since the collapse in trying to remedy its own faults.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) on securing a debate twice on this subject. We are of course grateful that no unfortunate event has befallen a current or former statesman and delayed today’s debate.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will understand that I am unable to go into some of the matters that he raised. Those include the decision-making process under which the original planning permission was granted and the report to which he referred on the monopoly position of various supermarkets. As the railways Minister, I am happy to address my own brief. Fortunately, I am not the Minister for Tesco.

I am.

My right hon. Friend takes that burden on his shoulders.

It is just unfortunate that I have turned up early.

My right hon. Friend has my best wishes.

It would be useful to reiterate once again some of the events of 2005. I know that the hon. Gentleman has referred to them, but I hope that he will forgive me for going over some of them in more detail.

At 19.34 hours on Thursday 30 June 2005, the driver of a Chiltern Railways Stratford-on-Avon to London Marylebone service reported the partial collapse of tunnel construction works over the railway at Gerrards Cross. The train driver acted commendably in conjunction with signallers immediately to implement emergency procedures. As a result, as has been said, a westbound train approaching the tunnel in the opposite direction was brought to a stand 300 yards before the obstruction.

I, too, congratulate and pay tribute to those train drivers, and that reflects what has been said in the debate. Fortunately, there were no injuries, but things could have been so much worse. The potential for a serious accident with multiple casualties was plain, and such an incident was avoided only by a margin of a few minutes.

Engineers from Network Rail and Tesco’s construction contractor were quickly on site and reported that approximately 30 m of the 320 m concrete tunnel had collapsed on to the track. Some 29 reinforced concrete tunnel segments and an estimated 5,000 tonnes of infill material had fallen on to the railway and blocked the line. A further 16 adjacent segments were subsequently identified as having been damaged or dislodged in the collapse and had to be dismantled.

The collapse occurred at the site for the new Tesco supermarket at Gerrards Cross, above the two-track Chiltern line that runs from London Marylebone to Beaconsfield, Banbury and Birmingham. The project involved building over the existing railway lines and infilling the 320 m long cutting in which the railway runs. The supermarket and car park were to be built on top of the infilled cutting.

The client for the construction project is Tesco and its principal contractor at the time was Jackson Civil Engineering. Various other companies are involved, including designers, planning supervisors and subcontractors. The work affects the railway beneath, so Network Rail is also closely involved in supervising the construction work. Along with others, Network Rail has obligations under health and safety legislation to ensure that work that could affect the safety of the railway is designed, planned and carried out safely. I understand that Tesco has appointed new contractors, Costain, and new structural engineers, Scott Wilson, to undertake a review of the project. I am told that that is a thorough and detailed piece of work. However, no decision on the future of the site will be made by Tesco until that review is completed. The hon. Gentleman made explicit his request that Tesco publish that report. I echo him, as that would reassure the many residents whom he represents. Publishing would be a positive and transparent move by Tesco, although whether it does is up to the company.

The incident was immediately reported to the Health and Safety Executive, the Government’s independent health and safety regulator. The HSE commenced an investigation into the collapse that night and an inspector was on site within two hours. A multidisciplinary investigation team was drawn together the next day. The investigation into the project and the responsibility of the various parties is still under way, but it is expected to conclude shortly. Decisions about potential enforcement action are expected in the next few months. Responsibility for enforcing railway safety was transferred from the HSE to the Office of Rail Regulation in April 2006. Although the principal risk in the incident was to the railway, the legislation allocating responsibilities between the HSE and the Office of Rail Regulation requires that the HSE remains in the lead.

The Gerrards Cross investigation team involves inspectors from both bodies. I am pleased to say that there is full co-operation to ensure that the investigation is thorough and concluded as soon as possible. The purpose of the HSE investigation is to ascertain the reasons for the collapse and identify the extent to which the various parties involved discharge their responsibilities under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and related regulations.

Specialist inspectors reviewed the decision to reopen the railway in August 2005; more recently, they have been in discussion with Network Rail about the options for recommencing work on the project. The hon. Gentleman referred to Chiltern’s performance before the incident. He will be interested to know that, although it is difficult to measure performance over that shorter period, it has, on a periodic basis, achieved its best-ever public performance measure since the accident. That, of course, is good news for passengers using the Chiltern line.

As the investigation has proceeded, the HSE has continued to make public key facts about the collapse to ensure as much openness as possible during the criminal investigation. I am pleased to say that the investigation team is receiving full co-operation from all the parties involved. As a result of the investigation, the HSE will decide whether it is appropriate to bring criminal proceedings against any of the parties in the construction project. Given the hon. Gentleman’s legal background, he will be unsurprised to know that the HSE will publish its own report only after prosecutions have been brought.

I entirely understand why that is the case. Having done such prosecutions in similar circumstances, I know that the report can come out only at the end of the prosecution’s case. The Minister will therefore understand why it is so important that there should be some means other than the HSE report through which the public can understand what has happened before anything further is done on the site.

I fully accept that. I reiterate my earlier point: provided that the review has been completed, Tesco should make its consultant’s report public. The HSE investigation has thoroughly explored the role of all relevant parties and considered all credible causes of the incident. It remains of the view that the cause was related to the way in which infill material was being loaded on to the concrete arch structure. The removal of the collapsed structure from the railway was undertaken by Jackson Civil Engineering and it was overseen by Network Rail. HSE specialist investigators gave advice during the clear-up to ensure that the huge task was completed as quickly as possible. A full engineering assessment of the tunnel was undertaken and verified independently. It involved a complex review of the design’s site records, a specialist engineering assessment and a detailed survey of the structure.

Some remedial works were undertaken to adjust backfill loading on the arch sections and to enable continuous monitoring of the structure. The line reopened for trains on 2 August 2005. All parties involved, including the HSE, were content that it was and remains safe to run trains through the remaining tunnel sections.

The material stored at Brentford Grange farm was to be used as construction material at the Tesco site in Gerrards Cross. The hon. Gentleman said that the material known as incinerated bottom ash aggregate is a secondary aggregate processed from the ash that is created from the high-temperature incineration of municipal waste. The material used at Gerrards Cross was supplied from incinerators at Edmonton, north London, and Rainham in Essex. It is important to stress that the material is inert; it does not contain high levels of toxic heavy metals. Chemical analysis of IBAA shows up below the detection limits of heavy metals deemed acceptable by the Environment Agency.

Further, the use of the material in the construction project was approved by the Environment Agency and by Network Rail, and it was accepted by South Buckinghamshire district council, the local planning authority.

I have also prosecuted incinerator contamination, so I am familiar with the fact that bottom ash may be used for several purposes. The Minister will appreciate, however, the distinction between bottom ash as fill over a tunnel that will be capped with tarmac, and bottom ash blowing in the wind around a local community and landing in people’s vegetable gardens. There is anxiety, and I am not completely content that the Environment Agency has provided reassurance on that wider issue.

Were I to be in the hon. Gentleman’s position as constituency MP, I would have exactly the same concerns. I do not want to sound like I am passing the buck, but he will appreciate that the conditions of any planning permission are not for the Department to enforce. I none the less welcome any move to ensure that enforcement measures are considered when a construction company has such materials to hand and does not make the proper arrangements to contain them and to stop them contaminating people’s gardens and property.

I have served on the same Committees and attended various debates with the hon. Gentleman, and the number of people and the categories of individuals whom he has prosecuted in a past life continue to grow. I look forward to hearing what new additions there are in the future.

Decisions relating to any future reconstruction of the structure are a matter for Tesco. There is no firm date set for that. However, management of the construction work will need to comply with the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 1994 and will be overseen by the HSE’s construction inspectors.

When completed, the structure over the railway will be subject to approval by the Office of Rail Regulation under the requirements of the Railways and Other Transport Systems (Approvals of Works, Plant and Equipment) Regulations 1994—obviously. That approval will extend only to the functionality of the work and its effect on the safe operation of the railway; it will not consider the structural elements or the method of construction.

In summary, the incident naturally created much local concern and it had a severe impact on railway operations. It was only by the quick thinking of railway staff that a serious accident with multiple casualties was avoided. The clear-up operation and detailed site assessment enabled Network Rail to reopen the railway line as quickly as it could, once all key parties were satisfied that there was no risk of a further collapse.

The complex investigation into the cause of the collapse is still under way. It has gathered a large quantity of evidence and it will reach a conclusion soon. I understand that Chiltern Railways, Network Rail and Tesco are keeping stakeholders informed of events.

The great lakes region of Africa is emerging from a long and terrible period of violence and dictatorship. Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and now the Democratic Republic of the Congo have democratically elected Governments. The economies of Uganda and Rwanda in particular are being kick-started and there are many reasons to be mildly optimistic about the future of the region. Eastern Congo remains lawless, of course, and the writ of the Kinshasa Government does not yet run there in any true conventional sense. That lawlessness as a function of civil war, poverty and history continues to be fuelled in no small part by the existence of marauding bands of bandits formally associated with neighbouring countries that have at one time or another occupied parts of the country.

Today I want to focus on the problem of the Lord’s Resistance Army, which still occupies part of eastern Congo and has conducted a 20-year campaign in and around northern Uganda. In that time many children have been abducted and forced into military service, many people in northern Uganda have lost limbs and many have lost their lives. The suffering of the people of northern Uganda has been beyond expression at times.

I come to the subject as chair of the all-party group on the great lakes region and genocide prevention. Just over a year ago, a delegation from the all-party group, including my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), visited northern Uganda and met President Yoweri Museveni. The report of the visit reiterated the extent of human suffering the conflict in northern Uganda has caused. At the time many thought that the International Criminal Court indictments of the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony, and of several of his close associates, which were delivered while the mission was still in the field, signalled that the window for possible peace talks between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Ugandan Government had closed. Kony seemed unprepared to talk and President Museveni had urged the ICC to take up the case.

When the group subsequently met President Museveni in London, it seemed that little had changed. The president had decided that if the LRA would not lay down its arms and if Uganda were not to be permitted by the international community effectively to invade the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it was up to the ICC to take charge of the situation. The ICC did that and there has apparently been a considerable turnround in many respects. The LRA has apparently taken part in talks in Juba, although—to put it in the most positive way—things are moving extremely slowly.

It is estimated that 1,000 people a week in the region are dying as a result of the conflict. Children are still the principal victims of the violence: an estimated 1,500 are still in LRA ranks and at least 10,000 remain unaccounted for. It is worth emphasising the abominable extent of the crimes conducted in the course of the conflict. Some 20,000 to 25,000 children have been abducted and made to work as field wives, child soldiers, and porters of weaponry; often they have been forced to mutilate or kill friends and relatives. Tens of thousands of other people in the region have become night commuters, walking long distances every night into towns to try to avoid attack. Members of the all-party group met some of those children at the Noah’s Ark shelter in Gulu. The founder of the Concerned Parents Association, a remarkable non-governmental organisation formed in response to the abductions and killings, told the all-party group the harrowing tale of her daughter: kidnapped by the rebels in a notorious attack on the Aboke girls’ school, she was forced to become the wife of a commander and was held for seven years before she managed to escape and return home.

The group’s visit to Koch Goma internally displaced person camp was perhaps the most striking and depressing experience of its time in Uganda. As at other camps, the inhabitants live in fear. The day before the visit, residents who had gone to tend nearby fields had fled in panic after coming across signs of LRA presence. At a memorable meeting with the group, residents described an incident in May 2005 in which 16 people were killed and two abducted when the LRA attacked the camp. When the assembled crowd was asked who had lost someone to the LRA through murder or abduction, virtually every hand went up.

I believe it is incumbent on anyone who wants to help alleviate that suffering to put the present victims at the top of the international agenda. If there is a way to make it stop, we have to help to find it and the sooner the better. There is another agenda, however, and that is to seek to prevent such things from happening in future. That agenda is served by making it clear that the perpetrators of the world’s worst crimes against humanity are held responsible and punished for the atrocities that they commit. The present situation in northern Uganda, with a temporary ceasefire in place while negotiations take place to make it permanent, I hope, is therefore extremely sensitive.

At face value, that appears to be a Catch-22 situation. There is no doubt that atrocities have taken place over many years, and that cannot be ignored under any circumstances. That is why the ICC has indicted a number of LRA suspects. However, discussions imply movement on both sides. Such movement brings with it, one assumes, the possibility of damaging the ICC process and the crucial role that it will play in preventing future atrocities. It is essential not to find a messy compromise, but to serve both objectives—to stop the violence, while also holding to account those responsible for violence in the past.

For those on the ground, that will be a challenge of the greatest proportions. For sure, the August 2006 cessation of hostilities agreement has so far led to increased safety, confidence and hope. With assistance from non-governmental organisations such as Christian Aid, Oxfam, Tearfund, and Save the Children, schools are being rebuilt and there is better access to health care. The improved security has allowed NGOs much better access to camps for families who have been forced from their homes by fighting. Displaced people have been able to move to new settlement sites, which are often closer to their homes and have access to farmland. New fighting and a return to terror tactics in northern Uganda could destroy all that progress, so we need to do what we can as an important member of the international community to prevent that from happening, if that is possible.

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and congratulate him on securing this debate. Does he accept that one of the problems is that many of the refugees are based around Juba, in southern Sudan? We all know that Sudan is a unstable country. There is a need to bring the peace talks to an early closure, hopefully with peace at the end of them, so that we can have peace in the whole sub-region.

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is crucial that the talks should come to a successful conclusion, because the whole region is interlinked. My interest extends out of what was a terrible mess in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, which came about through all sorts of terrible events, arising primarily after the Rwandan genocide of 1994. All those problems are interlinked, and we can deal with them only if we deal with them all together. That will sometimes mean a gradational move in each set of negotiations.

Members of the all-party group and I have had the good fortune of meeting both President Museveni and many of the key actors in the region. The latter include the Juba mediation team, the ICC, and various experts who are close to the process. There have been many false dawns and there are many serious obstacles to overcome, but the process has the potential to make more progress than we might have expected a year or so ago.

The talks are delicate and at a critical stage, and many observers perceive a possibly dangerous loss of momentum. I hope that the Government will ensure that anything that can be done to contribute to a successful outcome will be done. I very much welcome the UK’s contribution of £250,000 to facilitate the talks process, but I also note the recent International Crisis Group report, which found that mediation efforts have so far suffered from a lack of capacity. Will the Minister make clear the UK’s continued appropriate support for the peace process, both politically and materially?

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and congratulate him on securing this debate. I was in Uganda with Oxfam in September last year. I am sure that he is aware that over the past few days, if not the past couple of weeks, the Lord’s Resistance Army has started to say that it does not have any confidence in the fact that the peace talks are being held in southern Sudan. The LRA does not see the Sudanese Government as impartial and has suggested that another country, such as Kenya, Tanzania or others, could be used to host the talks. Would my hon. Friend comment on that, and also on the fact that the African Union has so far been reluctant to get involved?

I thank my hon. Friend for that. Mr. Chissano has been appointed to mediate on that important issue. He will have to face a decision. The LRA has suggested that it might like the comfort of a hotel in Kenya for the next few years, instead of getting on with things in Juba. Sometimes, we have to take rumours as being exactly that. People on the ground will understand what they mean and be able to interpret them. I am concerned by what some of the LRA negotiators may have said recently about continuing at Juba, but at the moment, we must hold fire. They should crack on and continue at Juba because there is a worry that if they move to another location they might simply get bogged down and stay there for the next few years.

On the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, East (Kerry McCarthy), it has been suggested—this may be a cynical view—that the current talks are a ruse for the Government of Uganda to keep the heat off until after the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference in November. Supposedly, the Ugandan army has been deploying in sensitive areas, and President Museveni has not given any ground in the talks so far. It is important to note that he is, more or less, the democratically elected president of a UN-recognised state and that the LRA is a somewhat different entity. I put it no stronger than that. There is an argument about moral equivalence. We should not be too hard on President Museveni, who has faced a threat over his border and has not been allowed to pursue the enemy because we have not permitted him to make an incursion into another country.

It would help if the Government would make it clear that a resolution of the conflict is at the heart of their policy and interests. The spotlight will be firmly on Uganda in November as we approach the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference that it is hosting. A sound and durable peace process would be a huge and laudable achievement to showcase to the world.

In order to reach a solution to the conflict, underlying issues that contributed to it must be addressed, particularly the apparent underdevelopment of services in northern Uganda in comparison with other parts of the country. In many ways, Uganda is a great success story. The film, “The Last King of Scotland”, shows what a mess it was in before President Museveni. Some might say that he has not always done the right thing recently, but there is now universal primary education across Uganda and it leads the region in many laudable ways.

There may be arguments for separating talks on the future of the LRA from discussions on the wider issues of development in northern Uganda. Any such talks should involve not only the LRA, but a wider and, one might argue, far more legitimate representation of the people of northern Uganda. It is particularly important that civil society organisations should attend such talks. Will the Minister reassure us that whenever and wherever appropriate, the Government will be ready to make an appropriate contribution to such efforts quickly, whether to the negotiations or to the relationship between the Ugandan Government and northern Uganda on the ground? I am sure that that has already been done, but it is a good idea to flag up such considerations when one gets a chance such as this.

One of the most difficult issues in the talks is the indictments of the ICC. I flag this up again because it is a core problem. It is imperative that the ICC is supported as a tool of international accountability. The question is whether any overlap exists between the overriding need to maintain the credibility of the court and the need to find a solution in the talks that will end the violence in the region. I know that if such overlap exists, the UK Government will do what they can to assist people to exploit it.

I sense that the ICC does not see itself as a blunt instrument. It is aware of the reality on the ground for the people of northern Uganda, such as the Acholi people. I would like to find a way forward that maintains its authority and does the best for northern Ugandans. The danger is that if the ICC takes an unnecessarily blinkered approach, it may simply say that the writ of the ICC has to be upheld, and people will have to pay for that on the ground. It appears, however, from recent ICC comments and our contact with it, that its position is much more sophisticated than that, which I am extremely glad to see.

It has been suggested that some of the trials could be dealt with in Uganda rather than at the ICC. What confidence does my hon. Friend have that the Ugandan justice system is sufficiently robust to handle such trials?

That question addresses a core point. Let me tie my answer in with the point that I was about to make about separating indictees from non-indictees. The rule with the International Criminal Court is that if a state is unable or unwilling to deal with a case, it should be referred to the ICC. I may be wrong, but as far as I can see, Uganda has the capability, but not the political will, for various other reasons—I do not mean that in a pejorative sense—and that is why the matter was referred. However, President Museveni has now changed his mind and would like to deal with it within Uganda.

My view is that the Ugandan system could deal with the matter, but I think that, in practical terms, it would have to separate off the indictees, who would have to go through a full, proper judicial process, from other processes—perhaps judicial or quasi-judicial processes tied in with traditional justice mechanisms in Uganda, such as we have seen in Rwanda and Burundi. That might be a possibility for the non-indictees. There are 1,500 people, many of whom could be integrated back into Uganda without, perhaps, a formal judicial process. That is why I think that the focus on the indictees needs to be held up.

It is also worth saying that if a proper judicial process was gone through and it was acceptable to the ICC—I am hypothesising here on the basis of relatively little knowledge of the law—President Museveni might well be more influential on what would happen to the indictees were they to be found guilty. He may be able to influence an outcome subsequent to those trials that is appropriate for all concerned.

The international community has a powerful responsibility to get to grips with the situation. There is a window of opportunity. The issue is not something for which the British Government are wholly responsible, but we are an enormous force for good right across the great lakes region. We are the highest funders of foreign aid, arguably, in Rwanda, in Burundi and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We have a long and strong relationship with the Ugandans. They are a great success story and I hope that we can help to sort out the problem in northern Uganda in relatively short order.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (Mr. Joyce) and his colleagues in the all-party group on the great lakes region and genocide prevention on securing and participating in this debate on the northern Ugandan peace talks. I also thank them for their support and endeavours to resolve what is an appalling conflict in a very large part of the African continent. I will try to respond to all the points raised, but I will review the record of the debate and if I have not responded adequately or have missed questions, I will write to my hon. Friend and place the answer in the Library, so that all members of the all-party group can read that it in conjunction with the debate.

The most important thing for us is to address the threats posed by the Lord’s Resistance Army. Ending the conflict in northern Uganda is indeed a Government priority. For nearly 20 years, that vicious insurgency group has abducted children, torn families apart and committed acts of unspeakable cruelty against innocent civilians. At the worst point, more than 2 million people—nearly two thirds of northern Uganda’s entire population—were displaced as a result of its activities. It is impossible not to be moved or angered by the cruel loss of life and the continued suffering of the local communities which my hon. Friend described.

The LRA’s activities have also threatened the stability and security of the wider region, particularly in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Both those countries are also trying to deal with their own fragile transition processes. As my hon. Friend said, those matters are interlinked. The efforts by the Government of South Sudan to mediate on a resolution between the LRA and the Ugandan Government are to be applauded, and some progress has been made. The signing of a cessation of hostilities agreement, which remains in force, is a genuine achievement and has had a marked impact on the security situation in northern Uganda. That is why the LRA’s announcement on 12 January this year that it would not return to Juba is so frustrating.

What now for the talks? In short, the future of the talks depends on whether the LRA is willing to return to Juba and resume mediation. The Ugandan Government have reiterated their commitment to making progress in Juba, as has the mediator, South Sudan’s vice-president, Riek Machar. The UK is not a party to that regional initiative, but we have welcomed and supported it with a contribution of £250,000 to the UN fund. Along with other members of the international community, we have worked to secure clear statements of support for the talks process from the United Nations and the European Union. The newly appointed UN special envoy for LRA-affected areas, former President Chissano, has just visited the region and he, too, has encouraged all concerned to return to southern Sudan and focus on making progress. UK officials, including our high commissioner, have regularly visited the north to monitor the situation and build contacts with local politicians. It is clear that the talks process is extremely fragile, but it offers a genuine chance for peace. It is now for the parties to demonstrate that this is what they want and to go that extra mile, as it were, to Juba to resume the dialogue.

There have been recurring claims that the Ugandan Government are not interested in negotiating an end to the conflict, but they supported previous mediation efforts, such as those led by former Ugandan Minister, Betty Bigombe, and have engaged strongly over the past six months with the Juba process. Primary responsibility for providing security to the people of northern Uganda and forging a lasting solution to the conflict must rightly lie with the Government of Uganda. Lord Triesman met President Museveni most recently on 20 November 2006 and discussed those issues. The President has consistently assured us that he is committed to getting peace and security in the north, and it is clearly in his interests to do so. The ongoing conflict undermines Uganda’s economic and development gains made over the past 20 years, and it threatens future progress and the security of neighbouring states, to which my hon. Friend alluded.

Uganda has failed to end this conflict militarily, despite aggressive campaigns. The numbers seeking refuge in internally displaced people’s camps actually rose as a result of these campaigns and the LRA attacks continued. That led to the image and standing of the Ugandan Government and their army being undermined, so I do not accept the suggestions that President Museveni is not committed to ending the conflict. It is the only way in which he can resolve not just the conflict but the problem of the international standing and improvement of his Government and armed forces.

The most senior LRA commanders are now subject to International Criminal Court arrest warrants. Some commentators have pointed to the warrants as being a barrier to further progress in Juba, but I disagree. The ICC arrest warrants have brought increased international attention to the conflict in northern Uganda, reduced the logistical support for the LRA, exposed its crimes and pressed it to come to the negotiating table. The UK is a strong supporter of the work of the ICC. There can be no impunity and no deals for those indicted by the International Criminal Court.

As the UN Secretary-General’s special adviser on genocide prevention, Juan Mendez, noted in his talk to parliamentarians in December last year, accountability for such crimes is crucial to prevention of similar crimes in the future. Any sense of impunity for crimes already committed breeds insecurity among populations at risk and creates an incentive for repetition among the perpetrators. Mendez noted the particular role the International Criminal Court can play in breaking that cycle of impunity. The northern Uganda warrants were the first to be issued by the ICC. Our efforts to combat impunity, not just in northern Uganda, but in other current and future situations, hinge on our resolve to stand by the court as its faces its first challenges.

Kony and the other senior commanders indicted by the ICC must face justice for the crimes of which they are accused. These are the most serious charges: crimes against humanity and war crimes, including the targeting and killing of civilians, rape, attacks against the camps for internally displaced people and the abduction of civilians, including women and children. However, the vast majority of LRA members not indicted by the ICC can, and do, receive a full amnesty from the Ugandan Government. The UK has supported the work of the amnesty commission in that regard.

The Ugandan Government must do more to encourage those LRA members not facing ICC arrest warrants to give up their arms, leave the bush and seek reintegration into their communities, in the way that my hon. Friend suggested. The international community will support such efforts, and we will support the international community in that regard.

So what else needs to be done? The security situation in northern Uganda has improved enormously since the talks began in July 2006. According to the UN about 300,000 displaced people voluntarily returned to their villages last year. That is significant proof of the benefits the peace process has brought up to this point. However, 1.4 million people remain living in camps for internally displaced people and those communities are still heavily dependent on international humanitarian assistance. That is a continuing concern.

We have consistently called on the Ugandan Government to provide for the needs, and to ensure the protection, of those living and working in the north of Uganda. We welcomed the establishment last year by the Government of Uganda of the joint monitoring committee to oversee the delivery of a prioritised emergency action plan to tackle humanitarian issues in the north. The JMC has made some progress, but more needs to be done. So while we all wish that we were not needed, the UK is one of the largest humanitarian donors to Uganda. Since April 2005, we have committed more than £37 million in humanitarian assistance through UN agencies and the Red Cross. Our aid helps to provide food, health care, water, sanitation, education and protection to vulnerable children, but we want to see the region standing on its own feet. That is why we are working closely with international partners to support the regional initiative in Juba.

The President of the UN Security Council issued a statement on 16 November 2006 welcoming the cessation of hostilities agreement, which remains in force, and efforts to end the long-running conflict. On 1 December 2006, the UN Secretary-General appointed a special envoy for the LRA-affected areas. Former President Chissano has made clear that he sees his role as supporting, not supplanting, that of the mediator at the Juba talks. We welcome his appointment and believe that it offers a chance for fresh impetus in the regional effort to address the conflict in northern Uganda.

We are also working bilaterally with the Government of Uganda to discuss progress and to encourage them to stick with the mediation effort. Our high commissioner in Kampala met the Ugandan Foreign Minister this morning. Lord Triesman also plans to hold discussions with the Foreign Minister when they are both at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa later this week. We will be considering what the African Union can do to participate more fully in the process of bringing talks to a successful conclusion.

My sense, listening to colleagues not just in this debate but over the past few months, is that hon. Members want the UK and the international community to do more to ensure that the Juba peace process is successful. We will do what we can but, of course, a lasting solution can ultimately be delivered only by the parties to the talks, and for the talks to succeed both sides must return to the negotiating table. Ultimately, if the talks fail there is a real risk of a return to violence. The effect of that would be felt across the region as a whole and would impact most heavily on civilians. It is likely that the regional Governments would then unite in working to address the LRA threat. However, we see no prospect for a purely military solution as that has been tried for so many years and has always failed. Indeed, that approach has created an even worse situation to be resolved with the support of the international community.

We will continue to press the Government of Uganda to do everything that they can to ensure that peace and security returns to northern Uganda. Ultimately, it is their responsibility, but we will do what we can to help. In that regard, as well as placing a letter in the Library and writing a personal note to my hon. Friend, I will ask Lord Triesman when he returns from his discussions to have a meeting with him and his group to keep them abreast of events. I hope that that will assist him in the work that he is doing, along with ourselves, to at last bring an end to this terrible violation of human rights and dignity in a way that brings peace, justice and security to the people, not just of northern Uganda, but of the region as a whole.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at two minutes to Two o’clock.