My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare my direct financial interest in the matter.

The Question was as follows:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what action they are taking to enlarge the market for English and Welsh timber.

My Lords, the market for wood products in Britain is worth over £5 billion with over 85 per cent of this supplied from imports. To compete, domestically grown timber must be competitively priced or meet the specialist needs of niche markets. Heat and energy schemes are beginning to provide new market opportunities and the Forestry Commission is assisting with research to develop new wood products. It is also developing new support measures for small-scale harvesting, processing and marketing.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his Answer. Do the Government appreciate that low timber prices have already forced the closure of many home-grown timber mills and are damaging the big producers, for example, Forest Enterprise and the Crown Estates? Do the Government see timber fuel as a source of renewable energy? Will they stimulate investment in it, particularly through combined heat and power?

My Lords, the issue of timber prices is whether in an import-dominated market, domestically grown timber can be competitive. I recognise that there have been problems on this front but it is also true that a number of timber producers and saw mills have done relatively well in maintaining their market share. As regards timber for fuels, the Government, as part of their approach to renewable fuels and carbon saving, see benefits both in using forest products and in short-rotation coppice. There are a number of schemes to develop woodlands for those purposes as part of the overall approach to carbon saving.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware of the damage being done specifically to oak trees by squirrels? Could not some financial assistance be available to those who have suffered from the effects of that damage?

My Lords, all owners of woodlands have to face the issue of squirrels. Various control mechanisms are in place in both private and Forestry Commission woodlands. The commission is undertaking substantial research into the best form of control of grey squirrels. So there is already, through the commission, a considerable amount of activity on this front. It is, however, for the owners of woodlands to conduct their own systems of control and protection of their forests. I do not believe that there is scope for support additional to that already being given through the efforts of the commission.

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Forestry Commission and I appreciate that timber production and income are critical. Does the Minister agree that forests and woodlands can provide many other benefits to society in the form of recreation, conservation, biodiversity and economic regeneration but only if forestry in Britain is sustainable? Can he advise the House of the Government's strategy towards sustainability in woodlands and forestry?

My Lords, both the role of forestry and the need for access to forestry for other purposes are recognised by the Government. The efforts that the Forestry Commission has made are well documented and appreciated. As to sustainability, clearly the Government's policy is to encourage the maximum uptake of sustainable timber, both in terms of our own procurement and encouraging certification. In this respect, the Forestry Commission leads not only Europe but the world in terms of certification. Indeed, the World Wildlife award to the commission last month was given for its system of independent certification of sustainable forestry management in the United Kingdom. On both fronts the commission is making a contribution. I congratulate my noble friend.

My Lords, I welcome what the Government are doing in respect of the limited use of short-term coppicing as a source of energy. Would they not be equally wise to recognise that this can never be more than a very small contributor? Has the Minister seen the figures which show that to replace the energy output of the Dungeness B nuclear power station, the entire county of Kent would have to be given over to short-term coppicing? Most people would not regard that as realistic.

My Lords, it is well known that the Government's target for supply from all forms of renewable energy is 10 per cent. The contribution to that of short-rotation coppicing will be relatively small. Nevertheless, it is important for energy policy purposes, for carbon saving and for agricultural and forestry purposes that we support the growing of such materials and the use of forestry by-products in the energy programme. That will provide both income to the woodlands areas and significant carbon saving. But certainly it will not resolve the energy problem.

My Lords, can the Minister explain why the industries which require timber are sited so far from forests? What are the Government doing to encourage industry to move into forest locations, which are often under-populated rural areas requiring employment? Would this not save heavy lorries having to travel vast distances at high speed? Would it not also save the rebuilding and strengthening of bridges to take these lorries?

My Lords, there is something in that. However, the timber products industry tends to be located in areas where its markets exist. It is not therefore surprising that, for example, the furniture trade tends to be based in urban areas rather than close to forestry. Some degree of encouragement of the first-line processing of timber closer to forests could be undertaken as part of our general approach to rural policy, but that would not change the overall distribution of timber-using industries.

My Lords, if we are to have the sustainable industry for which the noble Lord, Lord Clark, rightly asks, is it not essential to recognise that those who will control the market in 15 years' time are now at school? Will the Minister offer his support to the work of the forestry education initiative, which is breeding up a generation of schoolchildren who understand the widely varying uses that wood is able to provide in place of plastics, which are ecologically unfriendly?

Yes, my Lords, I can commend the work of the forestry education initiative, in which both the trade federation and the Woodland Trust are engaged. It has a fully worked-out curriculum for various age groups. It is important that young people in school recognise the different uses of timber and the way in which it has to be managed.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

My Lords, since the late 1970s, public expenditure has been planned and controlled at current prices, and a measure of general price inflation in the economy has been used to adjust spending plans for inflation when required.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply, but that was not an answer. Is he aware that his colleagues frequently claim that expenditure on such services as health and education has increased by approximately one-third under the present administration; but as we all know, output, let alone quality, has scarcely increased at all? Does not that suggest that the rate of inflation in the public services is about 6 per cent, in contrast to that in services provided by the private sector, which is probably less than 2 per cent?

No, my Lords. The answer to the noble Lord's Question was clearly implicit in what I have just said. We do not make these calculations, and we have not done so for more than 20 years. The noble Lord's government did not make these calculations, because the calculations did not work. There are measures of output; they are provided in the Blue Book, and are produced by the Office for National Statistics. They do not give a measure of the effectiveness of public spending.

Education, for example, is measured in terms of pupil years. If you increase expenditure, it can be a question of either doubling the income of teachers or halving class sizes. It will appear in the same way in the statistics and yet the real outcome, rather than the output, is very different.

My Lords, this is one of those special parliamentary occasions when a Minister comes to the Dispatch Box and clears up one of the great mysteries of the age. What we all want to know is how the Government have achieved a modern miracle—to raise billions of pounds in extra tax, spend it, and produce results which are invisible to the naked eye.

Perhaps I may offer the noble Lord an explanation which he can shortly say is complete nonsense, and then tell us the real reason. Is not the reason—exactly as my noble friend Lord Tebbit says—that 59 per cent of all the sums spent by the Government on public services is disappearing in wage and cost inflation in the public sector; and that the sum left over is too small to make a difference? If that is not the real reason, will the noble Lord say what is?

My Lords, the noble Lord really must get out of the habit of answering his own questions. For the reason I gave in reply to the supplementary question of the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, measures of output of the simple kind that the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, and apparently the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, would wish, do not measure the quality of the public service provided.

Let us stay with education as an example. Is the noble Lord seriously saying that the increase in the number of teachers is not an increase in quality? So far as concerns health expenditure, is he saying that the increase in the number of doctors and nurses is not an increase in quality in the provision of health services? If those on the Benches opposite are saying so, let them say it to the teachers, the doctors and the nurses.

My Lords, does the Minister accept that, in the 1990s, pay in the private sector rose by 51 per cent, whereas in the public sector it rose by only 42 per cent? Will he further accept that, in the year to October 2002, public sector pay rose by 3.8 per cent, compared to a 3.6 per cent rise in private sector pay? Finally, will he accept that if there is a problem in regard to improved outputs in the public sector, it cannot be laid at the door of excessive wage payments?

My Lords, I do not have the noble Lord's figures in front of me. I have no reason to doubt them—and, if I do not doubt them, I have no reason to doubt his conclusions.

My Lords, will the Minister tell the House whether, in terms of inflation in healthcare, there is a continuing disproportionate increase in the amount having to be set aside by the National Health Service for legal liabilities?

My Lords, unfortunately, the noble Baroness is entirely right. The growth in litigious activity in this country is greatly to be regretted. It is costing the public sector a great deal of money and is one factor that is putting a brake on reform alongside the increase in resources, which is the key to our approach to the public services.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

My Lords, the National Screening Committee is awaiting a report from its child health sub-group. On the basis of that report, the committee will make its recommendations to Ministers. We will consider any improvements to visual screening in the context of the national service framework for children.

My Lords, will the noble Baroness make urgent inquiries about the report, since there is widespread concern that the draft report recommends that children should have eye tests, not at age three and four, as previously, but at age five? Is the noble Baroness aware that one in five toddlers has semi-severe visual problems; and that if such children do not know what others see, they cannot understand and complain about their own disability? Does the noble Baroness recognise that this is a severe educational problem, and that other countries are sticking to eye tests for three and four year-olds, not five year-olds? Will the Government ensure that Britain's children are not disadvantaged by any change?

My Lords, I am in awe of the noble Baroness's reputation in this field, so I am happy to be able to agree with her that the earlier we screen, detect and treat vision defects, the better. I understand that there has been a lively professional debate. One of the reasons why Ministers are still waiting on the report is that there has been a very open consultative process.

I understand that screening at age three is problematic. Although defects such as amblyopia can be picked up more easily, when children are immature, they are less likely to provide a reliable report. Also, there is the problem of take-up. We shall examine all the relative merits of testing at different ages. I can assure the noble Baroness that her concerns will be noted.

My Lords, on the question of take-up, will a special effort be made to encourage low-income families to take advantage of visual screening?

Yes, my Lords. We are concerned that in the pattern of inequalities in health there are real problems. Children from disadvantaged families often do not get the free eye test to which they are entitled. Within the national service framework for children, we very much want to ensure quality standards and additional information. The Sure Start programme, which was expanded in December last year, is a good setting for young, disadvantaged parents to be directed towards the free eye tests and the screening to which they are entitled.

My Lords, the Hall report on screening, of which I have managed to obtain a rough copy, suggests that pre-school screening is very difficult because, at that age, children are not gathered together. Will the change in educational practice as regards the pre-school age group—that is, having four year-olds within a school setting—make this the ideal stage at which to begin screening? As the noble Baroness has said, a disability that is not picked up early will lead to far greater on-costs, both for those involved and for the system.

Yes, my Lords, I know that there is a strong case for testing at age four to five, precisely because one has a relatively captive population which one does not have at age three to four, But we need to look more closely at other issues associated with testing at age four to five. We will do that in the context of the national service framework. I hope that the Hall report, the fourth report by the committee, Health for All Children, to which the noble Lord refers, will be finalised within the next month. We will have the advantage of that information.

My Lords, I hope that I can be reassured by the noble Baroness's statement that the Government will consult fully on the report. Some voluntary organisations in this field have told me that they are anxious that there will be a very uneven pattern of service across the country because of the shortage of orthoptists. Is it not the case that such tasks with small children can be done equally well by optometrists and other professionals in the field of visual handicap; and that there should be no excuse for the shortage of specialists, which the report appears to have accepted?

My Lords, the noble Lord asked several questions. First, we are aware that there is uneven service provision in the way services are offered across the country. Secondly, there has been wide consultation on the Hall report, because it has been on the world-wide web for more than six months. It has provoked, as it was designed to, much consultation from across the profession and the voluntary sector. Thirdly, as far as I know, there are no shortages in this field. Unlike other parts of the health service, we are well supplied. In particular, there has been an increase of 14 per cent in optometrists in the past three years. The noble Lord is correct to say that we must be clear that the right people screen children at the right age, and that the pattern is equal across the country so that every child has the same chance.

My Lords, when and where will the screenings be carried out? Is simple eye-testing carried out in schools anymore?

My Lords, eye-testing still takes place in schools. There has never been a prescription for a particular eye test, although linear eye tests have been the pattern for many years. The Hall report does not recommend changes to that. When we look at the advice to Ministers in the context of raising standards overall, we might be able to come up with better provision generally.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

My Lords, there is no special exemption for government vehicles. The Government Car and Despatch Agency will be responsible for the payment of congestion charges on its vehicles and will recover costs from government departments and other customers.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. If Ministers are content to accept this benefit for themselves, do they agree that it is morally wrong that low-paid public service employees such as teachers and nurses, and unpaid volunteers such as the Samaritans, all of whom must use their cars, should not get a similar benefit? Will the Minister suggest to other Ministers that they follow the example of my right honourable friend the leader of my party, who is adamant that he will not allow the taxpayer to pay his congestion charge?

My Lords, many organisations in both the private and public sectors provide cars and vans to enable staff to carry out their jobs. There will be active exemptions; for example, essential workers with Westminster City Council and the National Health Service and fire fighters. That will be a matter for employers.

The government guidance on travel by Ministers, which is available in your Lordships' Library, makes clear that Ministers are allowed to use official cars on the understanding that they will normally be working on classified papers. Security issues may also be relevant. That justifies the departments' reimbursing the GCDA for the cost of congestion charges.

My Lords, if public servants do not have to pay congestion charges, is it not logical that businesses cover their employees' costs?

My Lords, it is for employers to decide the procedures for their employees. It is not the only tax that employees must pay when travelling. There are parking taxes, road, bridge and tunnel tolls, and so on. We believe that the Government's policies have been tried and tested over many years.

My Lords, is it the mark of a socialist government that a Minister's driver coming to work must pay the charge himself but the Minister swans around in the car at the expense of the taxpayer; that is to say, his driver?

My Lords, that need not be the case. Ministers who drive to their place of work must pay the congestion charge. If they are picked up within the congestion-charging zone, the charge will be reimbursed by the Government.

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it is so long since the party opposite was in government that it has forgotten what it means to have a ministerial job—I hope noble Lords enjoyed that—and to have red boxes, which are confidential? Some of the questions are absurd. Will my noble friend say that the congestion charge—if the details are right, and there are doubts about that—will make a sensible contribution to traffic management in London and other cities?

My Lords, I am sure we all hope, for the sake of Londoners, that the congestion charging scheme will be a success, We believe that, done properly, congestion charging is one way of dealing with traffic problems.

My Lords, on the general point, should not the proceeds from these charges go to the local authorities involved? If the revenues do not cover the administrative costs, is it equitable to pass the bill to United Kingdom taxpayers?

My Lords, the proceeds of congestion charging in London will go to Transport for London. The Government will be involved in consultations on how that money would best be spent. Obviously, it will be spent on trying to improve travel conditions for Londoners.

My Lords, given that vehicles converted to run on LPG and electricity are exempt from the charge, what proportion of the government car fleet is already converted, and what progress has been made on speeding up the programme?

My Lords, around one-third of the government car fleet has already been converted, presumably to the power-shift register using liquid petroleum gas. The target is to have 75 per cent of the car fleet running on power-shift registered fuels.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the most efficient and effective way of getting around London is the Underground? When it works, it works extremely well. When it works! Just now, I travelled from King's Cross in around a quarter of an hour—far quicker than taking a taxi from north London, particularly in recent months, as noble Lords know too well. Will the Minister consider using some of the proceeds of congestion charging to improve the Underground where necessary, particularly the Circle line?

My Lords, we should be clear that the money will not come to the Government. It will go to Transport for London and will be controlled by the Mayor in consultation with the Government. However, the public/private partnership put in place initially on 31st December 'will make a considerable difference to Londoners' satisfaction with Tube services.

My Lords, we have heard a lot from the Official Opposition about congestion charging. Has the Minister heard any constructive proposal from them on how to deal with the terrible problems of congestion in London?

Not often, my Lords, but there are many honourable exceptions. I look to the noble Lord, Lord Peyton, as the man who brought home to me the importance of holes in the road. Since then, we have been working very hard to fill them.

My Lords—

My Lords—

My Lords—

Peyton!

My Lords, is the Minister aware of how warmly I welcome that tribute—so long as I can take it as sincerely meant? Is he aware that implicit in one of his earlier answers was the advice that the papers that Ministers carry are much more important than Ministers themselves?

My Lords, I have a feeling that our newest colleague, the noble Lord. Lord Wilson of Dinton, could probably assure the noble Lord that his analysis is correct. There is, however, a serious point. As former government members on the Benches opposite will know, Ministers are not allowed to take their red boxes on to the street and there are restrictions on taking them on public transport as they often contain very sensitive classified papers. So although a bracing walk may occasionally be tempting, one is sometimes forced to take the car.

My Lords, it seems to be the habit—it has happened twice this week—for Ministers to provoke the noble Lord, Lord Peyton, into rising to his feet when he had not intended to do so. On a technical point, can the Minister say whether any progress has been made in ensuring that there is a payment point in the Palace of Westminster where some 4,000 people are employed? It may not be his responsibility, but, as a transport spokesmen, perhaps he should interest himself in it.

My Lords, it as a pertinent point. I believe I can assure the House that Black Rod is looking into it.

My Lords, may I offer the Minister a constructive suggestion from the Official Opposition? Will he have a look at Hamlet's soliloquy,

"To be or not to be",

and its despair at the corruption in the court of the King of Denmark? Shakespeare has a striking phrase for the abuse of power by those on high—he calls it the insolence of office. Is that not a fitting description of Ministers who impose a tax on the rest of us but duck out of it themselves?

My Lords—

Show us your Shakespeare!

My Lords, I certainly would not follow the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, in such a convoluted example. As on so many other occasions, I wonder who his copywriters are.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

My Lords, both ZANU-PF and the MDC have issued statements denying that they have been involved in any recent discussions on power-sharing. The United Kingdom has encouraged efforts, led by the presidents of South Africa and Nigeria, to build inter-party dialogue in Zimbabwe.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the two names linked with this initiative have been closely involved with some of the worst excesses of the Mugabe regime, and that normal relations with Zimbabwe should not be resumed until after free and fair elections?

My Lords, the Government's position is absolutely clear. We have said that we want to see the restoration of democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe. We want to see a stable Zimbabwe. We also want to see Zimbabwe's economy restored so that the current humanitarian crisis can be dealt with from within Zimbabwe.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that, due to the current situation, there is a great deal of concern and some chaos regarding the emergence of political decisions in Zimbabwe? In the light of that, does she recognise that Zimbabweans, black or white, who stand up for democracy and the rule of law could be particularly at risk? Can she assure the House that, in issuing visas, our own High Commission will bear very much in mind the claim and the record of those seeking asylum as to whether they have shown commitment to those principles in Zimbabwe?

My Lords, the noble Baroness is quite right that the difficulties with human rights and the political situation in Zimbabwe continue. Indeed, in a recent case, the mayor of Harare was arrested for holding meetings on matters that fell within his jurisdiction. It is therefore important that, in issuing visas, our High Commission is not only concerned with the human rights and political situation in Zimbabwe, but, as has been said in the House before, keeps a watch for those seeking visas who may have been part of the continuing repression.

My Lords, does the noble Baroness recall that the Government recently published ideas about concerted international action to deal with humanitarian catastrophes within states? Is she aware that the United States Administration seem to be thinking along similar lines to those of the United Kingdom Government? Does she recall that, both in 1999 and in 2002, Mr Kofi Annan said the following in the United Nations human rights commission:

"No government has the right to hide behind national sovereignty in order to violate the human rights or fundamental freedoms of its peoples"?

Is it not time for those governments who are shocked by what is going on in Zimbabwe to get together and take steps to prevent what could turn out to be a major humanitarian catastrophe by starvation?

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Blaker, that there needs to be concerted international action. On the matter of human rights, he will recall that a human rights resolution on Zimbabwe was tabled at the UN Commission on Human Rights but that a blocking action by African states prevented that resolution going through. With respect to the broader humanitarian situation, the international community is gravely concerned. I myself have raised this matter with colleagues particularly in southern African countries, and we have looked at the implications for their countries in particular. We need to work to restore human rights, the rule of law and a stable democratic government in Zimbabwe for the good of ordinary Zimbabweans.

My Lords, has the Minister noticed the report in today's Washington Times that Mugabe might be prepared to retire to somewhere such as Malaysia and live on the proceeds of his 100 million dollars in ill-gotten gains? Does she agree that, in the light of what has happened in the case of other dictators such as Abacha in Nigeria and Fujimori in Peru, it would be totally unacceptable to allow Mugabe to walk off with the wealth that he has stolen from the Zimbabwean people?

My Lords, in a speech in Lusaka on 14th January, Mugabe said that,

"it would be foolhardy and counter-revolutionary to give up power 10 months after claiming victory in an election".

He also said:

"I am not retiring. I will never, never go into exile. I fought for Zimbabwe and when I die I will be buried in Zimbabwe, nowhere else".

My Lords, has the noble Baroness seen the latest detailed documentary advice showing how children who do not have the right ZANU-PF connections are being starved and consequently dying? Is she aware of that evidence about this violent and racist regime? If she has not seen it, would she like me to supply it to her later this afternoon?

My Lords, I am aware of what has been said about the politicisation of food aid in Zimbabwe—indeed, we have discussed it in this House. I have sought to reassure the House on various occasions that the money we are giving for humanitarian assistance in Zimbabwe goes through the UN and NGO channels. There are two different channels: the channel for the destitute, which is the UN/NGO channel; and the Government of Zimbabwe channel by means of the monopoly of the Grain Marketing Board. It is the latter food aid that is being politicised and diverted. We have very little influence, as noble Lords know, with the Government of Zimbabwe on that.

My Lords, do the Government recognise the constructive role played by the Government of Mozambique in welcoming fugitives from Zimbabwe, both farm workers and farmers" Do they recognise Mozambique's role in the Commonwealth and its possible importance as a diplomatic player?

My Lords, the noble Earl is quite right. There are several countries in southern Africa whose role in this crisis is absolutely critical. Mozambique is one of those countries. I have had discussions with the President and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mozambique. I am aware that President Chisano has worked tirelessly behind the scenes. I believe that Mozambique will continue to take a keen interest in these matters.

My Lords, are the Government keeping under constant review the level of food aid to Zimbabweans, and will they increase it as and when they can?

My Lords, we are keeping that under constant review. A recent assessment identified that some 7.8 million Zimbabweans will now require food aid. Our humanitarian assistance has increased to £49 million, and my right honourable friend Clare Short has said that we will continue to do what we can to help the poor and vulnerable in Zimbabwe.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, between the two debates this afternoon, my noble friend Lord Bach will repeat a Statement on missile defence.

My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.

Moved, That the debates on the Motions in the names of the Lord Henley and the Baroness Cumberlege set down for today shall each be limited to two-and-a-half hours.—(Lord Williams of Mostyn.)

My Lords, I would like to make reference to item 2 of the report—

Wrong business!

My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.

I draw particular attention to three of the recommendations made in the report. First, know that many Deputy Chairmen, members of the Procedure Committee and other Members of the House feel strongly on the question of attendance of debates of noble Lords who take part. A substantial number of speakers in recent debates have excused themselves from the greater part of the debate and, in particular, have been absent from the opening or closing speeches.

The report sets out the guidance in the Companion, which is clear and firm. Noble Lords who are unable to be present for the opening and closing speeches are expected to withdraw from the list. An apology at the start of the speech is insufficient.

Secondly, the Procedure Committee has noted an increasing tendency for irrelevant supplementary questions to be asked and answered. The report reminds the House that supplementary questions should be confined to the subject of the original question and that Ministers should not answer irrelevant questions.

Thirdly, the Procedure Committee has noted recent instances of Back-Bench interventions on Statements which are far from brief. With a 20-minute limit on Back-Bench questions and answers, long interventions and replies are unfair to others who may wish to speak.

Moved, That the First Report from the Select Committee (HL Paper 26) be agreed to.—(The Chairman of Committees.)

My Lords, I would like to apologise to the House for my previous intervention—

My Lords, I welcome this report, particularly item 2 on the attendance by speakers in debates. Noble Lords will be aware that, early in the previous Parliament, the usual channels agreed that a note should be placed at the top of the speakers' list, which states:

"A Lord who becomes aware in advance that they are unlikely to be able to stay until the end of a debate should normally remove their name from the list of speakers".

Unfortunately, we did not realise that noble Lords would treat the word "normally" as a term of art. I am afraid that the Procedure Committee has fallen into the same mistake, because the Companion clearly says:

"Members who become aware in advance that they are unlikely to be able to stay until the end of a debate should remove their names from the list of speakers".

However, the report goes on to use the words,

"should normally withdraw their names".

That allows noble Lords to misinterpret the clear guidance in the Companion, which states that if noble Lords cannot be present at the beginning and end and for a reasonable amount of the debate, they should not put their names down to speak, however important they believe their contribution might be.

My Lords, it was on the same point that I endeavoured to intervene on two occasions—one wrongly, I fear. I apologise to the House for my premature entry into the debate.

I wished to speak on the same point as was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Carter. It is most annoying to noble Lords who sit here for many hours listening to a debate to be told at the beginning of the debate, often by very senior Members of the House, that they cannot stay until the end of the debate. Nobody is so great that they should not obey the Standing Orders and rules of this House. What is more, whatever they have to say and however important it is, it can be left for another occasion when they can be present to hear the debate, or certainly the opening and closing speeches.

I say that advisedly, but there may be some excuse for them, because some of them may be a little shortsighted and may not read the list of speakers properly. Therefore, I suggest that the notice should be placed at the very top of the speakers' list in bold red, blue or even black type, so there can be no mistaking the Standing Order. I am sure that all Members, when they see the Standing Order boldly printed, will obey it.

My Lords, from time to time, Members of the House who have not been here very long ask advice. When I have been asked advice about whether they have to stay to the end of the debate, I say absolutely that if they cannot stay to the end of a debate, they should not take part in it. I only wish that we could drop the word "normally" from the extract from the Companion that is given at the top of the speakers' list. Would the Chairman of Committees agree that the word "normally" should be dropped?

I make one other comment on paragraph 3 and the length of interventions on Statements. I agree with what it says. On occasions, we have heard enormously long speeches that deny many noble Lords the chance to intervene on Statements. However—and here I look at the two Front Benches opposite—I am not sure whether 20 minutes for what are allegedly only two questions is not a bit long and out of proportion. I say that with all due respect for the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Front Benches. I wonder whether there is any way in which to balance the time better and give Back-Benchers more of the 40 minutes, if Front-Benchers would willingly take a little less time, or if they were compelled to do so.

My Lords, I intervene both as a member of the Procedure Committee and as a member of the panel of Deputy Chairmen to endorse wholeheartedly what the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees said. It is rare that someone from this side of the House can totally endorse the comments of the noble Lords, Lord Carter, Lord Stoddart and Lord Dubs. All I would say is that those of us on the panel of Deputy Chairmen are watching the point raised in item 2 most closely. I give advance warning to the 21 Back-Bench speakers in the two debates this afternoon that I am on the Woolsack from 5.30 to 7 p.m. and shall be marking the card.

My Lords, I have a different point for the Chairman of Committees. Am I right in thinking that just before the meeting of the Procedure Committee on this issue, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Privy Seal—or it may have been the Government Chief Whip—circulated a private memorandum to certain members of the committee seeking to suppress discussion on a certain part of the committee's agenda? I hope that that is not the reason why, on that occasion, I had a little difficulty attracting the noble Lord's attention when I wished to speak.

My Lords, I associate these Benches with many of the remarks that have been made. Will the committee look at the possibility of some sanctions being applied on those who break the rule? For example, they could be put lower down the list the next time one is drawn up for interventions. When we have discussions of this sort, everyone denies that they have ever done it and all promise best behaviour for the future, yet the practice goes on. On coming into this place, having had a short experience in another place, I found that one of the joys of this place was to take part in debates to which people listened, in which they participated and for which they stayed. I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, that I have noticed over the past few years that the main offenders are not senior people in this House, but people who were senior in another place and who still seem to think that their Privy Councillorship or their previous office give them special privileges and rights in this place, which simply do not exist.

My Lords, does the Chairman of Committees agree that the problem with some supplementary questions is not just that they are wide of the mark, but that they are often too long and are read?

My Lords, I should like to utter a few words in defence of the word "normally". The spirit of this is clear to the House. People who know before a debate starts that they will not be present throughout the opening and closing speeches should not participate and should withdraw their name. That is the normal situation. An abnormal situation—which makes the use of "normally" possibly apposite—is when you think that you are going to be available at the time when the closing speeches are to be made, but you get an urgent telephone call just before those speeches occur. You rush out and try awfully hard to make the person at the other end somewhat brief in their observations over the telephone, but it could be urgent. Should that person, rushing back into the Chamber, be debarred from speaking? That might be an abnormal situation, so "normally" is possibly correct.

My Lords, I have two points The first point, which was also made by my noble friend Lady Sharples, is that questions and answers are almost always too long. It would be a great help if Ministers could be encouraged—I am sure that the Government Chief Whip could do this—to make their answers as short as possible. People asking supplementary questions should also be prevailed upon to make them shorter. They both go on too long and it is a bore for everyone else who is trying to get in and finds that they cannot.

Secondly, does the Chairman of Committees agree that one important aspect of item 2, which he did not emphasise so strongly, is that noble Lords should be present for the opening speeches and for at least the speech before and that following their own? Noble Lords frequently make speeches and then buzz off. A very senior noble Lord did that the other day. Within two minutes of making his speech he had gone. Admittedly, he was discovered talking in another part of the House. Noble Lords should remain in their seats to listen to the following speech.

My Lords, do we not have a problem in that the major offenders in relation to paragraph 2 are not in the House today?

My Lords, I am a little worried about the debate. I have been nearly 25 years in the House. The system seemed to work quite well 20 or so years ago, when I first came here. That is when I used to make speeches. Noble Lords will be glad to know that I seldom do so nowadays. It is quite feasible for someone to have an appropriate contribution to make to a debate, if only from that expertise that we continually claim to possess. It has also often happened that such a person has been in a position to contribute that expertise and yet, because of outside engagements and other eventualities, including phone calls, as the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, said, has been unable to wait until the end. We should not be too severe in this matter. "Normally" is quite reasonable. I have my suspicions, but I would not go so far as to say that this is an attempt to stifle debate. It is not. However, in a sense it has tinges of an attempt to stifle opinion, which is just as bad.

My Lords, next week we have a debate that will extend for two days. I ask this question because I do not know the answer. Is it imperative that the people who are down for the second day should be present on the first day?

Yes.

My Lords, so the answer is that a person who has put down their name should be present on both days throughout if possible.

My Lords, I shall attempt to answer some of the questions that have been put. They fall broadly into two or three categories, one of which is attendance at debates. I am most grateful for the words of support from around the House, starting with the noble Lord, Lord Carter, who, like the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, queried the use of the word "normally". In the current revision of the Companion, "normally" will be dropped, so it will read,

"should remove their name from the list of speakers".

On the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, the Companion clearly says that Members should be present for at least the speech before their own and that following it. That is already covered.

The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, suggested that the notice at the top of the list of speakers should be put in bold type. I am told by the Government Chief Whip that it will be in future.

The amount of time allocated to Front Benchers and Back Benchers on Statements could be discussed at the next meeting of the Procedure Committee. I am also grateful to those who supported the proposal that interventions under the present arrangements should not be too long.

When I was answering Parliamentary Questions, I always thought that the best answers were generally "Yes, my Lords" or "No, my Lords". It might be good if Ministers could do that more often and if noble Lords asking supplementaries could keep them as short as possible.

The noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, asked about the two-day debate that we are having next week. Anyone who has their name down to speak in that debate, whether they are speaking on the first day or the second day, should definitely be present for the opening speeches on the first day and for as much as possible of the rest of the debate—certainly for the speeches around their own speech and for the winding up speeches on the second day. I hope that noble Lords will not put their name down to speak in that debate unless they are able to fulfil that commitment.

Lastly, I come to a completely different point made by the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne. I was not aware of anything such as a confidential memo being circulated. It is quite normal for the usual channels to circulate memos among themselves, but I am not certain what it was about and what relevance it might have.

I hope that I have answered most of the questions. I am conscious that, if we go on with this debate any more, those who put their names down to speak in the debate this afternoon may find themselves running up against dinner engagements.

My Lords, I was present at both the beginning and end of the noble Lord's speech, but I did not notice a reply to my point about the abnormal situation that can occur.

My Lords, I accept that there could be an abnormal situation. I am sorry that I did not reply to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. He spoke about receiving a phone call. I was not quite sure when that phone call would take place—whether it would be before or after he had spoken in the debate. If he had spoken, he should obviously then wait for the winding up. If the phone call comes through, he should preferably try to put off receiving it until the debate is over.

My Lords, I am not in the least bit satisfied with what the noble Lord has said. I am told that a private memorandum was indeed circulated by the Lord Privy Seal seeking to restrict discussion on a part of the agenda of the meeting over which he presided. I am surprised that the Chairman of Committees did not receive a copy of that memorandum, but perhaps he was thought as unreliable as I am.

My Lords, if there was a memorandum, I understand that it was circulated within the usual channels. I do not myself recall having received a copy of it, so I find myself in some difficulty in replying to the noble Lord's question.

rose to call attention to sentencing policy and, specifically, to the debate on sentencing for burglary and firearms offences; and to move for Papers.

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Henley, on introducing this short debate. I remind the House that I have the privilege of chairing the all-party penal affairs group.

My view is that the newspaper headlines about the Lord Chief Justice's guidance to sentencers following convictions for burglary are mischievous, misleading and grossly inaccurate. They do not add up to what the irresponsible tabloids, such as the Daily Mail and the Daily Express—and some of the grown-up newspapers as well—have dubbed "a burglars' charter". This is a manufactured row that blithely ignores the facts and sets out to distort for narrow party-political reasons. The fact is that most burglaries are carried out to raise money to pay for drug abuse. I know of no treatment for burglary, although I do know of several successful treatments for drug addiction. That is rightly where I believe the focus should be.

In the 12 months to last September, all crime fell by 7 per cent and domestic burglary was down by the same amount. The British Crime Survey shows that since 1997 burglary is down by 39 per cent. Those are the facts that too many newspapers and other media ignore.

The second largest group of people in prison have been sentenced for burglary: a total of 9,130 men and women as at last June. The second largest group of prisoners remanded in custody are charged with burglary: 1,990 out of a total of 13,080 last June. In both cases, those totals are higher than those convicted of or awaiting trial for charges involving drugs, robbery, theft and handling and sexual offences.

The public are getting a bad and expensive deal out of sending to prison too many people whose offences do not justify that. Two out of every three people sent to prison are back inside within two years, at a cost of around £32,000 a year. There are 5,000 more people in prison now than a year ago. The public's money is also misspent because too many people are remanded in custody who later do not receive custodial sentences. In 2000, some 52 in every 100 male prisoners on remand did not get a prison sentence and two out of every three women on remand in prison did not get a custodial sentence. About one in five of male and female prisoners sent to prison on remand were subsequently acquitted. The public are being misled into believing that prison works. It does not; certainly not in terms of reconviction rates. I shall illustrate the point for noble Lords. Of every 100 people who serve a community sentence, 11 fewer are reconvicted within two years compared with those who are gaoled. The crude figures are a reconviction rate of 44 per cent for those serving community sentences against 55 per cent for those given custodial sentences, and community sentences cost one-tenth the amount of keeping someone in prison.

Of course, those convicted of serious and violent crimes belong in prison where serious work can be, and increasingly is being, done in dealing with offending behaviour, drug and alcohol abuse and basic literacy and numeracy skills. However, I have to say that none of that work is helped by overcrowding. But for many other types of offender, non-custodial community sentences are sensible and adequate where properly designed and resourced and they can and do help people to live more fulfilling lives.

I shall take it as an unhappy slip of the tongue that, according to today's Daily Telegraph, the Home Secretary, Mr David Blunkett, regards community sentences as "simply being let off". That echoes the slipshod newspaper reporting of "people walking free", as they put it, after being convicted and given a community sentence. I am encouraged to take the generous view that it was a slip of the tongue on the part of the Home Secretary when I recall what he said in March last year:

"If anyone … seriously believes that a further exponential rise in the prison population for short-term prisoners and first-time offenders is the way to ensure our safety, then they are sorely deluded".

As the Lord Chief Justice said yesterday,

"a community sentence can provide protection for three years during which a combination of tagging and curfew orders will keep the offender off the streets".

Let us compare that with what happens over custodial sentences: three in every four sentences are for 12 months or less—that is, 80,000 a year roughly; 40,000 are for three months or less; and 14,000 are for one month or less. That gives the Prison Service no chance at all to do any serious work with prisoners in trying to address their offending behaviour.

I believe that parliamentarians and the media, as well as sentencers and the Probation Service, need to argue the merits of community sentences, where appropriate, as a more effective route to rehabilitation. It really is simple: if better and more effective ways of addressing offending behaviour and its causes are used through the range of community sentences, communities can be made safer and, in turn, our prisons more effective and less overcrowded.

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for this timely debate. Looking at today's newspapers, he could not have picked a better day or a better time to discuss issues affecting sentencing policy.

We have already read press reports that the police will now give scant regard to low levels of incidents of burglary. We gave up reporting car crime some time ago; if we are not very careful, if this is the policy advocated by certain police forces, then burglary may follow the same pattern.

Firearm offences are also a matter of serious concern, particularly to the black community. Black-on-black crime and drugs feature prominently in our inner cities. All that requires not a knee-jerk reaction but evidence-based policies and practices. The current explosion in gun crime is very much a young male, inner city phenomenon. We also need to address the causes which drive young people to use guns.

Today's newspapers have extensive reports on the statement of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, on sentencing guidelines. I subscribe fully to what the noble Lord, Lord Corbett, has just said. The Lord Chief Justice is right to place emphasis on community sentences as a starting point when considering what sentences are appropriate in certain cases. To interpret this as a "burglar's charter" is mischievous.

The noble and learned Lord has vast experience of prisons and prison conditions and he is right to point out that community sentences for less serious burglaries would "relieve the overcrowding" in prisons. I hope that there is no pressure on the judiciary from the executive to alter this very delicate balance. Of course, public confidence is shaped by the quality of service provided by the criminal justice system. But, at times, we have to lead public opinion and not simply follow it. The Government have a clear role here.

Heat has been generated by the Lord Chief Justice's recent comments on burglary but precious little light has been shed. In 1991, 28 per cent of offenders sentenced for burglary received a custodial sentence. That figure had increased to 42 per cent by 1996 and to 51 per cent by 2001. Some 40 per cent of those convicted of burglary in 2001 received a community sentence—a position unchanged from 10 years ago. The main declines in non-custodial sentences were in absolute or conditional discharges and fines.

I chair NACRO—the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders. We have examined the criminal statistics for 2001. Those demonstrate that the suggestion that the sentencing climate for burglars has become too lenient is simply not correct. The opposite is true. Guidance given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, that most first-time burglars should not receive a custodial sentence is not a dramatic move in the direction of leniency but rather little more than a restatement of the current position. We need to reaffirm the principle that offenders should not be sent to prison except when necessary and, in those circumstances, only for as long as necessary. That will particularly be the case for those who might be engaged in burglary to fund a drug habit and for whom community-based drug treatment will be far more effective than a spell in prison.

Those who advocate an even tougher sentencing climate should explain how that would work in practice. The questions that we need to address are these. Should burglary on its own, as a first offence, have a non-custodial sentence? Should offences against the person be treated as a second, separate offence? Should more threatening burglary—for example, burglary carried out at night with firearms—be treated differently from that which involves entering empty premises during the day?

With regard to firearms, it is evident that there has been a major rise in the use of air weapons. In 1990, the use of such weapons accounted for 5,380 notifiable offences; in 1995, that figure had risen to 7,568; and, by last year, there were 12,340 such offences. The figures on robberies involving a firearm are mixed. Recorded offences of this type increased from 2,939 in 1997–98 to 5,484 in 2001–02, although some of that rise can be put down to changes in recording practices. But, taking a longer view, one can see that the 2001–02 figures show little change from 1991.

Tough sentencing is unlikely in itself to have an impact but it would be wrong to assume that it has none. Equally, drug treatment and other drug-related interventions may make an impact, but violent gangsters will not necessarily give up gun usage because the rich financial rewards will always be an important consideration to them. Sentencing is just one small but important aspect relating to the complex issue of drugs, guns and violence.

I want to draw the Minister's attention to the agenda which industry also needs to pursue. According to the Guardian, NCIS claims that half of all the guns recovered in London from crime scenes were converted Brocock airguns. It also points out how easy it is to convert a Brocock airgun into a live firing gun. It is still possible to buy deactivated weapons legally. Sometimes blame is attached to the influence of rap music on the gun culture, but there is little evidence that it is a strong drive in gun crime.

It would be helpful if the Minister would indicate what precise role the police have in preventing and prosecuting those who commit burglary. The conflicting messages from police forces adds to the fear of crime, which is so evident within our communities. It is also necessary to examine with our European partners the need for a Europe-wide strategy to deal with sophisticated eastern European weapons entering European countries.

Sentencing should take into account the pressure on the Prison Service. Over the past decade, we have played up the image of a disorderly and crime-ridden Britain. The solution is often seen to be not only an increase in police numbers but also the need to embark on a massive prison expansion programme. Neither will have a substantial effect on the reduction of crime. We need to move away from the saloon-bar politics of crime and establish research and evidence-based policies.

My Lords, every so often, usually propelled by events well covered in the press, an issue comes before Parliament which raises questions of legal or constitutional principle. I believe that today's debate is one such occasion.

Put briefly, while it is the responsibility of the legislature to define and enact what the penalties should be for criminal offences, and it is the responsibility of the police and prosecutors to detect and to charge persons believed to have committed such offences, it is the long-established role of the courts to convict and sentence offenders who are found guilty by due process of law.

The level of penalty imposed will be within a statutory maximum, taking account of precedents in similar cases as well as guidelines laid down by the Court of Appeal and the Lord Chief Justice in order to ensure consistency.

With the exception of the penalty for murder no sentences have traditionally been mandatory; they have been at the discretion of the court within certain limits. That has always been regarded as of fundamental importance. Then came the events of the late 1990s—the noble Lord, Lord Corbett, who was active in another place at the time no doubt remembers them well—namely, the controversy over the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997. The measure was introduced by a Conservative Home Secretary, Mr Michael Howard, and originally opposed by the Labour Front Bench. However, soon after Labour came to power in 1997, two out of three novel mandatory sentences were adopted. They were an automatic life sentence for repeat serious, violent and sexual offenders and a seven-year mandatory sentence for third-time drug traffickers. An additional category with a far greater potential impact on the prison population, namely, a three-year minimum sentence of imprisonment for third-time domestic burglars, was held over until after the general election in 1997 and was not brought into force until December 1999. The numbers affected were far larger in that category than in the other two.

Now, once again, what is interpreted by the Government as being the demands of public opinion has led to the threat of a further encroachment on the discretion, indeed on the responsibility, of the criminal courts to punish each convicted offender according to the relative harm which has been done. That is not only wrong in principle; it is likely to be ineffective in practice to attempt to send signals to burglars and other potential offenders by way of legislation. This is a curious idea but one deeply embedded in the minds of some in government and Parliament. It is, as I say, not only wrong in principle but likely to be ineffective in practice. If the intended receiver is not listening, then no message will get through.

Politics and justice have always been uncomfortable bedfellows. As I look around the House I see many who have had distinguished careers in both politics and the administration of justice. They will be aware there is little evidence that policies based on deterrence have much restraining effect on potential offenders, especially the very large number of those under the influence of drink or drugs or both at the time of the offence.

In short, the conclusion must be that the administration of justice and politically inspired initiatives should be kept separate. Each has its proper place in our parliamentary system and in the administration of justice, but to mix them raises false hopes. It also harms the relationship between the executive and the judiciary. What we have read about the clash which has occurred recently is very regrettable. It holds out little chance of producing agreed outcomes.

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for initiating this debate. I feel reasonably well qualified to talk about this subject today at least from one perspective. While away over Christmas and the New Year, my house in Lambeth in central London was burgled. It was my first experience of being burgled in 12 years in this house and it was a very mild one: there was no damage, nothing broken and only two very small things taken.

The important issues for me as a burglary victim were the rallying round of the neighbours, who discovered it and who cleared up the house before I returned, and the Metropolitan Police, who dealt with the matter with courtesy, helpfulness and reassuring realism. They were most impressive.

It is often said that justice for victims equals seeing someone suffer for the crime. For me, and I suspect a great many people, the important aspects of being a burglary victim are not to be left feeling alone and invaded but to be supported and to receive sympathy, with an understanding response from the police and a chance to get back items of sentimental value which have been stolen.

Sentencing is a much less immediate concern. If my burglar were to be apprehended I would sincerely hope that he or she would not be sent to prison. That view arises not from a warm feeling towards the burglar, and neither from sympathy with the social conditions which might have led to the burglary, far from it—should I have been able to meet the burglar I would have made that very clear—but because a rational calculation suggests that for someone who is not deeply into serious and violent crime (my burglar seemed to be a total amateur) a prison sentence is a recipe for turning a small-time opportunist into a candidate for the proposed five-year minimum sentence for carrying a firearm. I shall have more security in future in my house in Lambeth, and more protection, with less prospect of being burgled again, if almost any other course is taken than sending the perpetrator to prison.

If I were to be given a say in sentencing my burglar I would ask, first, for a properly organised scheme of community service, with as many elements included as possible that would tend to awaken conscience and an awareness of the needs of others. Secondly, a meeting should be offered with the victim so that the burglar should hear about the impact of the burglary. I would have been very happy to have met the burglar and told him or her what it was like to he 400 miles away and to have received a phone call at six o'clock in the morning from a neighbour saying that there appeared to be strangers in my house. Thirdly, together with community service and contact with the victim, I would ask for social measures to deal with what is most likely to characterise my burglar—that is probably drug addiction, as the noble Lord, Lord Corbett, mentioned, or some other form of acute social disadvantage. That is what I would choose and, according to international research studies on attitudes to punishment, so would very many other people throughout the world.

Yet prison still carries the argument every time. Why is that? Perhaps it is because the prison sentence is very clear and predictable. The criminal is bundled into the van, unloaded at the prison, strip searched, bathed, interviewed, put into a cell and locked up. He is clearly being punished. If the prison is well resourced, he will absorb £36,539 in the next financial year.

The alternative route is so unclear, so unpredictable. It is patchy, spongy, ill-resourced, lacking in confidence, with no clear, persuasive message for the criminals or the public. If anyone wonders what I mean by the word "spongy", the comment by the representative of the probation officers' trade union in today's Independent about the inability of the probation service to take on any more work with burglars is perhaps the best definition of the word.

Research shows that there is much support for the policy set out by the Lord Chancellor on 3rd January that prisons should be used as a last resort and for no longer than necessary. Can we do it? Can we build up ways of dealing with most offenders that are credible and as emotionally satisfying as prison? We certainly can. We could, for example, learn from the Youth Justice Board and set up adult offending teams on the model of the youth offending teams. We could relaunch the community service order as a highly credible and attractive alternative under the strong leadership of someone good at communicating with the public. We could encourage much more local community involvement in the sentencing process for less serious offenders. We could require courts to obtain a pre-sentence report before imposing a prison sentence.

I list those ideas so that I can ask the Minister to consider them and respond to them. I also make the point that we know that such measures would have an effect; we know that they would reduce the use of prison. If they are not used, that is a matter of choice. An ever-increasing prison population is not inevitable, although it will be if every time there is a scare about some type of offence a minimum sentence is proposed for it. It is difficult to see a way out unless the Government take measures radically to redress the imbalance between the credibility and delivery of alternatives to prison and prison itself.

My Lords, like other noble Lords who have already spoken, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Henley on introducing what is a topical and very important matter. The noble Baroness, Lady Stern, was able to speak with the advantage—or perhaps I should say disadvantage—of having experienced a recent burglary. I am sure that she will forgive me if, in the few minutes available to me, I take up the two points that my noble friend Lord Henley made on the issue of sentencing.

First, I turn to the matter of firearms. Clearly, the increase in the use of firearms and the carrying of firearms is grave and serious. The Government are anxious to do what they can to deal with the problem. It may be that some of the law in that area should be reconsidered. However, I believe that the Government's immediate reaction in talking about a mandatory five years in prison is a knee-jerk reaction which has not been fully thought through.

Will such a sentence be mandatory? At first we were told that it was to be and now I understand that that has been clarified: it was to be mandatory but there will be exceptions. Then on 8th January, as has been said, the Prime Minister in answer to a question in another place said that the five-year mandatory sentence is not yet law but that the Government want it to be. Is the intention still to bring in a five-year mandatory sentence?

I remind the Minister of the present situation. If someone uses a firearm or carries a firearm intending to commit another offence, the maximum penalty is already life imprisonment. If, on the other hand, someone is charged merely with possession of a firearm or carrying a loaded firearm without intent, the punishment is a maximum of seven years or, if tried in a magistrates' court, a maximum of six months' imprisonment.

Is it seriously intended that those different penalties should be replaced by one mandatory sentence of a minimum of five years? Surely that must be wholly out of keeping with a case that is, at the moment, triable summarily in a magistrates' court. If it is intended to be limited to the use of the weapon or the weapon being carried when another offence is committed, the fact that there is a maximum of life imprisonment makes a five-year mandatory sentence of little effect. I believe, unfortunately, that it is an example of this Government speaking loud on crime, but doing very little that will be effective.

I want to make it clear that I am opposed to mandatory sentences. They do not give flexibility to the courts to take account of the different circumstances that may occur. Therefore, they are bound to lead to injustice.

As my noble friend Lord Windlesham has said, I believe that the duty of Parliament is to set the maximum sentence, but that the length of any individual sentence must be a matter for the discretion of the court that has heard the case. I believe that it is vitally important that we retain that distinction in our functions.

I turn to the issue of burglary. I want to ask the Minister whether it is the Government's wish that all those convicted of burglary, even for the first time, should serve short sentences of imprisonment, or do they accept that the Lord Chief Justice was correct to say that at first one should see whether a community sentence would be more appropriate? We know that the prisons are desperately overcrowded; we know that prison to some extent fails to deter; and, in view of the high level of re-offending to which the noble Lord, Lord Corbett of Castle Vale, referred, we know that prison certainly fails to reform.

I do not believe that sentences deter. At the end of the day it is the likelihood of conviction that deters; and the likelihood of conviction depends on the likelihood of being caught. I believe that that is a far graver deterrent than merely serving a short term of imprisonment rather than a community sentence order.

At some stage that was the view of the Minister. Perhaps I may quote from an answer that he gave me on 17th July 2002. He said, in relation to the second point that I made in my question,

"First, there need to be more alternatives to prison, and, secondly, sentencers need to be encouraged to consider those where appropriate. I make it clear that all too many short sentences are now passed where an alternative to custody would be better". —[Official Report, 17/7/02; col. 1254.]

Is that still the view of the Minister? When the Lord Chief Justice attempts, through judicial guidance, to give practice to that policy, it appears that the Government denounce their own policy. I hope that we shall have answers to those questions today.

My Lords, the first principle, as I understand it, of sentencing is to ensure that the public are adequately protected. It seems to me that that is exactly what the guidelines put at the forefront. The two appellants, McInerney and Keating, received three-and-a-half years imprisonment and three years imprisonment respectively. That was considered by the Court of Appeal to be necessary for the protection of society.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, made it clear that in his guidelines he was not dealing with second-time domestic burglars who commit one of the high level aggravating factors such as threatening a victim. He made it clear that the Court of Appeal accepted the advice of the Sentencing Advisory Panel that in such a case the starting rate should be three years; he made it clear that he was dealing with a burglar whose offence may attract up to 18 months' imprisonment. Only a quarter of that sentence would be served. With a 12 months' sentence he would be released after six months with 90 days' home curfew. The result is that the sentence would be only three months. Three months in prison is quite inadequate to enable the Prison Service to carry out any form of rehabilitation to avoid re-offending.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, compared that with community sentencing, which can provide protection for three years, either by tagging and/or curfew orders, in order to keep the offenders off the street. He said that it is a realistic and serious restraint on the offender's freedom. It is supported by the sanction that if the offender does not comply with the terms of the order, he would be sentenced for the original offence and could expect a custodial sentence. That itself is a deterrent.

The solution produced by the noble and learned Lord in his guidelines would reduce overcrowding in prison. We all know that overcrowding makes the Prison Service quite incapable of carrying out any effective activity with a view to teaching the offender the folly of continuing in his ways.

I concede that I, too, have been the subject of two burglaries in the country. Only in one case was the burglar caught. He was a professional burglar. He was found hiding ultimately in the driveway of a grand house with maps and all kinds of detail of the area. I had the satisfaction of knowing that the burglar used the only escape through the back garden, which was full of stinging nettles. On the other hand, I had the dissatisfaction of learning that he was given a suspended sentence because his sister-in-law was apparently going through a difficult change of life.

I hope that that would no longer happen. I think that the lessons so emphasised by the guidelines have been learned. But, having reached the age of anecdotage, I was reminded of the clamour by some parts of the press during the well-known "Spycatcher" case some 15 years ago. I was one of the three of the majority who imposed an injunction on the media. We said at the end of the case that we could not give, an immediate judgment, but we thought that the parties would like to know the result. So we announced the majority decision and said that we would give our reasons for it shortly.

There was an attack of fury from most of the press. Abuse was heaped on us, even to the extent that a picture of the three forming the majority was published upside down with the phrase, "You Fools", attached to it. In giving my judgment I said:

"I hope that but a tithe of the publicity given to the ill-informed criticisms of the majority decision of your Lordships' House is now accorded to the basis and reasons given for that decision".

Hope springs eternal, but it was not to be.

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Henley, on this very timely debate. I hope that I am acting correctly. But—for the first time I believe in this House—I offer condolences on behalf of the House to the family of Detective Constable Oake who was murdered in defence of the criminal justice system that we so proudly discuss today.

I was often told as a young police officer that I should not concern myself with the sentencing of convicted people; that that was a matter for the courts. That is easier said than done when one's life is devoted to apprehending criminals. It takes a very detached personality to ignore the fruits or otherwise of one's labours. Having said that, the police should not become obsessive about the disposal and sentencing of convicted prisoners, which in a liberal democracy is a matter for the courts.

We have seen in other less fortunate countries that the police, either as an instrument of government or as misguided representatives of a society racked by crime, have become the investigator, the jury and the executioner. That of course leads to gross injustice and is the reason why the crown prosecution system was established—quite rightly—independently of the police who investigate crime.

The police are the criminal justice system's interface with the public. Any dissatisfaction with any part of the system is often expressed with vigour to the frontline police officer, whether he is the officer in the case, the family liaison officer or the officer on patrol in the streets.

So police officers quite naturally take an interest in the disposal of criminal cases, not least because they know that while professional offenders are in prison, they are not carrying on their anti-social activities.

As I have said, the debate today is timely. Many tabloid inches have been given to sentencing policy and to the guidance of recent weeks, much of it critical. But newspapers, as we know, have a great deal of power to communicate without much responsibility.

My view of sentencing is obviously coloured by 35 years of policing, much of it as a detective dealing with crime at the sharp end. So what is my view? It is that a sentence must be just. It should do justice primarily for the victim, who, incidentally, is the only participant in the criminal justice system who is not a volunteer. It should do justice to the community in that it seeks to deter the offender and others who may be similarly minded from committing further crime. I suppose that I am saying that it should have unpleasant consequences because otherwise it will be seen as a reward, and that would have the totally opposite effect to that desired.

But it should also do justice to the offender. By that I mean that it should provide him with the means of avoiding falling into the trap of criminality in the future. That may be by rehabilitation, training, education, drug treatment, counselling and so on. I do not think that there would be a great deal of disagreement between thinking people on those matters.

I was the president of the Police Superintendents' Association in the early 1990s when we campaigned vigorously for an end to "revolving door justice", as it was called, in particular with regard to juveniles who would be arrested time after time by the police and then released by the magistrates, quite simply because there were no secure places to detain them.

The streetwise youngster soon got to know that this was the name of the game. Of course he exploited the system to the full—stealing cars with impunity continually. The police were totally frustrated and the public were in despair. I take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Carlisle, because that gives the lie to the argument which is often trotted out, that the only deterrent is being caught. What follows being caught is equally important. It is the duty of the justice system to provide custodial facilities when they are needed. Otherwise, the system is skewed.

In the north-east of England, where I come from, we spawned ram-raiding, where youths would drive their car into a shop window and escape with as many goods as they could. I remember two tearaways ramming a designer closing shop in Durham and stealing about £800-worth of designer clothing. That provided money for beer and cigarettes for about two weeks. Then Geordie said to his pal, "We need to do another ram raid". His pal, Billy, looked askance and said, "Not bloody likely, last time it cost me £1,000 to get the car repaired". Fortunately, criminals are not always that bright.

I am looking at the clock with some trepidation. In conclusion, the increase in firearms crime does not mean that the ban on handguns was not justified. It was not designed to prevent criminal use of firearms but to prevent another Dunblane or Hungerford. That has worked. Firearms offences are fuelled by the easy accessibility of guns in the market-place, mainly from former eastern bloc countries. Those who would legalise drugs that are damaging the nation would presumably argue that because there is a thriving black market in guns they should be legalised as well. That shows what nonsense that argument is.

I welcome the Government's proposals on sentencing. Obviously, the way forward is to stop weapons entering the country at source, if we can, but those found in possession of illegal firearms should be visited with long deterrent sentences. In that sense, prison does and will work.

My Lords, in recording my gratitude to my noble friend Lord Henley for initiating this debate, let me say at once that I shall not detain your Lordships for long.

I listened with great care and interest to the recent radio interview given by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor on a range of subjects. I was especially struck when he said that only 25 per cent of recorded crimes are cleared up by the police and that only a small proportion of that 25 per cent result in a conviction. Against that background, the current debate on sentencing may be less relevant than some people imagine. Surely potential criminals always imagine that they will not be caught and that, even if they are, they are unlikely to be convicted. The figures offered by the noble and learned Lord appear to confirm just that. If there is no prospect or little prospect of being apprehended, the question of sentence—long, short or suspended—ceases to be an important consideration.

Perhaps the way to tackle the wholly unacceptable level of crime—especially offences associated with domestic property and motor vehicles—is to make a much greater effort to solve them. We are told that the Metropolitan Police is several thousand officers under strength. We have all heard the dreadful stories of hopelessly undermanned rural police forces where, if one rings them for assistance, one gets only an answerphone.

We should devote more attention and resources to enabling the police to achieve a much higher clear-up rate than at present. It is for chief constables to say what additional resources they need for that purpose, but I hope that the Government will respond sympathetically to those requirements. If my hypothesis is correct, we should in due course be able to make savings—or at least forgo expenditure—on new prisons, if that is needed to cover the cost.

It may be said that none of us wants to live in a society with police standing on every street corner. Of course I agree with that, but the risk of apprehension is now so low that sentences, however long or severe, do not enter the criminal calculation at all.

The Government are fond of setting targets. Perhaps I may suggest just one more: to improve the clear-up rate from 25 per cent to, say, 50 per cent by the end of this Parliament. Nothing would do more to deter criminals and help to reduce the level of crime. Then we can truly leave the question of sentencing to the judiciary.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for initiating this timely debate. The main principles of the Halliday report, one of the most comprehensive to be carried out during the past century by the Home Office, have been widely accepted. I am glad to say that the Church of England not only submitted evidence to Halliday but a staff officer from our Board for Social Responsibility was on the external reference group.

One principle in particular is incontrovertible. Punishment should be proportionate to the seriousness of the criminal conduct. That in turn depends on the degree of harmfulness or risk of harmfulness of the criminal offence. Behind that principle lies one of the main reasons for punishment in the first place. It expresses society's moral disapproval of the crime. So my first question is: how far does a prison sentence as such still register that disapproval? It is possible that in the minds of some people prison is simply a matter of doing time. What is needed in our society is a much more widely shared disapproval of crime, leading to a stronger and more consistent sense of shame by perpetrators when a crime has been committed.

That raises the further question of whether it is possible to associate non-custodial sentences more closely with society's disapproval in a way that brings about that sense of shame in the offender. As the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, emphasised so powerfully, the message of prison is clear for all to see. The message of non-custodial sentences is at present unclear—as she put it, it is spongy.

In principle, I believe that everyone would like to reduce the prison population. Prison is expensive and crowded prisons are not a good environment in which to bring about a change in people's outlook and lifestyle and help them to take their place as respected, contributing members of the community. The problem is that the fear of crime can help to stoke up the rhetoric of punishment—usually interpreted to mean more and longer prison sentences.

So I return to the fundamental issue of how we can bring about in our society a more consistent disapproval of crime, which has the effect of bringing about a sense of shame in those who commit criminal acts. If that disapproval was more consistent in its effect, it might then be associated in a more integrated way with non-custodial sentences, and the call for more and longer prison sentences would not resonate so widely with people who have an understandable fear of crime.

If what I am saying is true, it means that society as a whole—especially parents, schools and faith communities, but involving all of us—has a role in changing the climate of opinion so that the concept of moral responsibility is once again accepted a s a foundational norm in every one of our communities. That in turn points to another issue. Fear of crime is real, but is crime in fact rising? Figures from the police indeed show such a rise, but the British Crime Survey, which records people's personal experience of crime, shows a 7 per cent drop in crime and a similar drop in the fear of crime, as the noble Lord, Lord Corbett, pointed out. I understand that it is possible to reconcile those different figures, but my point is that we need to be sparing about using such figures in a way that stokes up the rhetoric of more and more drastic punishments, whether for burglary or for any other offence.

I now turn briefly to sentences connected with the possession of guns. Home Office figures show that firearms, excluding air weapons, were used in 9,974 recorded cases in 2001–02, an increase of 35 per cent on the previous year. In 24 per cent of those offences the firearm was fired. So there is clearly a strong case for society expressing its moral disapproval of the unauthorised possession of such weapons. We certainly do not want to move in the direction of America's gang and gun culture.

However, the United States also provides some positive examples. A number of American cities have introduced successful policies to get guns off the streets. In Boston, for example, street workers— largely, ex-gang members who have gone straight and who want to stop their friends being killed—act as go-betweens between the youths on the streets and the criminal justice system. In South Carolina, guns hotlines have been instituted. Anyone who sees a weapon being flashed around at a school or club can ring the hot-line anonymously. Police response has been quick enough to obtain the weapon, with grounds to at least convict the person for possession.

Most positively of all, in Texas they instituted a Youth Advocate Programme, which hires local people from the same patch as the offenders to supervise them for 30 hours per week—far more than any probation officer could manage. Young people who have been convicted are given an advocate at school, in the court and to help them get a job, and to enjoy themselves safely without fear of being attacked by a rival gang. The programme costs less than one-third of the cost of prison and is three times as effective in stopping the offender. This Youth Advocate Programme is now established in Britain in 11 London boroughs and is already showing good results. It is that kind of programme, together with restorative justice programmes pioneered in the Thames Valley, which can bring hope both of taking crime and the effects of crime seriously and enabling those convicted to change their behaviour.

Sentencing policy for burglary and the possession of firearms, however important, is only one aspect of the problem facing our society. Wider changes in our culture are necessary: quite simply, the acceptance that burglary, the possession of firearms and every other crime is wrong—morally wrong. If those changes could be introduced and non-custodial sentences could be seen more widely—not as a soft option, but as a clear expression of society's disapproval—I believe that the call that arises from time to time for harsher prison sentences would be muted. Together with that, particularly in relation to the possession of firearms, there are other innovative ideas now being put into practice which, if extended, could be really effective in tackling this disturbing phenomenon in our society at its root.

My Lords, in making my contribution I wish to declare my interest as chairman of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales. First, I wish to make a few remarks about the crime rates. It is clear from the most recent British Crime Survey that crime in July 2002 was approximately 7 per cent lower than for the previous year. I read carefully the material presenting the crime statistics last week that was used by Professor Paul Wiles, Director of Research, Development and Statistics at the Home Office. As far as I know, no one is doubting his integrity. The material makes it clear beyond doubt that the risk of becoming a victim of crime now remains historically low—approximately the same as at the time of the first British Crime Survey in 1981.

Professor Wiles' statistical judgment on burglary is that it is currently stable. A visitor to this country last week could be forgiven for not understanding those basic facts from the misleading and mischievous media coverage. On the subject of burglary, perhaps I may give your Lordships the picture on juveniles. The data within the Youth Justice Board shows a similar position to that described more broadly by Professor Wiles. Our self-report surveys of teenagers show breaking and entering lower in 2002 than in 2000—that is the same statistic as data that we are receiving from youth offending teams. Overall, the picture set out in our annual review to Parliament is that youth crime is not spiralling out of control.

In that context, it is hard to understand rationally why so many people became so excited about the guidelines on sentencing for burglary that were issued by the Lord Chief Justice. Burglary is not spiralling out of control. The guidelines did nothing to reduce protection of the public. In suggesting that effective community penalties for unaggravated burglary by non-persistent offenders was the right starting point for sentences, it seems to me that the Lord Chief Justice said something rather unexceptional.

The emphasis in the judgment given on the McInerney and Keating appeals in December 2002, in relation to community penalties, is heavily qualified in that the sentence has to be an effective punishment and must offer action on the part of the Probation Service to tackle criminal behaviour.

Those caveats related to adults. For juveniles the judgment endorsed the use of community penalties more strongly. It continued:

"The Youth Justice Board is spearheading effective punishment in the community and it is important that where appropriate juvenile offenders are dealt with in the Youth Court and not the Crown Court".

That is eminently sensible now that we have effective community penalties that are robust and effective—contrary to some popular belief—and, in particular, the Intensive Surveillance and Supervision Programme. Those community penalties do change the offending patterns of many young offenders.

The critical issue here is the credibility and availability of community penalties. Certainly, as regards juveniles the community penalties are credible and being used well by the courts. For example, the Intensive Surveillance and Supervision Programme has been designed as a robust community penalty for persistent and more serious offenders. It is a six-month programme with high levels of community-based surveillance, including tagging, with a sustained focus on tackling risk factors associated with offending and individually tailored plans for changing behaviour. The costs are far less than anything offered by the Prison Service. In terms of cost effectiveness, those programmes are a far better use of public money than short periods in custody. As the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, said, there are lessons to be drawn from that experience for adult offenders.

It is easy to underestimate the pressures on the Probation Service and the resources needed to bolster the credibility of community penalties. However, it would be wise for Conservative critics of the Government to dwell a little on their own record on the Probation Service before attacking the Government. I was personally involved in helping to design the new probation qualification for the Probation Service after the 1997 election, following the effective abolition of their professional qualification by the last Conservative Home Secretary, who put nothing in its place. That was hardly a helpful contribution to the recruitment of staff to the Probation Service and for encouraging high morale.

Since the early 1990s, somehow we have placed ourselves on an escalator towards a higher and higher prison population that consumes more and more resources. We have an expanded prison estate that is struggling to maintain standards of decency and maintain regimes and resettlement programmes that offer offenders the prospect of change. Continuing to raise sentence thresholds and ceilings for whole classes of offences will not help us to get off this escalator; nor will excessive fettering of sentencer's discretion in individual cases.

The juvenile sector has shown a way of change that needs to be applied to other offenders—particularly young adults and women. While I understand the case for deterrence in sentencing for firearms, I hope that we shall not be panicked or seduced further along the path of excessive minimum sentences irrespective of individual circumstances. That is particularly important in the area of juveniles where we have long had a situation where the sentencing structure is very different from that for adults—and for very good reason. I hope that that will remain the case unless there is a sound evidential basis for not doing so.

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow a noble Lord who holds such important responsibilities. I agree with much of what he said, though not quite with all. I join also in the expressions of gratitude for my noble friend Lord Henley that have already been made. He has allowed us to explore an area of sentencing policy that is regrettably a scene of confusion, and even of turmoil.

I am afraid that Ministers are largely responsible for the confusion. My noble friend dealt tellingly with that. For example, one day there will be a five-year mandatory sentence for burglary; the next day there will not be. A few days later, there will be again. I offer another example: the Lord Chief Justice, who has already been alluded to, has been supported by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor—quite rightly because he is head of the judiciary. But the next day the Lord Chief Justice escapes blame from the Home Secretary—if I may say, on the "Today" programme—solely on the grounds that,

"he is not a politician".

It is fairly clear where that was intended to leave the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, even before briefing from No. 10 was brought into the equation.

That is a sorry state of affairs. After all, it is the public who suffer the crimes which are recorded in these cold statistics. As the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie, has said, the public are the only people in the criminal justice scene who are not volunteers. It is baffling to the public and unfair to the judges who always get the blame. I do not think that we should altogether neglect the concept of justice for judges.

In the time available, I want to focus on the discretion that is vested by our system in the judges when sentencing and the use that their leader, the Lord Chief Justice, has recently guided them to make of it.

It is of course elementary that within the criminal justice system the judges are constrained by whatever parameters that Parliament sees fit to place upon their powers, even if they are as impracticable as mandatory sentences, for example.

It is no less elementary that within these parameters it is their duty to exercise their discretion. All of this has been explained better than I could hope to do by my noble friends Lord Windlesham and Lord Carlisle of Bucklow. It would not be necessary to say any of this if it were not for the hot water that the Lord Chief Justice got into for giving carefully considered guidance in the Court of Appeal on the sentencing of burglars and explaining that judgment later.

The judgment was given on 19th December in a case called McInerney, which has already been referred to. It was a long judgment which few, if any, adverse commentators seemed to have thought necessary to read. I hope that the Lord Chief Justice's statement yesterday will encourage them to do so. It proposed a switch away from short custodial sentences for certain categories of burglars towards punishment in the community.

To be ultra-fair, I. think that the Home Secretary was as much complaining about the opportunity that the Lord Chief Justice has taken to let the public understand the court's thinking in that judgment. However, especially these days, it is important that the public should not feel excluded from the thinking of the senior judges, otherwise the judges would be criticised for Olympian arrogance. Communication is now part of the Lord Chief Justice's job.

The public are not as superficial as the editors of certain tabloids seem to suppose and certainly encourage them to be—tabloids of which No. 10 regrettably seems to be in such fear.

The judgment records a research finding— and this is interesting—by the Sentencing Advisory Panel that,

"people think that sentences … are far too soft, [but] … when asked what sentence should be imposed (burglary scenario being used as the test), they often propose a sentence less than that actually imposed".

Absolutely central to the exercise of judicial discretion in sentencing must surely be an understanding of the overcrowded state of prisons. As the judgment itself records, it has resulted in the extensive use of executive release from prison for those sentenced to four years or less—executive, not judicial, not statutory remission for good conduct, but executive because it is convenient to let somebody out sooner than a court has said that he should be. That does not do very much for the rule of law.

It is worth considering a few statistics about overcrowding. The prison population at the end of June last year was 11 per cent higher than the certified normal accommodation. At 71,220, the excess was no less than 7,030 prisoners. Since then, it has become worse and the population is probably now around 72,500, with around 400 prisoners being held in police cells each night.

In McInerney, the court stated that as a result of the present system being so grossly overcrowded, the Prison Service could not achieve the limited assistance that could otherwise be provided during a short sentence. Meanwhile, there was positive evidence emerging as to what could be achieved by punishment in the community. It made clear, with the Lord Chief Justice giving the judgment, that its concern was to give not less, but greater protection to the public.

This has to be taken a good deal more seriously than a lot of the media comment has done. The fact of overcrowding in prisons is a perfectly proper factor for judges to take into account. I hope that the Home Secretary and his colleagues, rather than grumble about that use of their discretion, will reflect on their failure to alleviate overcrowding and that they will forbear from criticising the judges.

My Lords, I start with burglary. There are two points here. First, among all the confusing and sometimes conflicting statistics which are put before us, one thing is absolutely clear: there has been a steady, indeed dramatic, fall in all kinds of domestic burglary since 1995. The figures are set out in table 4.02 of the main crime survey volume. They were referred to as being equivalent to a decline of 39 per cent by the noble Lord.

What is the reason for this very welcome trend? In another place on Monday, it was suggested that it might have something to do with the sentencing policies pursued by the Home Secretary in a previous administration. I find that very difficult to believe. I am not a criminologist myself, but if we think that there is any direct connection between the prevalence of particular crimes and the sentencing level for those crimes, we deceive ourselves.

The causes for the rise or fall in any particular crime lie far deeper than that. Here, I find myself much nearer to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, than I do to the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie. It was thought by many that the abolition of the death penalty, for example, might lead to a large increase in murder. It did nothing of the kind.

The welcome decline in domestic burglary has nothing whatever to do with whether or not first-time or second-time burglars are sent to jail. There is not the slightest reason to believe that if we tilt the balance in favour of the community sentence, which the Lord Chief Justice tried to do, it would lead to any appreciable increase in domestic burglary.

The second point, made also very frequently today, is that prisons are grossly overcrowded—we all know that. Even if we had more prisons, so that all prisoners could be contained properly, a prison population of 72,500 is far too high. Faced with the overcrowding, we all believe that prisons should be reserved for those who commit the more serious offences of violence, sexual assault and so on. That is what we always say. However, one cannot have more serious offences unless one accepts that there are some offences which are less serious, and the generality of burglary is less serious. Of course, there are very serious crimes of burglary, but the generality of burglaries, the kind of burglaries which are dealt with by magistrates rather than on an indictment, are much less serious than that.

This was the only real distinction which the Lord Chief Justice was seeking to make. There is an important distinction. He said, as I understood it, that in the case of first-time and maybe second-time burglars, unless the burglary was so serious that there was no alternative but to send the burglar to prison, a community service order was acceptable.

Like most judges, I have spent many hours talking to groups of magistrates. I always used to say that the most important single decision that any criminal court has to make is the decision to send a man to prison for the first time. I entirely support the line which the Lord Chief Justice has taken.

On gun crime, again, there are two points. Do we need a new initiative? I suggest not. I take it that we are dealing with the crime of carrying a loaded firearm in public under Section 19 of the Firearms Act. The maximum sentence, already pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Carlisle, is six months in summary proceedings and seven years on indictment. It would be very odd to have a crime for which the maximum sentence was seven years and the minimum sentence was five years.

However, putting that to one side, do we need this new initiative? No. I accept that there is a serious problem of gun crime in certain parts of the country, but judges are used to dealing with problems of that kind. We all remember the sentence imposed by Mr Justice Salmon in the aftermath of the Notting Hill riots. Courts will always take into account the prevalence of a particular crime in a particular locality, and they will always take into account any concern that the public may feel on that score.

That was laid down as a principle by Lord Chief Justice Taylor in the case of Cunningham in 1993 and probably long before. It is an obvious principle and, in its light, I suggest that we should leave this matter to the judges and not let the politicians interfere.

My Lords, while I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, in his remarks about firearms, I should say a word in the defence of my old boss, the former Home Secretary, Michael Howard. If the consequence of his actions in regard to burglars was that they spent longer in prison, they would not be able to burgle people's houses while they were in prison. One would therefore expect the incidence of burglaries to fall, which is precisely what has happened.

I wish to address my remarks to the issue of firearms legislation. I have not said anything about this in public before, but I was Secretary of State at the time of the Dunblane murders, which took place in the constituency for which I was the MP. When I came to this House, a number of people indicated their disapproval of what they saw as a knee-jerk reaction to the Dunblane events in the legislation we passed which banned handguns down to 22 calibre. We tried to proceed on the basis of a political consensus but, for understandable reasons—it was an election year—the Labour Party went one step further and decided to go for a total ban. I have to say, in all honesty, that had I been re-elected I would have supported a total ban. I believe that it was the right thing to do.

When I was taken into the school gym by the police, the children were still where they had fallen. It was a scene of unbelievable carnage. I cannot describe my reactions save to say this. The man who had committed the offence was a regular attender at my constituency surgeries—he was one of my persistent correspondents—and all I could think of was the glib way in which I had denounced those who had suggested after Hungerford that we should ban handguns. I took the view that hard cases make bad law and that it would be unreasonable to do so, but I have no doubt whatever that had we banned handguns then, this would not have happened. I believe therefore that it was the right thing to do.

The ban caused huge offence to the shooting community and enormous cost to the taxpayer, I believe approaching £100 million. Many in the shooting community argued that it was the wrong thing to do because it did not address the problem of people who owned guns illegally. In all conscience, I have to say now that they were right. I do not say that we were wrong to impose a ban, but they were right to point out that we were not addressing the major problem.

As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford pointed out, the figures show that the incidence of gun crime has doubled during the period the Government have been in power since 1997, with a slight dip in the years 1997 and 1998. On any given day in England and Wales there are seven offences involving the firing of guns. Weapons are fired seven days a week, seven times every day.

I look to the Government for a solution to the essential problem of the illegal use of guns. What is being proposed was on the list of suggested solutions produced by Home Office officials at the time of the Cullen report, when we looked at every aspect of the problem. They were rejected for a number of reasons, which we do not have time to discuss today.

The move towards banning replica guns may help in incidents where the police are not sure whether criminals are carrying real firearms, and may provide some degree of protection for the criminal. But if we ban replica guns on the grounds that replica guns can be converted, we will be banning something which is already illegal. A weapon which has been converted for use is already illegal. This is already happening. The problem lies in enforcement. As many noble Lords have said, this is about securing convictions and enforcement of the existing law; it is not about creating additional laws.

Equally, if there is a demand for replica weapons and we reduce the supply, are we not in danger of increasing the demand for the weapons which are coming from Eastern Europe and other countries and which are capable of doing serious and lasting damage?

As to the issue of a minimum five-year sentence—I am delighted to see the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, in his place—I must confess that I am a convert. When I was Secretary of State I thought mandatory sentences were a great idea because I was fed up with the way in which judges did not seem to be responding to public opinion. I was persuaded that sentencing guidelines were the appropriate way forward and that we had to have discretion. The Government seem to be making some of the same mistakes which previous governments have made and which do not deliver results.

As my noble friend Lord Trefgarne said, the issue is about bringing criminals to justice. It is not a debate about how long the sentence should be if someone is carrying an illegal weapon; it is a debate about how we make sure that such people are put behind bars in the first place.

I appreciate that there is not a great deal of time for this debate. I do not wish to make any party points against the Government—these are complicated issues which are particularly difficult to discuss in the context of the kind of press that we enjoy in this country—but I believe that we should be looking long and hard at the gun culture which is being created in this country. What I would describe as a "screen and rap" culture is dominating our youngsters, and we should ask ourselves why it is that so many disaffected youngsters in inner-city communities now see carrying a gun in the same way as a previous generation saw trainers and other fashion accessories—as something they had to have. There is a breakdown in respect for individuals and law and order, and a culture of violence— which is fed by many other aspects of the media—which we need to address in a sensible way. So far the proposals coming from the Government singularly fail to address the problem.

My Lords, I wonder how mar y of your Lordships have seen the brilliant new film, "God's City", about the terrifying level of gun culture in the cities of Brazil. Although in Britain we are still far from that level there is no doubt that we are moving in that direction. I certainly urge the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, to see that film if he has not already done so.

The growth of a gun culture in Britain is alien to British tradition and deeply offensive to the great majority of voters. Its growth is highlighted by the growing number of armed policemen on our streets and the suspicion that in certain areas the police are reluctant to tackle the ruthless armed criminal gangs, usually referred to in the press as the "Yardies".

Indeed, the handling of the siege in Hackney is questionable. The record length of the siege is not a record of which to be proud, and the outcome can give no comfort or reassurance to anyone.

To carry an illegal firearm is a serious matter; to threaten anyone with one is doubly so; and to fire shots at public or police is wholly unacceptable. Unless there are real reasons to believe that a gunman is a certifiable lunatic, I do not believe that once a criminal shoots at anyone, showing beyond dispute that he is willing to kill, there should be inhibitions about shooting him dead. It is quite wrong that the police should put their own or anyone else's life in danger in such circumstances. I suspect that the law may need changing to give the police full cover for using lethal force in response to a criminal actually shooting at anyone.

In the matter of guns on the street, the Home Office has, in my view, been culpably dismal in failing to do what is needed. I follow the arguments advanced by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford. What is needed is not to flood the prisons with those found carrying guns but to get guns off the streets. As the right reverend Prelate said, this has worked well in America. Since 1994, 90,000 guns have been seized on the streets of New York and shootings have fallen by 74 per cent. New York is now a much safer city.

On 12th March last year, in an amendment to the Police Reform Bill, I put forward a specific proposal for action to help to get guns off the streets. It would have given the police powers to seal off any area where they thought that people might be carrying guns and to sweep everyone in that area with metal detectors and body searches. The area might be a street, part of a street, a club or the area outside it, a cinema, a train or a station platform.

I received support for the idea from all sides of the House. However, the unfortunate noble Lord, Lord Bassam, was put up by the Home Office to reject it. Of course, I was not surprised. The immediate reaction of the Home Office tends to be to reject any idea which is not its own.

After all, Parliament passed Section 39 of the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997 requiring a national register of persons who have applied for, or been granted, a shotgun or firearms certificate. Five years later, after a prolonged, and no doubt to Home Office officials an amusing, game of "Yes, Minister"—which included ignoring a severe rebuke in the year 2000 from the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, then presided over by the noble Lord, Lord Corbett—we still have no register.

Indeed, only last week, on 9th January, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, signed a Written Answer to a Question from my noble friend Lady Blatch asking when the register would become fully operational. His answer was pure, bureaucratic gibberish, and the noble and learned Lord should be ashamed of signing it. Perhaps I may read one sentence:

"The Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO) is currently considering the responses to the notice it issued seeking non-binding expressions of interest for a retender". —[Official Report, 9/1/03; col. WA 225.]

That is after five years—yes, years.

The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, was asked to say that the powers that currently existed were "effective for the purpose", and:

"we believe we have got it about right".

Try telling that to the good citizens of Hackney or Birmingham.

The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, wrote to me on 15th April rejecting my suggestion on the basis that the police did not think it necessary. I wonder whether that is still their view. He stated:

"The only statutory power to cordon off an area is that under section 33 of the Terrorism Act 2000 which allows an officer of at least superintendent rank to designate an area as a cordoned area where he considers it expedient for the purposes of a terrorist investigation".

The Home Office says:

"We have serious concerns on the practicalities of sealing off an area to conduct a sweep for the illegal carrying of firearms".

These concerns seem to be based on the resources needed, the impact on local communities and disproportionality. I suspect that the word "disproportionate" reflects the need, which of course I accept, to balance effective policing with the need to avoid inflaming race relations. All I can say is that the growth of gun warfare on the streets of our cities is one of the major poisons in race relations.

Recent events have therefore convinced me that powers, at least equivalent to those under Section 33 of the Terrorism Act, are needed. The sort of ad hoc sweeps that I propose would be very useful in reassuring the public and would result in many guns being removed. I hope that the Government will include such a provision in their forthcoming legislation.

The noble and learned Lord knows that I am in many areas a supporter of what the Government are trying to do. The Chancellor has done his best to build on the success of the Thatcherite economic revolution. The Government are standing up against the absurd wage claims of the firemen. The Prime Minister speaks loud and clear in the world for Britain's interests. The Home Secretary has many sound instincts and aspirations on law and order, as had his predecessor. But what we need now is action, not words. If the Government are judged by the electorate to have failed in these matters, they will suffer severely at the next election.

My Lords, in expressing gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for introducing this debate, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Windlesham, that it raises important constitutional considerations.

The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, referred to the economy. Perhaps the most important decision taken by the Labour Government was to declare the Bank of England independent of political interference, thereby preventing a pre-election boom for electoral advantage. That was an innovation.

But in the field of criminal justice, sentencing has always been in the hands of independent experts, professional judges and magistrates. The function of Parliament is to set maximum sentences, and to provide the tools, the range of penalties, whether custodial or non-custodial, which an individual judge can exercise with regard to the defendant who is before him; and exercise his judgment, insulated from the popular concerns of the moment and without any interest in electoral advantage.

It need not necessarily be so. In the United States, judges in 38 states are elected; they are directly responsible to their electorate and move by public opinion. But that is not the British way. Here, we believe in judicial independence, which secures continuity, regardless of a change of Home Secretary or of a government, consistency, and proportionality.

As for continuity, I well recall a sentencing conference in Cardiff in the late 1980s, when the Home Secretary was minded to promote non-custodial sentences and the very gallant Lord Justice, who had a long connection with the Rugby Union addressed us, and said: "Now, listen, boys, if you think the so-and-so should go to prison, you send him there. Don't listen to this stuff from the Home Office. We'll back you in the Court of Appeal". It was an exhortation redolent of the changing-room before a match, but it emphasised the independence of the judiciary from political control.

As for consistency, judges have long experience. They have the opportunity to confer with colleagues; they have judicial guidelines; they have their "bible", Thomas on Sentencing—no relation.

When it comes to proportionality, judges have, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, said, an overview of the hierarchy of crime, of placing the particular offence with which a person is charged in its proper perspective.

Victims do not have that overview. Their hurt is unique to themselves. Many victims and their families who attend the courts are later to be seen on television complaining about the leniency of the sentence that the judge has passed in a particular case. Victims always think that sentences are lenient. It was interesting to see that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, in his capacity as a victim took that view of the sentence passed in the case to which he referred.

Reports in the media foster a climate of distrust in the judicial body. Consequently, there comes about a popular demand for higher penalties. People do not appreciate the larger picture. In particular, they do not realise the value and effectiveness of community penalties, for the reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord Corbett. 'The effects are not properly reported.

Furthermore, people tend to believe that the deterrent benefits of prison are far greater than the statistics show to be the case. Politicians are tempted to latch on to this feeling and to announce from time to time headline grabbing initiatives. There, the party political battle begins, with each side blaming the other.

Turning to guns, the gun culture is not new. Some five or six years ago, I was engaged in a case deriving from a club in the neighbourhood where the recent tragic events in Birmingham took place. A young man trod on the foot of another young man as he went to the bar. He was challenged to a fight outside. When the challenger raised his fists, the man who had trodden on the other's toes produced a gun and casually shot him. The only witness was subsequently found shot in his flat. That happened five or six years ago. The incident barely made the national news. It was regarded as just another Yardie killing.

At that time, the Government were obsessed with "three strikes and you're out" mandatory sentencing. The history of that policy is revealing about how politics can mingle with sentencing. In 1994, a victim of crime, a photographer by occupation, placed on the ballot in California Initiative 184 for "three strikes and you're out". The Republican governor, who faced the possibility that he would not be re-elected, then introduced a Bill putting that policy forward into the Democrat-controlled legislature. The Democrats were not going to be less tough than the governor just before the election. So they pushed through the proposal for "three strikes and you're out". That meant that on the third conviction for an offence as minor as domestic burglary a person's sentence would range from 25 years to life, with no reduction. The governor then campaigned on the further proposal of "one strike equals life imprisonment" for sexual offences. When he was eventually re-elected, of course, the proposal was dropped. That illustrates politics using the sentencing system to try to gain electoral advantage.

A study published in 2001 by the Oxford University Press, carried out by Franklin Zimring and others, concluded that the "three strikes and you're out" proposal in California had no effect on second offending. It found no more than "weak evidence of marginal deterrence" on third offending. It was pure politics. I welcome the conversion of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, from mandatory sentencing to the more traditional view.

We have the highest proportion of prisoners in Europe; so there is no sign that the judiciary has failed to respond to public concern about crime. There are conflicting statistics. On the one hand, the Government use Home Office statistics showing increases in robbery, burglary, drug offences and gun crime to justify driving up sentencing levels; on the other, they quote the British Crime Survey finding of a 27 per cent decrease in crime as proof of their strategy's success. Why, if crime is decreasing, are we trying to increase the number sent to prison and: sentence terms? Why is it necessary to take increasingly punitive measures?

The Criminal Justice Bill proposes a sentencing guidelines council, which would have much closer political control than the Court of Appeal in producing sentencing guidelines. Would the new council, which will be closer to politicians than the Court of Appeal, reduce sentencing norms? I very much doubt it. Mr Letwin, on behalf of the Conservative Opposition in another place, is calling for Parliament to take power to set guidelines to indicate the norm, not maximum sentences. That opens the possibility of political interference.

Noble Lords on all sides of the House have said today that the prison estate is ready to burst. There is a danger of an explosion of violence in overcrowded prison conditions. That is a concern of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, who was responsible for the investigations into prison conditions in Manchester. In April last year, I was in the Royal Jail at Frederick Street, Port of Spain in Trinidad, which was built in 1860 to accommodate 250 escaped indentured labourers and now holds 800 prisoners, more than 100 of whom are on death row. The genial but very perceptive and concerned governor, Mr Roberts, said he was frustrated because the prison had good rehabilitative programmes to put into effect but could not do so because of the pressure of numbers. He reflected the precise problem we have here.

We all agree that a core of dangerous people must be locked up. The rest are locked up for excessive periods; they are fed and clothed; they have nothing to do; they have no need to think or take a decision; their conduct is never challenged; and they are then dumped back into society. We wring our hands about the reconviction rate. We want a clear political lead from the very top. As the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, said, we need a clear persuasive message to convey to the public: confidence in judges; the advantages of non-custodial sentences; how the prison population can be reduced; the provision of programmes to prisoners within those prisons; and resources. The greatest success of this Government in criminal justice has been the Youth Justice Board under the excellent chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Warner. The criminal justice system requires more such properly resourced initiatives.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Henley for bringing his very timely Motion before the House. It occasioned some distinguished and very learned speeches, including his own. Mine is strictly a layman's viewpoint. I hope that there is still room for such views in a specialised debate such as this.

My first difficulty is with the crime figures. I am glad to see that I am not alone. The Times, too, was confused last Friday and began its first leader with this remarkable sentence:

"The Home Office yesterday announced that in the year ending in September 2002 crime rose by … 9 per cent, that it rose by only 2 per cent and that it fell by 7 per cent".

It gave similarly variable figures for domestic burglary—up 5 per cent and down 7 per cent—concluding that,

"the announcement was hopelessly and intentionally confusing".

The Sunday Times columnist Minette Marin described it as, "confusion worse confounded".

The Home Office has certainly fiddled with the way in which crime figures are calculated. I am told that recorded crime is now as defined by the victim; and if there is more than one offence, they are counted as a multiple incident. That produced the 9 per cent increase. On the same day, the British Crime Survey recorded a 7 per cent fall. But it, too, has its shortcomings. For example, it does not include crime committed on housing estates or against under 16 year-olds. Be that as it may, the Home Office pitched for the 2 per cent difference as the likely increase.

That is a meaningless indicator. We should have better and more useful means of detecting trends in criminal behaviour as they develop to assist the police in tackling crime. That seems a fundamental requirement in the battle against crime. I hope that the noble and learned Lord agrees with me.

As things stand, we are bound to accept the worst case scenario presented by these figures. The 5 per cent increase in domestic burglaries, for example, may well be the outcome of the erosion of the tougher stance adopted in earlier years, as described by my noble friend Lord Windlesham. The publicity surrounding the guideline judgment by the Lord Chief Justice in McInerney, with the emphasis on community sentences for first and second-time offenders in low-level burglary cases, sent the wrong message at the wrong time to would-be criminals, if they listen, and certainly to the public.

Yesterday, the Lord Chief Justice quite rightly felt obliged to revisit his guidelines and reassert the context. I have read the judgment, lengthy as it is. It states:

"Domestic burglary is, and always has been regarded as a very serious offence".

The noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor appears to have overlooked that point in his much quoted saying of the week. He said that he did not,

"accept that people are disturbed at first time burglars or even second time burglars where there are no aggravated elements in the burglary, not going to prison".

I think that he could have done with the assistance of a spin doctor in formulating that sentence.

It may be that the view of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor was supported by research into public attitudes, but I cannot find that research. I certainly could not find it in the research by the sentencing panel advising the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. The final sentence of the panel's very interesting conclusion states:

"this study has shown that burglary is regarded as a serious crime and that the public believes that sentencing should reflect this seriousness".

The resulting furore has, of course, placed a question mark over the way in which guideline judgments are prepared. Surely the Government's own proposal in the Criminal Justice Bill—that there should be a sentencing guidelines council to cover a wide range of criminal offences, and some parliamentary involvement through the Home Affairs Committee—tends to confirm that the Government share these doubts about the efficacy of the existing system. My own party is pressing for more parliamentary scrutiny. On Monday, in the other place, the Home Secretary indicated that he was mulling over the points made to him. There is clearly a need to respond to public concern. Let us not forget that the Audit Commission found that half the public are not satisfied that the criminal justice system is effective in bringing offenders to justice.

There is no disputing the fact that sentencing policy is being heavily influenced by overcrowding in the prison system and the expectation of a further increase in the prison population. The Government's own projection is that in the next six years the prison population will increase from its current 72,500 to about 100,000, and that does not even take into account the effect of the Bills currently before Parliament. I think that the Lord Chief Justice was absolutely right to say that overcrowding,

"is a cancer eating at the ability of the Prison Service to deliver".

The reconviction rate among released prisoners—58 per cent within two years; and 72 per cent among 18 to 20-year-old male prisoners—confirms the view of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf.

Whether it is right that sentencing policy should be dictated to the extent that it is by prison overcrowding is highly debatable. Prison does appear to have a deterrent effect, particularly on first-timers, compared with community sentences. As I understand it, however, there are some doubts about that. I should be very grateful if the Minister would clear that up. Does prison have that deterrent effect on first-timers?

I recognise the practical imperatives of the present prison overcrowding. However, more consideration could be given to the new prison building alternative. I understand that the Government are building two new prisons. I would rather see that than a softer approach to crime and punishment which only encourages crime and may prove more costly over time.

With regard to community-based sentences, I agree with the view expressed by the Metropolitan Police in their response to the White Paper Justice for All—that unless these,

"sentences have credibility and authority, then the entire system may fail in its stated purpose and the needs of communities and those who require rehabilitation will not be met".

I think that that was the point made also by the noble Baroness, Lady Stern.

The police are at the sharp end and facing a situation in which substantial numbers of people,

"fail to answer summons, fail to attend court, do not pay their fines, do not complete community service orders or drug testing orders".

That is the daily reality confronting them. To complicate the situation further, I am told that there is a strike brewing, if not threatening in the probation service. Costly as prison may be to the taxpayer, I am not at all certain that a properly supervised and truly effective community sentencing system would be cheaper in the long run.

The alarming 35 per cent increase in gun crime in one year, the 46 per cent increase in handgun crime, and the recent gang shooting of four young women in Birmingham have certainly roused the nation to a high pitch of awareness of the dangers of a gun culture that appears to be the offshoot of a drug culture of which we are already painfully aware. Did the Government not see that coming? There were plenty of warnings early last year and, as we have heard today, gun crime has been increasing for some time. The announcement of a mandatory five-year sentence for illegal possession has quickly and rightly been made subject to judges' discretion. Again, however, the impression is of a hasty and ill thought out reaction by the Government.

What really worries me is that we seem to be in danger of going off at a tangent. We talk about rap music, air guns, replicas and an amnesty when we should be more concerned with vicious and violent drug gangs, Uzi submachine guns and firearms smuggled from the Balkans and elsewhere to a comparatively low-price and easily accessible market. Air pistols can, of course, be adapted to shoot bullets, replicas can be reactivated, and so on. What I am saying is that the whole issue needs a considered and comprehensive rather than a knee-jerk approach. We should learn a lesson from the legislation that followed Dunblane, which, as my noble friend Lord Forsyth said, has done nothing to reduce the trade in illegal weapons.

Crime and the causes of crime continue to cause the public grave concern, as does the Government's apparent inability to provide a strong, coherent strategy to alleviate these problems. I have seen the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, on various television programmes and heard him on radio. He seems to pursue a more robust line than some of his colleagues. I hope that he will give a robust answer to this debate.

My Lords. I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Henley, on procuring this topical debate, and I welcome the opportunity to set out the Government's position on sentencing. I also join my noble friend Lord Mackenzie in sending most sincere condolences to the family of Detective Constable Oake, who died yesterday in Manchester. I express my strong support for the Greater Manchester police. The trauma which they endured yesterday demonstrates to the whole House the dangers that police officers such as Detective Constable Oake face in fighting dangerous criminals and crime.

I should like to make three preliminary points. First, there are inevitably difficult issues in relation to crime. For example, as everyone knows, it is difficult to measure the precise level of crime. People should not, as some noble Lords have, confuse the difficulty of identifying the precise level of crime with confusion itself. One cannot make difficult issues go away. One has to face up to the difficulty of some of those issues.

Secondly, on the question of who is in charge of sentencing policy, the Government are clear that it is a matter for the Home Office, as it has always been. Judges are a matter for the Lord Chancellor, in so far as anybody is responsible for them—because they are, of course, independent. The two departments must work closely together in formulating policy.

Thirdly, I strongly repudiate the idea that there have been mixed messages about the position on these matters. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for giving me the opportunity to mention that point. As an influential member of his party, I hope that he will speak to his right honourable friend Mr Oliver Letwin, who in an interview with the Independent on 10th December or thereabouts expressed his strong support for the judgment on guidelines issued by the Lord Chief Justice. A few days ago, he said that his support has now been withdrawn from the Lord Chief Justice's guidelines judgment. He said that he was wrong when he gave the Lord Chief Justice support and that a tougher line was required. Therefore, as far as mixed messages are concerned, the noble Lord, Lord Henley, might look to his own home first before making the points that he made about us.

I strongly endorse the comments of those noble Lords who say that sentencing must be considered on a long-term and well thought-out basis. It is important that any changes made to sentencing are made after proper consultation and after the ability has been given to consider the issue overall. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford said in his telling remarks, Mr Halliday, formerly a senior civil servant in the Home Office, produced a report during last year that made radical well thought-out proposals on the reform of sentencing. Those proposals were not produced in the heat of the moment but were well researched and prepared and widely consulted on.

The Government have broadly adopted those principles of sentencing in the White Paper produced in July 2002, and reflected in the Criminal Justice Bill published in the earlier part of last autumn. We are dealing with a series of well thought-out proposals, which are not remotely knee-jerk and do not consider only one bit of the situation but look right across the piece.

I also make clear that the proposals do not for a moment undermine the basic principle that a judge must act independently on individual cases to decide what an appropriate sentence would be, based on the facts. Nobody would dispute the proposition advanced on all sides of this House that the range of offenders and offences is wide and each case must be considered on its individual facts.

Having said all that, it is plain that guidelines are essential, as the judiciary has accepted for many years. Guidelines are important for ensuring consistency, proportionality and fairness in the passing of sentences. As Mr Halliday suggested, and the Government have accepted, there should be a process whereby guidelines can be promulgated. That should be based not only on argument in an individual case by counsel and decided on by judges without further assistance. I know that judges share that view.

As an approach to preparing guidelines, the sentencing advisory panel has been established. It gives advice regularly on various types of offences and offender situations. As noble Lords have said, the sentencing advisory panel gave extensive, well thought-out and well consulted advice to the Court of Appeal Criminal Division before it gave guidelines on burglary. We wish to expand on that, to continue the role of the sentencing advisory panel, and for a sentencing guidelines council to produce guidelines. We want those guidelines to be widely consulted on and published in draft. We want Parliament and the Secretary of State to have a role in determining the guidelines. There must be a combination of Parliament and judges setting the guidelines, with the judges ultimately deciding, entirely independently, on individual cases.

That is the correct approach, and it is the approach reflected in the Criminal Justice Bill that is currently passing through the Commons. It represents no infringement of the individual judge's right to decide on the appropriate decision in the individual case.

When the sentencing guidelines council is up and running, it will produce guidelines covering all the significant offences. It will also deal with the principles that will apply on sentencing. The Bill sets out what the principles of sentencing should be: punishment, crime reduction, protection of the public and reparation by offenders to victims. For the first time, a statutory purpose is being defined in relation to sentencing.

We have rightly focused on sentencing in this debate, because that is the issue on which the noble Lord, Lord Henley, quite properly focused. However, one should not regard the issue of dealing with crime as an either/or. One should plainly address the causes of crime by addressing issues such as health, education and the culture of particular communities in which crime thrives. We must support families and ensure that jobs are available for those who might otherwise go into crime. As the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, said, we must also address the issue of how to bring more cases to justice. That means more arrests and more convictions of the guilty through the criminal justice system.

One should address the question of sentencing as well. Sentencing that is effective in dealing with crime, in relation to punishment, reparation, reducing reoffending and providing public protection, is one part of the picture. However, with the greatest respect, noble Lords are wrong to treat the situation as either/or. We need to address the causes of crime, make the criminal justice system better and improve on the numbers of people arrested. We also need an effective sentencing system.

It is dangerous to set out comprehensive principles in relation to sentencing, but one can see the approach that we have taken in the Criminal Justice Bill.

I turn to other important points. First, offenders who have been given every opportunity to get away from crime but who seriously persist in crime should expect custody. For dangerous sexual and violent offenders, the first priority must be public protection. That means that dangerous sexual and violent offenders should be in custody for as long as public protection requires. The changes to sentencing in the Bill reflect that. As for drug-fuelled offending, every opportunity should be taken to get the offender off drugs. He should if necessary be offered the opportunity of treatment but, if he does not take that offer, he should expect the worst consequences of the law, which will frequently mean custody.

As for the type of sentence, heavy regard should be given to reducing reoffending. Again, noble Lords have sought to put the debate in the context of community sentences versus custody. That is not the right way in which to consider the matter. Every sentence must have in mind what would be the most effective way of reducing reoffending. That means effective community sentences when appropriate. We should consider what can be done to reduce reoffending when a defendant is in custody, and we should ensure that there is support for him when he comes out of prison so that he is less likely to reoffend. That is reflected in the Criminal Justice Bill and in the Social Exclusion Unit's report on effective ways of reducing reoffending. Again, it is not an either/or. The purposes must be clear. We are not arguing that one approach is always better than another. The approach taken must have public support, must effectively provide public protection, must reduce crime and must provide reparation by offenders to victims.

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord is making a very effective speech, as if this were the Second Reading of the Criminal Justice Bill in this House. It is not. A number of us are concerned about how all that is reconciled with an announcement by the Home Secretary that there is to be a minimum sentence of five years for gun crime.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for bringing me to gun crime. It is not possible to look at our approach to burglary and to gun crime without seeking to put our overall approach to sentencing in context. I shall deal first with burglary and then come to questions about gun crime. I apologise if I have been too slow getting there.

We take the view that burglary is a serious crime. As the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, made clear, the same view is taken by the Sentencing Advisory Panel, by the Lord Chief Justice the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, in his judgment and by my noble and learned friend Lord Irvine. The judgment delivered in the guidelines case by the Lord Chief Justice refers to the sentencing advisory panel and identifies what the typical burglar is and what the typical burglary consists of. Quoting the Sentencing Advisory Panel, he describes it involving a repeat offender, very often the stealing of electrical goods and some personal possessions, and some damage in getting in. The standard burglary will not usually involve violence to the individual house owner, but it will cause trauma. He also makes it clear that repeat offenders should normally merit some sort of custodial sentence. All the indications suggest that that is the typical burglary. It is serious, frequently involves persistence and will normally merit gaol.

The noble and learned Lord also identifies cases in which there is a genuine first-time offender, not somebody who has committed previous offences and who may commit a low level burglary. If it is a genuine first offence, not just a first burglary, and it is a low-level burglary, society may well be best benefited by a community sentence. As the Lord Chief Justice makes clear, that will depend on the facts. Our approach to burglary must be looked at in that context.

Reference has been made to the fact that there is a minimum sentence for burglary. The third conviction for burglary leads to a minimum sentence of three years under the 1997 Act, which the previous government introduced and we brought in in 1999. There is a clear place for minimum sentences, because they send the clearest possible signal that that sort of crime committed in that sort of circumstance is serious and demands serious punishment, such as, in the case of burglary, three years in prison. I believe that to be appropriate. In such cases, Parliament is entitled to send the signal that there should be a remorseless use of a particular punishment. That is the clearest possible deterrent to the relevant sort of criminal.

My Lords, I understand that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor was stepping in behind the Lord Chief Justice to support what he had said. From what the noble and learned Lord has said now, that is clearly in line with government policy. Why did not the Home Secretary do precisely the same, rather than differing from the clear message that has come from the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice?

My Lords, the Home Secretary specifically referred to the approach to repeat offenders. In the clarification issued yesterday, the Lord Chief Justice made it clear that a repeat offender could expect immediate imprisonment. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary yesterday welcomed that clarification.

There is no doubt that everybody engaged in the issue is clear that burglary is a very serious offence. We are all aware of the wide range of circumstances, but the typical burglary, as I have described it, normally merits prison.

My Lords, perhaps the noble and learned Lord can clear up one point that concerns me and others on the effectiveness of prison as opposed to community service in preventing reoffending by first offenders. Is one system more effective than the other?

My Lords, prison will be appropriate in certain circumstances. The Home Office independent research department says that it is not possible to draw conclusions on which is more effective, looked at overall. As I said earlier, it is not community sentences versus custody. Custody is appropriate for serious cases, for dangerous sexual or violent offenders or for persistent offenders. The debate is not assisted by seeking to analyse which is more successful overall. We have to identify where custody is appropriate and where a community sentence is appropriate.

My Lords, as I read the guidelines issued by the Lord Chief Justice, he makes it clear that sentences of 18 months or less achieve nothing because they result in the defendant being released home in about three months. That means that the Prison Service can provide nothing useful for him. A community-based sentence has the advantage that conditions can be imposed that, if broken, result in the offender going back to court to be sentenced. Such a sentence also offers for three years the protection of him being off the street as a result of wearing the handcuffs or anything of that kind. It is wrong to adopt what the Lord Chief Justice said and yet not to concede that sentences under 18 months—

My Lords, if the noble and learned Lord will forgive me, there are only three minutes left for this debate. These constant interventions are not helping the Government to make their case, however good or bad it might be.

My Lords, there is plainly a separation between us and the Lord Chief Justice. I do not mean there is disagreement, but we are doing different things. I am simply seeking to answer on the Government's sentencing policy.

I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff. I shall deal briefly with the point that has been raised. The Criminal Justice Bill makes it clear that if a custodial sentence that involves a short period in prison is to be useful thereafter, there must be support in the community to assist the offender's reintegration into society. That covers issues such as housing, employment, family relationships and drugs and alcohol.

I shall deal briefly with gun crime. I am afraid that my time is short because I wrongly took too many interventions. Everybody agrees that the problem of gun crime has been growing. The minimum mandatory sentence sends a clear message about how seriously it is to be regarded. The courts will rightly use the sentence remorselessly. As my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has made clear, that is only part of our approach. Other things must be done as well. I disagree with those who say that there is no place for minimum mandatory sentences. There is a place for them. In his guidelines judgment, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, makes it clear that such minimum sentences result in the courts giving a sentence that they would not otherwise give. That sends the clearest possible message of deterrence and makes sure that there is appropriate punishment.

I am sorry that I am not able to deal with all the other points that noble Lords have made. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for giving me the opportunity to put the Government's position.

My Lords, I think that I have only about a minute to thank all the noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. We have achieved something. I chose sentencing because of the obvious confusion in the Government's mind as to their exact policy, and I invited the Minister to see whether he could sort out that confusion. However, the intervention at the end from the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, was not properly answered, and we can say that there is still confusion in the Government's mind on this subject. Perhaps they can address that in due course. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall repeat a Statement made earlier today in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence. The Statement is as follows:

"With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement on missile defence.

"The House will recall that, in the defence debate on 17th October, I described the work in the United States on the development of ballistic missile defence systems and the Government's thinking on this issue. Subsequently, on 9th December, as I informed the House during Defence Questions that day, I placed in the Library a discussion paper produced by the Ministry of Defence setting out the role which active missile defence might play within a comprehensive strategy for tackling the threat from ballistic missiles. And on 17th December, I informed the House of the receipt of a request from the United States Government to upgrade the early warning radar at Fylingdales for missile defence purposes.

"I have repeatedly emphasised that the Government would not respond to such a request without a further opportunity for discussion in this House. Next week's defence debate is a very timely further occasion for the House to discuss the challenges that the United Kingdom faces in the new international security environment, including those posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile technology. I hope the House will find it helpful if today I set out the Government's thinking on the US request.

"The Government recognise that missile defence raises important strategic issues, as well as local concerns in North Yorkshire. Following the release of the discussion paper in December, with its invitation to all interested parties to contribute their views, we have had around 300 responses. In addition, I visited North Yorkshire last week, and heard the views of local people and their elected representatives, as well as meeting representatives from the planning authorities.

"We have taken these views into account as we have considered the key question, which is the key test which the Government will apply to the US request—would agreeing to the upgrade of Fylingdales ultimately enhance the security of the UK and the NATO alliance?

"The background to the US request is the marked increase in the potential threat to our security from weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery. The Prime Minister has described weapons of mass destruction as,

'the key issue facing the world community'.

It is a real threat to our security, fanned by proliferation from irresponsible regimes. As we all know, threat is a combination of intention and capability. Intentions can be debated but they can also change at very short notice. The evidence of expanding capabilities cannot responsibly be ignored. The hard fact is that a number of states of concern are making major investments in developing ever-longer range ballistic missiles.

"We are not referring here to countries developing standard military technology against the risk of conventional conflict. These ballistic missile programmes are being developed in order to threaten the delivery of mass destruction—nerve gas, toxins, biological agents or even nuclear warheads. It is the combination of ballistic missiles and the possession of these weapons of mass destruction, together with the demonstrated willingness to use these capabilities, that make Iraq the most immediate state threat to global security.

"Elsewhere, if North Korea ends its moratorium on flight testing, it could flight test a missile with the potential to reach Europe and the United States within weeks. Iran and Libya may acquire similar missile systems, not least through the proliferation of missile technology from North Korea.

"Based on the analysis and discussion which we have undertaken so far, I have therefore come to the preliminary conclusion that the answer to the US request must be yes, and that we should agree to the upgrade as proposed.

"RAF Fylingdales has operated since 1963 as a ballistic missile early warning system, which together with other radars in the United States and Greenland provides tactical warning and attack assessment of a missile attack against the United Kingdom, North America or Western Europe. It has been upgraded a number of times over the years: many honourable Members will recall the old 'golf balls' which were dismantled in the late 1980s and replaced with the existing pyramid-like structure. Indeed, a life extension programme is currently under way to maintain its capabilities to provide early warning and to track objects in space. These missions will continue to be the primary function of RAF Fylingdales.

"There are a number of misapprehensions about the US request which I have sought to dispel in various meetings in North Yorkshire. The proposal is for an upgrade of the existing radar, not some massive new construction. No change to the external appearance of the radar should be involved. The upgrade essentially comprises modification to the hardware and software of the computers within the base.

"There will be no change in the power output of the radar, which is many times below statutory safety limits. We therefore believe that no health risk to people or livestock would arise. We have already explained to the local planning authorities that we see nothing in the upgrade proposals which would require formal planning consultation, and we have promised to provide them with full supporting evidence in due course.

"The upgrade of the Fylingdales radar can and should be considered as a discrete proposition. It does not commit us in any way to any deeper involvement in missile defence—although it gives us options to do so, should we decide on this at a later date.

"It will not involve huge costs. The upgrade will be performed at US expense, and we do not expect any significant variation in the running costs of RAF Fylingdales which, as is appropriate for an RAF station, we already bear.

"Agreeing to this upgrade is not at odds with the wider approach of our NATO allies. The Prague Summit agreed,

'to examine options for addressing the increasing missile threat to Alliance territory, forces and population centres'.

The Danish Government have received a parallel request to upgrade the early warning radar in Greenland.

"Missile defence is a defensive system that threatens no one. We see no reason to believe fears that the development of missile defences will be strategically destabilising. Reactions from Russia and China 'have been measured. And missile defence would need to be used only if a ballistic missile has actually been fired. At that point, no matter how much we emphasise our other means of addressing the threat—non-proliferation, intelligence, law enforcement, conflict prevention, diplomacy and deterrence—those means will have failed and cannot be of further help. There would be no way of preventing a devastating impact without intercepting and destroying the missile. Once the missile is in the air, it is unthinkable that anyone could not want us to be in a position to shoot it down.

"These are the reasons for concluding that agreeing to the US request would not prejudice the UK's interests. But beyond this, the key consideration is that it would represent an invaluable extra insurance against the development of a still uncertain, but potentially catastrophic, threat to the citizens of this country. It does not yet represent an immediate threat to us as of today. But there is a distinct possibility that this threat could materialise in the relatively near future.

"It would therefore be irresponsible for the Government to leave the United Kingdom without a route map to acquire a defence against this potential threat. An upgraded Fylingdales radar would be a vital building block on which missile defence for this country and for our European neighbours could later be developed, if the need arises and if we so decide.

"We are confident that agreeing to the request will not significantly increase the threat to the UK. The security interests of the UK are already closely identified with those of the US and other NATO allies, and this will not change regardless of decisions on missile defence. Keeping a low profile and hoping for the best is not an option. We also believe that any increased threat to RAF Fylingdales itself is negligible. For the foreseeable future, states of concern are very unlikely to have the sophisticated capability or size of arsenal to consider targeting specific points or military installations. Long-range missiles in their hands will essentially be weapons of terror. And as with all military installations in the UK, the station is well defended against terrorist attack. But we must not forget that what drives the threat against the UK is not the deployment of missile defences, but those states of concern that develop or acquire weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery.

"The upgrade would indicate no commitment to further involvement with missile defence deployments. Separately, we intend to agree a new technical memorandum of understanding with the United States, which would give us full insight into the development of its missile defence programme and the opportunity for UK industry to reap the benefits of participation. But any UK acquisition of missile defence would be subject to a separate decision, at the relevant time. We must approach this in stages, considering each step in the light of how both the threat and the relevant technologies evolve.

"The Government have not yet replied to the US Administration on their request to upgrade the Fylingdales radar. I await with interest the views that honourable Members will wish to put forward, today and in next week's debate. But it is only right that the House should know the Government's preliminary conclusion that it is in the UK's interests to agree to the request. From the UK's national perspective, this specific decision is one that has real potential benefits at essentially no financial cost. But it will ensure that, if in the coming years we find that a potential devastating threat is becoming a reality, we have the opportunity to defend against it.

"Weapons of mass destruction present the gravest risk to the UK's security. A ballistic missile launched at the UK is the most catastrophic potential threat to our people in the future. The Government's first duty is to protect its citizens. I can tell the House that this is a duty that the Government will not shirk from undertaking".

My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for repeating the Statement on missile defence. We on these Benches have consistently made the case for missile defence and we support this government decision, because we believe that it is in the interests of British national security to have a system of missile defence. Can the Minister confirm that any missile defence system of our own would require forward early warning systems to protect the UK and would these be located in south-east Europe? What action is being taken over theatre missile defence?

As in any Statement, there are always a number of issues that require further clarification. Are Her Majesty's Government now confident that new technology will be successfully developed to make missile defence a practical reality, and what British government control will there be over the use of Fylingdales and the information gathered by the facilities there?

Is it possible that Menwith Hill will be included in the programme at some future date and, in return for British agreement to the United States' request, will the Government now actively secure the involvement of the British defence industries in the development of missile defence?

On 17th December, the Government produced an explanatory public discussion paper on missile defence, which included proposals for radars, sensors, interceptors and anti-missile missiles based on land, sea and air, and satellites. Now—only about eight parliamentary working days later—Her Majesty's Government announce their decision. The Minister said that there have been some 300 responses to this document so far, but could he tell the House how the consultation process will now continue as the Ministry of Defence has already come to the preliminary conclusion that the answer to the US request must be "Yes", and that we should agree to the upgrade as proposed?

It is difficult to see why so many objections have been raised against a missile defence system when a ballistic missile early warning system has been operating at Fylingdales, providing tactical warning and attack assessment of a missile attack against the UK, North America and western Europe, since 1963, especially when there is a proposal only for upgrading the existing radar, comprising modification to the hardware and software of the computers within the base. There will be no health risk to people and livestock and it should not commit us to deeper involvement in missile defence or involve us in huge costs.

We agree that a ballistic missile defence system would represent an extra insurance against the still uncertain but potentially catastrophic threat to the citizens of this country and the interests of the UK.

My Lords, we on these Benches are particularly grateful that the Government have agreed to repeat the Statement in this House and we thank the Minister for doing so.

However, the Statement is rather worrying. The line that I find most worrying is that which asserts that the answer to whether missile defence should be upgraded in this country "must be yes". I also ask why we are doing this in such a rush at the moment. The Statement appears to advance the Government's view that the case has been won for missile defence and it appears to negate the whole purpose of the consultation, which has not yet been concluded. I believe that although 300 submissions have been made, there is still a week in which to supply further submissions. It is unfortunate that we have not waited until the end of the process before coming to conclusions.

The whole point of missile defence is to institute a missile shield. Fylingdales as a radar system is obviously not part of that shield; it involves the early warning system that will indicate where a missile is coming from. If a missile were directed against the UK, under the present system there would be no way in which it could be intercepted. If Fylingdales picked up a missile flying over British airspace and an interception missile was fired from the United States, where would such an interception take place? Is there a system that would stop an interception taking place in the mid-range of the trajectory? If an intercontinental ballistic missile were involved, the interception could take place over British airspace or that of our European allies, and there would be resulting contamination from the missile's warhead. That is a particular concern.

If the Government are considering not simply providing radar facilities for the United States but also the placement of anti-ballistic missiles, where would they be placed? Would they be placed within Britain, and what cost would that involve? As we understand it, the case has not been made for the technical aspects of the missile system—whether they would work. Only a few tests have been undertaken and their results are extremely dubious.

How far have the costs of the system been analysed and how deeply have the cost implications been tested? As with the Star Wars system, this system appears to be open ended. The Minister will have some understanding of how much Fylingdales will cost but how much will it cost to site an anti-ballistic missile system, which I believe needs hot missiles, in this country? Have the Government considered how much that system would cost?

The Minister talked of the economic benefit to British industry of taking part in an anti-ballistic missile programme. However, is it really the case that it will be economically advantageous not only to British industry but to the taxpayer to take part in what could be a potential arms race with no end? As the Minister said, there is no real indication of from where the threat would come.

My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for their comments and questions. I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Vivian, for voicing his party support for what I have repeated today.

It is important that the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, remembers that we are living in a different world from the one that we lived in before 11th September 2001. It is apparent that some states—not only terrorist groups within states but states themselves—are absolutely determined to build ballistic missiles and to have weapons of mass destruction. That combination presents a huge danger that did not exist previously in the same way. It is a danger to the United Kingdom, to the United States and to other countries, too. It is essential that the House recognises that the situation has changed and that the present case for missile defence is undeniably stronger because of the dangers that such states present for us.

Having said that, let us remember what is being announced today. We are announcing that it is the Ministry of Defence's and the Government's preliminary view that the request from the United States, which has not itself decided on a deployed missile defence system, for the existing equipment at Fylingdales to be upgraded should be given permission by the British Government. That is all. We are not making a decision today about whether or not the United Kingdom requires a missile defence system. That is something that we and Parliament must consider, and that will be done in due course. We are simply announcing that we are tending towards the view that we should be prepared to allow the United States' request.

So far as concerns theatre defence, as the noble Lord, Lord Vivian, knows, NATO researches are coming to a conclusion. It remains our view in the United Kingdom that it would be premature to decide now on acquiring an active ballistic missile defence capability for our forces deployed overseas. That view is based on our assessment of the threat, on the rapidity with which relevant defence technologies are changing and on the need to evaluate further the potential role of missile defences as one element of a broad-ranging defence response. We believe that we shall come to a conclusion about theatre missile defence within about 12 months. We shall then decide whether we should start the formal process to acquire a national capability.

Whether or not we have a missile defence system for the UK in this country, it is right and appropriate that, using its technological skills, our industry should consider whether it can assist in developing the system that the Americans have decided they will create. That has nothing at all to do with whether or not we have a missile defence system ourselves; it is the way that the defence industry works.

As I said, the question for the Government to decide was whether we should say "yes" or "no" to requests from our closest ally to upgrade the existing Fylingdales. To have said "no" effectively would have eliminated any chance in the future of deciding to 'have a missile defence system for this country.

My Lords, the Minister spoke briefly about procurement and industrial aspects of that. When the Government respond formally to the United States on this issue, will it be made plain that it is important that British industry retains a capability and involvement in the whole range of interception technology? If Fylingdales is to be upgraded now, and if it is likely that further advances in these systems will take place in future, it is important that in this country we remain not only abreast of developments in that technology but also involved in it.

My Lords, I can give the noble Lord that reassurance. So far as concerns research and development and industry, the Memorandum of Understanding that will be signed by the United States and by us will assist British industry. We believe that the American Administration already know what an important part British defence industry can play in relation to their own missile defence.

My Lords, I was deeply involved in the debates about nuclear deterrence in the 1980s. I was totally opposed to any concept of missile defence because it undermined a fundamentally stable system of mutual deterrence. I accept the Government's point, as stated, for example, in their public discussion paper, that we have now moved into a very different world where the possibility of nuclear weapons being used against us is thinkable. That is, indeed, a very worrying thought. Deterrence will not work against terrorist rogue states in the same way as it did previously. It is doubtful whether any use of nuclear weapons against them in an effort to deter could be morally justifiable.

Therefore, does the Minister agree that, because we have moved into a very different world where the use of nuclear weapons is once again thinkable, there needs to be a new imperative to move to a system of international order where states' legitimate security needs can be taken care of without resort to nuclear weapons? Whether it is a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, a North Korea, an Iran or an Israel, to mention some states, there needs to be a new impetus. Of course, we have eaten the apple of nuclear knowledge and we cannot return to a pre-nuclear Eden. But we can move into a safer world than we have at present.

My Lords, I am grateful for the question and comments from the right reverend Prelate. With regard to what he said about deterrence, we have moved into a new world. But there is no point in our arguing—we do not do so—that to enter into a missile defence theory is somehow to remove the need for deterrence as well. It is because mutually assured destruction and all that went with it does not apply to a number of states of concern that the Americans, the United Kingdom and other countries—those in NATO—must consider how best to react to the undoubted threats that such countries now represent for us.

Of course, we face those threats not simply by setting up a missile defence system but by employing all the other methods that are still important, such as non-proliferation, diplomacy and others that have been mentioned many times. It is interesting to note that at one stage when the missile defence debate was taking place, there were fears that Russia, for example, would respond extremely badly to this new state of affairs. In fact, the Moscow agreement between the United States and Russia to dispose of a large number of nuclear weapons is, in one sense, a consequence of the debate about missile defence.

I agree with the right reverend Prelate when he says that there must be a new world order in terms of nuclear weapons. I mention, in passing, the new code of conduct, which the British Government played a significant part in putting forward.

My Lords, I ask the Minister to comment on the absence from the Statement and from the speeches of other noble Lords of any reference to the European role. We are moving into a world of European technology in terms of space, space detection and European-wide radar systems. How is it that this whole discussion is taking place entirely within a British-American context? Can that aspect be elaborated on?

My Lords, for some time this argument was seen in terms largely concerning the United States, and it still is. When repeating the Statement made in another place I said that NATO considered the issue at Prague. It resolved to look into the whole question of missile defence to see whether it would be appropriate for Europe and for the NATO alliance. Our view, and I am sure that of the United States, is to take a NATO and allied view as regards missile defence. I believe that my noble friend is wrong to say that there is no European dimension to this issue.

As regards theatre missile defence, we have been working with our NATO allies to see how practical it is, what form it should take and whether we should be part of it. We are talking to our NATO allies about territorial missile defence. They have already expressed a view.

My Lords, very recently the Minister referred to discussions with the Russians. I ask about discussions with the Chinese. Until now they have been fairly reluctant, to put it mildly, about missile defence. What sort of response has the United Kingdom Government received from the Chinese?

My Lords, the Chinese remain suspicious that United States missile defence plans are directed at negating their own nuclear deterrent. China began its strategic nuclear force modernisation programme a long time ago, in the mid-1980s, and long before the emergence of recent missile defence concepts. Therefore, it is hard to argue that it began its nuclear force modernisation programme because of the missile defence concept. Discussions have taken place. China knows that missile defence is not aimed at Russia or China but at those states of concern, as I have called them. The United States has made that clear to China on many occasions. The United States missile defence proposals are intended to deal with very limited threats, beginning with a handful of warheads in the hands of states of concern and the emergent missile capabilities. It is not intended to defend against responsible states with established strategic forces. China comes into that category, and what is more important, China knows it.

My Lords, I join others in thanking the Minister for repeating the Statement, and I very much welcome the decision in principle to respond positively to the request from the United States. That must be the only proper response to such a request from a very close ally. I hope also that it will be a first step towards acquiring a missile defence capability for the United Kingdom or towards involving ourselves in an American system. In that context, can the Minister tell us what discussions are in train with the United States Government about the United Kingdom having such a capability, and what broad time scale he envisages in which decisions will be brought forward and discussed more widely?

My Lords, I am grateful for the support which the noble Lord, Lord Powell of Bayswater, gives to the Government for the near-decision which we have announced today. The noble Lord has great experience in these fields. I am sure that, in turn, he will forgive me when I say that discussions with the United States are ongoing and have been for some time. On the question of the time-scale for any decision by the United Kingdom to seek missile defence for our own country, it is too early to say when such a decision would be made. As the noble Lord would expect, we are in close discussions with the United States about the issue, as we are with NATO.

rose to call attention to the quality of provision for maternity services in the United Kingdom; and to move for Papers.

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, on securing this important debate on the quality of our maternity services, particularly in the NHS. I thank the noble Baroness for inviting me to speak on an issue that is of professional interest to me as a retired paediatrician who practised care of newborn babies in a Liverpool hospital.

Maternity services are crucial to the well-being of mothers and their babies during pregnancy and particularly in labour and childbirth. Failure to maintain high quality maternity care may result in catastrophe with severe life-threatening complications leading to the death of mother and baby.

The latest report of confidential inquiries into maternal deaths from 1997 to 1999 was published in December 2001. The report, entitled Why Mothers Die, showed a small reduction in deaths from obstetric causes. Suicide in the postnatal period was the leading cause of death. But vulnerable and socially excluded women had high death rates. They included women living in poverty, those suffering from domestic violence, very young girls and women from ethnic minority groups.

I wish to focus on issues of staffing of services, patients' choice, prevention of complications to newborn babies and the care of ethnic minority women. High-quality maternity services depend on a variety of staff, in particular midwives, as mentioned by the noble Baroness.

The Department of Health is to be congratulated on its modernisation initiative of creating consultant midwives who undertake the supervision of midwife-led childbirth services. For the vast majority of women in childbirth, these services have been welcomed and are beneficial to mothers and their families.

But nine out of 10 maternity units in the NHS in England have unfilled posts for midwives, and the overall and long-term vacancy rates are the highest that the Royal College of Midwives has recorded, according to its latest survey conducted in July 2002. Long-term vacancies lasting for three months or more accounted for 59 per cent of vacancies in England.

London has critically high levels of midwife vacancies. On a personal note, my daughter resigned after three and a half years working as a community midwife in a central London maternity unit because of the excessively heavy workload resulting from the hospital's inability to recruit and retain community midwives.

The number of former midwives returning to practice still represents less than 1 per cent of midwives in post and less than 10 per cent of all joining the service. That represents a huge wastage in highly trained people the National Health Service needs today. So I look forward to the Minister's response about the recruitment and retention of midwives and plans to improve the situation.

Maternity services have improved the choice of care for women in pregnancy and labour. As most pregnancies are normal, midwife-supervised antenatal care in the community is now common. Women with experience of normal pregnancies and births can opt to deliver at home if facilities are optimal and community midwives are available.

The improvement in patients' choice of maternity care depends on a normal pregnancy being regularly monitored by midwives and, where necessary, by obstetricians. It is also dependent on rapid transfer of the woman to hospital in the event of complications during labour.

In addition, patients who make informed choices about childbirth preferences should also be prepared to share responsibility when complications arise. In our increasingly litigious society, highly motivated doctors and midwives need to have the assurance that they will not be taken to court for every unforeseen complication associated with childbirth.

Enormous monetary settlements in court, in particular for severe brain injury to the baby associated with complications during labour and delivery, may take place many years later. These judgments have increased substantially in the last decade in England. I question the ethics of such inordinately large cash settlements when the affected individual will continue to receive expensive and long-term care free through the NHS and local social services.

The desired outcome of every pregnancy and labour is the birth of a healthy baby, looked after by a healthy mother. Antenatal care is designed to monitor the health of both pregnant mother and her unborn baby. Midwives and obstetricians are trained to identify the at-risk pregnancy and recommend transfer of the woman to a hospital where both mother and newborn baby can be cared for by specialists.

A small proportion of all births will require intensive care for babies born prematurely. The outcome of these births depends on the transfer to an appropriate hospital before labour begins. The transfer of sick and tiny babies after delivery tends to be complicated, with problems requiring intensive care of the newborn, and their outcome is compromised.

In that regard, health professionals involved in maternity care are waiting for the publication of the report on neonatal intensive care. That inquiry was completed a year ago. The report should give recommendations on the standards for the care of very sick babies born too early to survive without intensive life-saving support in hospital. I hope the Minister can tell us when the report will be published.

I want to draw your Lordships' attention to the plight of ethnic minority women in maternity care. Their numbers are increasing because of the younger age of ethnic minority groups. According to the confidential inquiries into maternal deaths in 1997–99, published in December 2001, Why Mothers Die, to which I have referred, women from ethnic groups other than white and who speak little English are twice as likely to die than those in the white group.

Access to care is an issue for many of these women. One in five who died booked late for maternity care—that is after 24 weeks' gestation—or they had missed more than four routine antenatal visits.

In a large number of cases, professionals used family members to interpret for ethnic minority women. The report stated that there were several difficult cases where children were used inappropriately to interpret intimate personal or social details of the mother, and vital information was withheld.

I am appalled to read details of such poor quality practice in the NHS occurring today regarding interpreting for women who speak little English. For the past decade, recommendations have been sent out to all public services, including the NHS, about the need to arrange for a trained interpreter to assist people and patients who do not speak much English.

Many local reports throughout the NHS in GP practices and hospital clinics have demonstrated the importance of using interpreters who are trained to observe confidentiality and who are competent in the vocabulary of healthcare. In that connection, it is totally unsatisfactory for bilingual professional staff in hospitals to be called to interpret for patients outside their units. That practice disrupts the work of clinical units and leads to poor ratings for bilingual staff who are identified as not fully committed to the work they have been trained for and for which they are being paid.

Now that the Race Relations (Amendment) Act has made it compulsory for all NHS trusts to write race equality schemes, should we not ensure that the provision of trained interpreters is of the highest priority? The excuse of some managers that I have met is that interpreters are expensive and not required daily. Therefore, they are not considered essential. Will the Minister address that essential issue, which has caused the deaths of many women from ethnic minority groups using our maternity services?

Finally, The National Sentinel Caesarean Section Audit Report, published in October 2001, showed that in many regions in England one in three women have a caesarean birth. The highest rates are among ethnic minority women who speak little English. More research needs to take place to find out whether these surgical interventions are a consequence of poor antenatal clinic attendance with complications during labour. If that is the case, trained interpreters, bilingual midwives and doctors could run clinics in order to identify pregnancy problems early and avoid caesarean births.

Our maternity services are clearly of high quality, but we must address issues of staff shortages, the need for trained interpreters and guidelines on intensive neo-natal care and claims for medical negligence, to make those services even better and the best ever in the history of the NHS.

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, on initiating this debate, which is terribly important. I am saddened that it must take place at all. We know very well what is best practice in this country. We can make childbirth an experience that women remember with awe and happiness. We know exactly how to do that because our best practice is magnificent.

Unfortunately, as my noble friend Lord Chan said, it is the most vulnerable young women who suffer the worst as a result of existing inequalities. We lack a strategy to ensure that those vulnerable women obtain access to best practice across the country.

We talk a lot about giving women choice, but we know that choice means having adequate knowledge, and it is obvious that many women, especially the most vulnerable ones, do not have that information to hand. We also know that women—especially young, first-time mothers—need someone who will listen to their fears with sympathy and understanding to make them feel that they are an important part of the journey that they are undertaking, which was so eloquently described by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege. If people feel that their concerns are being taken seriously, they can then understand when they are not always met in the way in which they thought that they ought to be.

However, the ideal is a one-to-one service for all women. Where that is impossible, we should at least have community midwife teams, so that women know their names and know that one of them will be available to go with them to their scans, when they go to have the baby and afterwards, when they return home from hospital. We ought to be able to offer that to all women. However, we know that one-to-one services demand large numbers of trained midwives working long hours. Not everyone is willing to undertake such work. Staff concentration is expensive. I wish that our goal was to make that choice available to all women.

Everyone acknowledges that the shortage of midwives is a tragedy and must be addressed as a priority. Being a midwife can give people enormous job satisfaction, if we can get it right. We ought to set targets, and I hope that the Minister will tell us that he will. For example, we should aim to get the caesarian section rate at least down to the same level as that of the Netherlands and Scandinavia.

If a one-to-one or similar service was available throughout the country—it is not; in London, it is not even available from one part of a borough to another—we could inform women of the real implications of caesarean operation, future difficulties that they may experience as a result and why it is important to avoid them if one can. It would be ideal if we could develop dedicated birth centres, which the noble Baroness described, away from but near enough to an acute care centre so that, where necessary, women could be sent there. Normal birth would then be the norm for all our women.

I want there to be an on-going contact point for all women, from early pregnancy right through the experience of having a baby, delivery and early childhood and leading to contact with a health visitor, which takes them through until the child is five years old. Together with excellent initiatives such as HomeStart for the most vulnerable, that would begin to ensure a healthy, secure and supported start to life for all our children and a healthier and better adulthood, with genuine support for Britain's women —one not of isolation but of pleasure and happiness for them and their families.

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Cumberlege for introducing this important topic, and for her elegant and knowledgeable speech. I also declare an interest as the chair of the research governance committee of Addenbrooke's NHS Trust and Cambridge University Clinical School, and as a former non-executive director of Addenbrooke's NHS Trust.

Like so much of the NHS, maternity services are under severe stress—some might even call the stress in some areas intolerable. Despite the excellent work undertaken by consultants, midwives and technical and support staff, staff shortages mean that services are having to be cut back and wards are closing, decreasing the service available to women and their babies and causing mothers a great deal of anxiety and distress.

In the modern age, young mothers have high expectations—far higher than when most of us underwent our pregnancies. For the modern woman, scans, screening, blood tests and management of all kinds of abnormalities are available. Excellent though it is that those services are now available—many mothers and babies are healthy because of them—they all require a huge increase in specialised time, which is increasingly difficult to find. As my noble friend Lady Cumberlege said, the biggest issue is the shortage of midwives. The Rosie Maternity Hospital in Cambridge, part of the Addenbrooke's NHS Trust, is 20 per cent below its funded numbers—that is, it receives funding for 20 per cent more midwives than it can possibly find. That is a terrible waste of government funding.

No doubt, at the end of our debate the Minister will tell us about the large sums of money that have been invested in the NHS, but I hope that he will also acknowledge that there can be no adequate return of money supplied for services where the goods and services for which it is given are simply not available. Money for non-existent nurses or doctors and the beds that they make possible is a recipe for inflation and bad management and produces no improvement for patients.

According to the Government's research measurements for workforce planning, Addenbrooke's needs another 60 per cent more midwives than it has currently. At present, it has only 105 midwives; using the Government's workforce planning measure, it needs 169. That is a serious situation, but there is little hope that it will be solved, because the number of midwives entering training is also thinning to a small number.

The traditional route was 18 months of post-registration training. Those places are now not being taken up as people who have become nurses consider the stresses of the midwife's job. The shortage of other midwives, long hours and inadequate pay, especially for those who work in high cost areas such as London and Cambridge, are not an inducement, even though the 18-month route has the advantage of paying a full salary while in training.

In response to the low take-up of the 18-month post-registration route, the Government set up an alternative route of three-year direct entry training. That was a good idea, but unfortunately there is no funding for students on that course. That is a real difficulty, especially for the kind of person that the course was intended to attract: the more mature woman, who thinks carefully before undertaking three years of training that will be a heavy burden on her pocket and, perhaps, that of her family.

I am told by senior midwives that the profession aspires to the status of an all-graduate profession, but the lack of student support and the introduction of fees in higher education makes that a very distant prospect. What is more, there is developing a severe shortage of trainers of midwives. Midwives now have three alternative routes to promotion and to higher status. They can become teachers, as midwifery trainers; they can become managers; and, under a new government initiative, they can now become consultant midwives.

Of course, the consultant midwifery initiative was introduced with the best of intentions. It is a good idea to offer a promotional route to enable staff to stay in the clinical environment. Unfortunately—or perhaps one might even say fortunately—that has proved to be a very attractive route to midwives because most like to remain in the clinical area. However, because so many midwives are choosing the consultancy, route, the teaching and management routes are experiencing severe difficulties in recruitment. Therefore, the number of teachers available—even if it were possible to recruit candidates for training—is becoming a major problem.

As other noble Lords have said, there is the related problem of the shortage of neonatal cots and neonatal nurses. Noble Lords mentioned the long wait for a government response to the report on neonatal services. Because of the delay and shortage of neonatal cots and neonatal nurses, women in labour find themselves being piled into ambulances—quite often at a late stage in their labour—to be taken to a hospital where provision is available for their baby. In one recent case, a new mother was even told to get on a train so that she could catch up with her baby who had been taken to a neonatal unit. That must be a terrible experience for a woman a few hours after childbirth.

The position on consultants also gives little cause for optimism. Recent changes in training conditions, and the results of the European Working Time Directive, mean that there are now fewer available hours of consultant time. Already the European Working Time Directive means that all time "on-call" is counted as working hours, which will be reduced to 48 hours by 2009. Working hours are being reduced with the best of intentions, but that reduces the number of hours of consultants being available to help in the most difficult cases.

For reasons best known to themselves, the Government reduced the number of consultants in obstetrics' training in 1998–99. There appears to have been no account taken in the 1998–99 report—which resulted in the reduction of training places—of the effects of the European Working Time Directive and the changes in training conditions. Therefore, the number of consultants in obstetrics training was cut back and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in its 2000 report, Blueprint for the Future, predicted a major shortfall by 2003 as a result of that reduction in training places. That is already becoming apparent in key areas.

I ask Her Majesty's Government to act and act very quickly to remedy this situation. I hope that the Minister will give us some reassurances. Incidentally, by action, I do not mean throwing more money at the NHS; I mean a hard look at what is needed to solve some of the problems.

In spite of the problems, there is good news to report. With the leave of the House, I should like to pay tribute to the hospital that I know best—the Rosie Maternity Hospital—for the initiatives that it has managed to introduce and its achievements in recent years. In the past two years two new consultant posts—one, a professor in the university clinical school—have been established. That means that women who have difficulties with their pregnancy and birth are now being referred to the hospital from the whole region. At the same time, that has driven up the quality of provision for all women, including those with normal births.

A high dependency unit is being established for women with difficulties. The training is already in place; the unit will move into action soon. Plans are also moving ahead for a multi-disciplinary perinatal service, bringing together neonatology, neonatal-surgery, genetics and radiology. That means that a splendid service will be provided not only for women in difficulties but for all women in the region.

For the healthy—one might say—normal birth, a midwifery-led unit has been established which includes a birthing pool—a thought which I find terrifying, but which seems extremely popular with young mothers. A newly appointed consultant midwife is leading that service. There is closer collaboration with neighbouring hospitals enabling women to be cared for in the way which is most appropriate for them. As my noble friend said, every woman and every baby is individual and deserves individual, carefully tailored care.

With those initiatives the hospital and the trust are able to provide a service tailored to individual needs. All they ask is for less government direction and interference. They believe that the maternity services can deliver and should be left to do so.

My Lords, I, too, should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, for initiating this debate. There can be little doubt about her commitment to improving maternity services. Her report, Changing Childbirth, familiarly known as the Cumberlege report, may not have been universally well received, but it certainly raised the profile of maternity services and changed the thinking from looking at maternity services from the profession's point of view to putting mothers and babies centre stage.

Irrespective of any changes in the services introduced now or in the future, we should not go backwards. We run the risk of doing so with some of the recent reconfiguration of services. Frankly, our maternity services are in a mess. However, there is still time to stop the situation worsening if there is recognition from the centre that something needs to be done.

Much of today's debate is about the reconfiguration of maternity services that is going on ad hoc—for example, as a response to the pressure of reduction in junior doctors' hours, shortage of staff, lack of resources, cost saving initiatives, falling birth rate, smaller units, and so forth.

In an attempt to cope with the pressures, managers and clinicians embrace changes that do not serve the needs of mothers and their babies. Amalgamation of maternity units into bigger units, without capacity building in the number of staff and facilities, leads to further reduction in the quality of care delivered, and standards fall. Evidence gathered from midwives, the National Childbirth Trust and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists demonstrates that.

Every time there is a crisis of confidence in maternity services an inquiry is held. It happened with the Peel report and again in 1992 when the House of Commons Health Select Committee conducted an inquiry into maternity services—to which I was one of the advisers. That led to the then government report, Changing Childbirth.

It was announced yesterday that the Maternity Services Sub-committee of the House of Commons Health Select Committee is to start an inquiry focusing on variation in maternity services, data collection, staffing structures, caesarean section rates, and so forth. There are also other initiatives. We heard about the initiative from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, which has commissioned guidelines on caesarean section following a national audit. I hope that the guidelines will define standards of care that women undergoing caesarean sections should expect, including who makes, and has the responsibility for, the decision to carry out a caesarean section.

I understand that in future there will be guidelines for antenatal care and screening in pregnancy. Other initiatives have already been mentioned—the workforce group on children's and maternity services, a department initiative report on criteria to be met when reconfiguring maternity services. The Secretary-General of the Royal College of Midwives and I, with the former Secretary of State, Frank Dobson, asked for that initiative report to be carried out. Neither of these reports is in the public domain. I wonder what the recommendations were that cannot be made public.

Another initiative set up by the Department of Health is the National Service Framework for Children's Services, but it will include a section for maternity services. Will the Minister say whether this section defines the framework for maternity services?

It all seems to be rather haphazard planning. What we need is a co-ordinated strategy, initiated by the Department of Health, together with maternity services, in the same league as our near-neighbours in Europe, or better.

We have a serious shortage of staff. All of the previous speakers have referred to this. We have a huge shortfall in the number of midwives, a profession that is key to delivering high-quality care to all mothers and their babies during both pregnancy and the post-partum period. We have a shortage of obstetricians, particularly of those who are able and willing to deliver hands-on care at all times of the day whenever women need their help.

The noble Baroness, Lady Perry of Southwark, eloquently described the problems and how they occurred, and I will not dwell on them again, but I am grateful to her for highlighting them. Apart from obstetrics being a more demanding specialty, obstetricians and gynaecologists may see the choice of taking one of the ever-expanding, sometimes esoteric, gynaecological sub-specialties as a better option. If so, there may be a need to look at the training and remuneration for obstetrics as distinct from gynaecology. The training of doctors and all health professionals should reflect the health needs of society. I hope that a new postgraduate medical education and training board, when established, will have the responsibility and authority to make sure that all training programmes reflect this.

I am pleased to see the current president and vice-president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Professor Dunlop and Miss Mellows, attending this debate. I am sure that they and the college will look at ways to improve recruitment to obstetrics, for it is important that women who need care from obstetricians receive it from fully trained and competent doctors. Managers, also, should recognise the need to recruit more obstetricians.

My noble friend Lord Chan has already alluded to the problems with paediatrics and ethnic minorities. I simply concur.

Staffing is not the only issue. We have a lack of appropriate facilities. This leads to an early discharge of mothers and babies from maternity units. It could affect rates of breast feeding and confidence building, particularly in first-time mothers. We have examples of women in labour, sometimes with problems identified in the antenatal period, being asked to stay at home until a bed is found somewhere, risking both themselves and their babies.

In terms of outputs we do not feature in the top league. While our perinatal mortality is not the worst in the developed world, it is well down the league table. We have not seen a reduction in the unexplained antenatal still birth rate for more than a decade. We have the second-highest rate of low-birth weight babies in the developed world, second only to the United States of America.

We have a high a premature birth rate. Now I know that social deprivation is an important factor for poor outcomes for mother and baby. Therefore, it is even more important that our services can deliver care to these at-risk mothers. Our data collection system is inadequate and we are not able to compare outcomes related to different models of care in the whole population.

We have a rising caesarean section rate. The noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, referred to this. It will keep on rising until we have a service that provides one-to-one support to all women in labour by midwives and care by trained and competent obstetricians for those women who are at risk of requiring caesarean section. Both midwife and obstetric support is essential if we are to reduce caesarean section rates.

We also have one of the highest rates of litigation: 50 per cent of all medical litigation is related to pregnancy and child birth. It is estimated that the cost of settlements of currently pending cases may well be in the region of £2 billion to the NHS. I understand that the department has on-going initiatives through risk management and clinical governance to reduce the level of litigation in obstetrics.

I return to my theme of haphazard, uncoordinated stabs at tackling the problems. Does the Minister not agree that it would be better now to produce a Department of Health- sponsored maternity services framework, with clear targets for implementation and monitoring, which the future commission for health auditing inspectorate could monitor? Both Scotland and Northern Ireland have done so and I would commend to the Minister the Scottish framework and implementation documents.

I agree that the current configuration of maternity services is not sustainable for all the reasons mentioned earlier. We need to develop services which recognise this, but which also recognise that the potential of all professionals involved in caring for mother and baby needs to be harnessed in a co-ordinated way, working across boundaries, while at the same time they retain their own professionalism.

This has implications for common, continuing education programmes. For this to happen, there needs to be committed and strong leadership from the centre and all health professions, with the focus on the needs of women and their babies.

It is not too late. Here is an opportunity for the Minister to give a lead and bring our maternity services into the 21st century, for a model service that we can all be proud of. He could start by establishing a framework for maternity services.

Finally, I did not declare an interest at the beginning. My credentials are all too clear. I feel passionately about the care of women in pregnancy and labour. For most of my life I have been an obstetrician.

My Lords, it is an honour to follow my noble friend Lord Patel, and I wish to add my name to those who want to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, for raising this debate and for the customary skill with which she introduced it and faced us with the facts and issues.

If I have an interest to declare in this debate, it is that last year was the 50th year since I completed my midwifery training. I hasten to assure the House that I am no longer registered to practise as a midwife, but I have a deep interest in midwifery and the welfare of women in childbirth. I view my midwifery experience now with nostalgia and through rose-coloured spectacles. Most of my deliveries, some hundreds of them, were home deliveries in a rural area of Herefordshire and it was idyllic—both the country and the experience.

Perhaps I may describe one of my last deliveries. I trudged across a ploughed field with my little black bag to get to an isolated farmhouse where the mother was in labour. Once arrived there, I found there was no running water. Unfortunately, my midwifery training had not taught me how to extract water from a pump. Unfortunately for the father, I had to rouse him from a deep sleep by the fire because he was overcome with the thought of impending fatherhood. He managed to draw water out of the pump successfully.

Later on, the feather bed on which the mother was lying burst. After that, she had a post-partum haemorrhage. We had to call out the Flying Squad, which we then used, to deal with that. However, in some ways, the case finished with every satisfaction for the family and certainly for me, the midwife.

In my state of ignorance about present-day midwifery, I have been so grateful to receive briefing papers that have brought me slightly more up to date than I would otherwise have been in this debate—papers from the National Childbirth Trust; the Royal College of Midwives; the Royal College of Nursing; the Schools of Nursing and Midwifery at the Universities of Manchester and Sheffield; from individuals and various reports of meetings of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Maternity. These have given us a wealth of information about the present situation in midwifery.

Unfortunately, from these papers I get a very strong view that all is not well in the state of our midwifery services. Certainly the experience of some mothers is not now positive, and there is obviously great dissatisfaction among midwives. I therefore wish to talk briefly about the reconfiguration of the service and the kind of structure that there should be in the future; the increasing medicalisation of care, of which we have heard today; the increasing rate of caesarean section; the shortage of midwives; and patient satisfaction, if I get that far.

The reconfiguration of the service is extremely important. What shape should the service take in our present state of health service provision? As I read the papers, there seems to be a stark difference of view between those who favour home births and smaller, midwife-led community units, where care is much more easily accessible to the consumer and the midwife can give much more personal supervision throughout the period of labour. The Secretary of State has described this continued care of the mother by one midwife as the gold standard for our midwifery services.

Set against this position is the view that larger units can effect economies of scale. That is important in the present state of our health service. More importantly, a unit within an acute hospital has obstetricians and paediatricians much more readily available. It is important that this kind of medical help is readily available. I recall one obstetrician with whom I worked frequently stating, "No birth is normal except with hindsight". There may be something in that statement.

We have heard that there is an increasing medicalisation of childbirth, certainly since 50 years ago when I was practising. The increased rate of caesarean section has already been mentioned and is a cause for concern. The "Postnote" that I have received dated October 2002 states that in the 1950s 3 per cent of births in England were by caesarean section; by the early 1990s this had risen to 10 per cent; and to 21 per cent in 2001. But the national figures mask tremendous local variations of between 10 and 30 per cent.

The differential cost to the National Health Service of caesarean section versus vaginal delivery is considerable. The Audit Commission has calculated that every 1 per cent rise in the caesarean section rate costs the National Health Service an extra £5 million a year.

The parliamentary "Postnote" is valuable in regard to the caesarean section rate. It reviews the medical factors that have contributed to the increase, and the non-medical factors such as culture, organisation and maternal choice, which I believe is often influenced by the line taken by the media.

Clearly these are considerations that call for us to think deeply about reconfiguration of the service. I appreciate the paper from the National Childbirth Trust, which looks at the questions that need to be answered before we tackle reconfiguration of the service and contains a suggested reconfiguration.

As regards the increased rate of caesarean section, I look forward to receiving the promised guidelines from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence. Although it is an extremely difficult issue on which to give guidelines, they will be a valuable help to us.

I am extremely concerned, as are many other noble Lords, about the shortage of midwives and the lack of job satisfaction. This situation has been researched by Mavis Kirkham, Professor of Midwifery at the University of Sheffield. The work was sponsored by the Royal College of Midwives and the Department of Trade and Industry Partnership Fund. Professor Kirkham followed up 2,325 midwives who notified their intention to practice in 1999 but did not do so the following year in 2000. That is quite a significant loss of midwives in one year.

Making the decision to leave midwifery was often a protracted and painful business. The professor said that the research painted a depressing picture of a group of committed professional women struggling over a protracted period of time within an environment of increasing confrontation and stress. The largest group of those who left—30 per cent—were dissatisfied with midwifery. There were other causes, but the midwives had a predominant feeling that they could not practise as they were taught to practise under the conditions now existing in the health service.

Midwives are now educated in a way that gives them specialised knowledge and problem-solving skills which enable them to base their practice on evidence derived from research. Their expectation is that they will be able to practise autonomously, but what they meet in practice is very different and bears little resemblance to what is implied in the midwives' code of practice. There are matters which militate against their practising as they would wish. They are made to rotate through all the shifts and around all the areas of clinical practice and feel that they have insufficient control over their working lives. These frequent dislocations of the place in which they practice make it difficult to maintain confidence and relationships with both clients and colleagues. It is essential that we do something about the recruitment and retention of midwives.

As a final point I was going to talk about mothers—the consumers—and patient satisfaction. I shall not do so because my time is up. I wanted to recount to your Lordships the experiences that some of the younger members of my family have had in childbirth. It is not a pretty story.

My Lords, I, too, am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, for securing the debate today. Perhaps I may also say how useful I have found the meetings of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Maternity, which the noble Baroness and Julia Drown, MP, founded some two years ago.

Indeed, at the launch of the all-party parliamentary group I was very much struck by the contribution from Cathy Warwick, a clinician at King's College Hospital. The midwifery unit she described that cares for mothers in south London—mothers sometimes living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, often from ethnic minorities and often on low incomes—appeared remarkable. Its practice is an example of the case-load midwifery that the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and several other noble Lords have referred to.

According to the evaluation report published in March last year, the Albany midwifery practice was enabling such mothers to achieve breast-feeding rates of 93 per cent at birth, as against a norm for the area of 75 per cent. Breast-feeding remained high at 28 days, at 70 per cent of mothers. Health visitors reported continuing high breast-feeding rates.

Compared with the other midwifery group practices, the Albany practice had a lower induction rate, a higher vaginal delivery rate, a lower elective caesarean section rate, a higher intact perineum rate, a lower episiotomy rate, a greater use of the birthing pool and a lower use of pethidine and epidurals.

There were also benefits from the midwife's point of view. I invite your Lordships to consider what a pleasure it might be for a midwife to follow one mother from registration to birth and from birth to four weeks.

I invite your Lordships to consider how attractive it might be for a midwife to work in the community in a centre which has a safe play area for children, a swimming-pool, a well-equipped gymnasium, right next to the shopping centre in Peckham.

Please consider how satisfying it might be for a midwife to be the mistress of her employment. The Albany practice operates on a contractual basis unique in the UK. The noble Baroness, Lady McFarlane, eloquently set out the concerns that midwives feel about not being in control of their working environment and the stress that that places them under. In the Albany practice, they, the midwives, decide on salary and pay, on sickness and holiday leave. They have a practice manager to relieve them of the administrative burden of such responsibility. This control of their working conditions may be helpful in reducing the stress that is inseparable from their work.

The Albany midwives are dedicated to offering continuity of care to their patients. A full-time midwife is on 24-hour call to 36 mothers for nine months of each year.

Thirty-six weeks prior to birth, the primary midwife and secondary midwife will talk the mother and the mother's birth partner through all the options for her care. The primary midwife, the mother's key worker, will explain that she can be reached at any time, day or night, by calling her on her pager.

In practice, mothers almost invariably call during the night only in an emergency, because of the special personal relationship that they develop with their primary midwife and the respect and consideration that that engenders.

The germ of this practice lay in the ambition of three pairs of independent midwives in the early 1990s—one of whom is present in the Public Gallery. They wanted to see the well-evidenced positive outcomes for their paying clients provided for free, on the NHS, to the women who most needed continuity of care. Fostered by a favourable political climate which the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, did so much to engender, their goal has been achieved.

I should say that the past success of the model of caseload midwifery that I have described has been qualified. A great deal of support is necessary for midwives prepared to offer a 24-hour personal service to their clients. Such work would not suit the circumstances of some midwives.

But the outcomes for mothers, for mothers who are particularly vulnerable, are encouraging. The introduction of three months' annual leave, the careful setting of caseload and the increase in professional autonomy, supported by a practice manager, may be attractive to many midwives. The satisfaction of seeing one's patient through the pregnancy and beyond might be an incitement for midwives to continue to work in the profession, and to return to the profession, and for young people to train as midwives.

When I visited the Albany practice yesterday afternoon, I heard how satisfied the midwives felt in their work. I heard of the pleasure they had in not only seeing the infant through the first four weeks, but in also having mothers call by, so that they, the midwives, could see how well the mother's six year-old was doing, a child delivered in the clinic. So the midwives are very much part of their community and can see the children for whom they have cared in the past growing up.

I should like to ask the Minister whether he has studied the Albany model and what lessons he considers can be learnt from it. Is he undertaking research into why this particular model has given rise to high home birth rates and breast-feeding rates in an area of such high deprivation? Will the relationship between the continuity of care given, the provision of ante-natal education and the positive birth outcomes in this model be explored in further research?

I apologise for not giving the Minister notice of these detailed questions. I hope that he may be good enough to write to me if he has no response ready.

Yesterday, I also met with a manager of a children's home with more than 30 years' experience. The home had recently received a troubled 15 year-old girl who was pregnant. The manager was of the view that the model of continuity of care offered by the Albany practice would be exactly that which would be of most benefit to her new resident.

I am advised that it is easy to overlook the vulnerability of mothers during their pregnancy. Because childbirth is common, it can be thought to be unproblematic.

I believe that we still have the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in western Europe. A report by the National Children's Bureau in the 1990s found that nearly half of girls leaving care were mothers within 18 to 24 months. So, there are many groups of mothers who particularly need continuity of care during their maternity.

YoungMinds, a charity dedicated to promoting the emotional well-being of children, advises me of the importance of relationships with midwives characterised by continuity, reliability and familiarity. It is vital that mothers should feel ready and welcoming of their baby, vital for the sound and secure attachment to the baby. It is this attachment which so much research underlines as being the sure foundation for an individual life. My noble friend Lord Northbourne may have more to say on this point.

I have no doubt that, if we can develop first-rate services to mothers during their maternity, answering their physical and emotional needs, we shall go some way to ensuring that fewer children go to prison, that fewer children are taken into care and that the cycle of failure from generation to generation is somewhat ameliorated. Hand in hand with improvements in housing, education, other health services, social services and a sound economy, we could see many more children fulfilling more of their potential.

My Lords, I had already apologised to the noble Baroness for the fact that I might be late this evening. I was, and I apologise to the House.

I want briefly to refer to one specific aspect which may in future become an important part of the role of the maternity services. Over the past 100 years or so, the maternity services have evolved mainly with a concern for the physical welfare of the mother and child. More recently, the emotional welfare of the mother has been of increasing concern.

However, modern research based on powerful new scanners indicates that the period in the womb and the first 33 months of a child's life are critical in the development of that child's brain.

A significant number of children today are born into, and grow up in, severely disadvantaged family circumstances—often multiple disadvantages—and sometimes with parents who have little or no experience of caring for children. In that context, maternity services and staff can be the gatekeepers who identify imminent problems. Some believe that the maternity services can play that very important role. They hold the patient's confidence. Their role should be primarily diagnostic, although some believe that they should also be trained to deliver advice and support services to parents without a clue about how to bring up their child. They could put the advice in simple, common language.

In my view, there is little argument about whether there is a role for the maternity services in identifying problems. The question is whether their role should be purely diagnostic; whether it should be signposting; or whether staff should be trained to deliver support services relating to the mother's emotional condition and the child's cognitive and emotional development needs.

The maternity services should be trained in three aspects: to recognise potential problems; to gain parents' confidence—which they do anyway; and successfully to transfer that confidence to other services. For that, they must be trained, and the other services must be available. I shall explain what I mean by "transfer that confidence". Consider a health visitor who, at the end of the six-week visiting period, tells a mother, "I am sorry, Molly, I am not coming anymore, but I will refer you to Social Services". Contrast that approach with the health visitor who says, "Molly, I am terribly sorry; I shan't be able to help you anymore because I am not allowed to. Butt my friend Susan is really nice and I think you'll like her. Would you like me to give her your name so that she could call and you could see if you like her?". The difference is between acceptance and rejection in the case of many vulnerable people.

I regret to have to say that Social Services are not the people to do this job. Unfortunately, and through no fault of their own, Social Services have become the enemy to many deprived and disadvantaged families. They are thought of as the people who take your child away and are perceived by many as policemen rather than support services.

There is a role for the extended family, but often relatives need support, co-ordination, help and resources. There is a potential role for neighbours, the community and the voluntary sector. These services, wherever they come from, will probably need to be coordinated. possibly for training or accreditation. Who should be in charge of accreditation, training and coordination—the Department of Health, the Department of Education or local authorities? I do not know. But I know that the criterion ought to be: which will be the most effective? I ask the Minister to take into account what I have said.

My Lords, like others, I welcome this debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, does us all a service by reminding us regularly of the enormous importance of the birth process. I apologise for the absence of my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, who has an unbreakable arrangement abroad. It is a pity because I am sure that he knows much more about these matters than I.

Birth is a process we have all undergone. It is natural and normal and in most cases it has a healthy outcome. The death of mother or child is now a rare result, although no less dreadful when it occurs. Eighty per cent of women have babies, and 90 per cent of those babies are healthy. Of the others, very few require more than a little help with breathing in the first few hours, treatment for jaundice or suchlike. A tiny minority need the highest level of care—on the whole, then, a success story for Mother Nature and the advances in healthcare working together. However, we should heed the words of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, on our place in the league table.

Yet, in preparing for this debate, I was struck by the chaos that seems to hang over the service and policy discussions about it. I was also struck by a lack of relevant statistics. What is the best sort of service for mother and baby? Are midwife-led, low-tech procedures in special birth units more appropriate than obstetrician-led procedures in hospitals, with all the high-tech support available? What are the cost benefits of each? Why is the rate of caesarean sections rising so inexorably? Why do rates of so-called "normal" births vary so much between places? Do those two variations not suggest a lack of consensus among practitioners on what constitutes good practice? What is the right level of home births? Why is the percentage rate in single figures in this country while it is around 30 per cent in Holland, to take but one example? Where should we provide care for the most fragile or sick babies? How can we secure the very best service from paediatricians? Why are the statistics so incomplete?

Inevitably, the question arises of why the Government have not given a steer? There have been no responses yet to the National Childbirth Trust Report and no action taken on their own report on neo-natal services. When will the framework document on children's services be published, and what aspects of maternity and neo-natal services will be covered? It appears that NHS trusts require guidance from the Government to assist them with the difficulties in prioritising and judging between the main options for maternity treatment. There can be no doubt about what women want, once someone gives them a chance to talk. They value good advice given in a way that they can understand. They want to be in contact with the same professionals, preferably midwives, during pregnancy, through the confinement and on into aftercare. They prefer the homely surroundings of a local birth unit or community hospital to a more impersonal district hospital.

I hope that the Minister will take on board suggestions from the noble Lord, Lord Chan, and others that more effort needs to be made to take the message of how to access maternity care to the most underprivileged and vulnerable members of our society. It was a very important point which has been echoed by other speakers.

It is very important what mothers think and feel. An experience of childbirth which leaves a mother with postnatal depression can, untreated, result in a four year-old with behavioural problems who turns into a problem teenager. Mothers who are taught to breastfeed will have healthier babies. It is amazing what good midwives can achieve. One practice in a deprived area of south London has achieved a 40 per cent rate of home births with no adverse consequences. With the percentage of home births so low nationwide, it is easy to see what a good and cost-effective achievement that is.

The variation in "treatment"—I put it in inverted commas on purpose—seems extreme judged by the standards of other specialties. Indeed, the very word "treatment" seems wrong. In the majority of cases the mothers do not need "treatment". They are not ill. They just need professional help and support.

I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, on the subject of caesarean section and the need to promote normal birth. As she said, last year Shrewsbury had the lowest rate in England of caesarean section, at 10.4 per cent, and the highest rate of normal birth, at 67.7 per cent. Yet, in Worcester, women have no choice but to go into the infirmary, where the rate of caesarean section is 25 per cent. The mothers seem to have little choice. As others have pointed out, the cost of this high rate of caesarean section is great: each costs £1,000 more than an ordinary delivery. Saving 30 unnecessary caesarean sections buys one midwife. So the opportunity costs are clear. The costs to the child also can be considerable, especially when the procedure is carried out before term.

The reasons for the apparently inexorable increase in caesarean section are not clear. One idea often put about by the press is that it results from the personal choice of smart or busy mums. It could be the result of concentrating births in district hospitals. Again, better statistics would help. Whatever it is, caesarean section must be the only major surgical intervention which seems to be available if asked for, even when it is not necessary.

One thing seems clear—namely, that mothers who have had a caesarean section are almost invariably advised to have another, although I know from experience in my own family that that is not necessarily required. So the most important thing is to try to ensure that the first caesarean never takes place unless strictly required for the health of mother or child.

The problem of a shortage of midwives has been mentioned by many, but particularly by the noble Baroness, Lady McFarlane. There seems to be a vicious circle at work here. For example, a hospital loses its baby acute care beds and closes the maternity beds as a safety measure, or midwives are transferred to an even larger general hospital where they lose their status, cannot keep in touch with their patients, feel they are not giving the service they want to give, and leave. Something similar can happen when local birth units are closed, as has been happening in recent times, despite the evidence that they can deal with the majority of normal births at least as satisfactorily as any hospital. Any policy which the Government propose will have to recognise the very special role that midwives play in the care of mothers and babies. They will also have to attract back into the NHS those who have left.

This evening a wide measure of agreement has emerged as to what would make a good maternity service. First, proper prenatal care is essential to assess correctly which mothers, or their babies, are likely to need the medical attention that only a hospital can provide—although not even hospitals and senior medical professionals are entirely foolproof. I know of a horrible case, reported to me by one of my colleagues, in which a young woman being examined two months after an ectopic pregnancy was told that a small shadow on the x-ray was nothing to worry about. Two and a half months later, she nearly died after a severe loss of blood from a second ectopic pregnancy. The Ectopic Pregnancy Trust says that such cases of misdiagnosis are common even where there is a history of ectopic pregnancy.

Returning to more cheerful subjects, however, the healthy woman should have a choice of where to give birth: at home, in a reasonably local birth unit or in hospital. In the first two at least, she will be able to have continuous care from the professionals who have looked after her during her pregnancy. If a large number of women chose the first two options and good practice secured the same levels of success that have been mentioned in particular instances, a considerable saving in beds would accrue to district hospitals. I am sure that those beds could be used for things other than housing perfectly healthy women. Post-natal care could be given in the same unit and then in the home.

A real effort should be made to establish breast-feeding, which is cheaper for the mother and better for the baby. Differential rates of breast-feeding are really surprising, with the lowest rate for the least number of weeks among women from more deprived backgrounds—just where the additional protection against illness and obesity given by breast-feeding would be most valuable.

A back-up service would be required should complications arise during the birth, just as for any other medical emergency. Very sick or fragile babies should be treated in specialty centres, if that is the only or best way in which to get the constant presence of a paediatrician and the quality of nursing care that such children need.

I look forward to hearing the Minister's response to the many questions that have been raised, and his idea of what maternity services should be like.

My Lords, before the noble Baroness finishes, will she clarify her remark that mistakes are common? Professional mistakes are not at all common in midwifery, but there is a perception—often in the courts, quite unjustifiably—that they are because of monitoring that gives imprecise information. It is unwise to say that mistakes are common. As a practising doctor in this field, I believe that it is untrue.

My Lords, I bow to the noble Lord's superior knowledge. I was referring to a type of mistake made in a particular case and quoting a letter sent to me by a pressure group. I am sorry if I gave a mistaken impression: I am certainly not suggesting that mistakes are common in obstetric care in general or trying to justify the large claims made by lawyers on behalf of their clients.

My Lords, I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lady Cumberlege for initiating this important debate and for drawing in so many expert speakers. It has been an excellent debate.

We know that the topic is important, as it touches the lives of almost 600,000 women who give birth each year, and the lives of their families. As other noble Lords have said, it is also apt that the debate should be led by my noble friend, who has been closely associated with the development of maternity services over the past decade. The report entitled Changing Childbirth is much better known as the Cumberlege report. That report was revolutionary in proposing women-centred care.

Simple principles underpinned that, including choice for women, continuity of care and control of women over their care. When the Audit Commission examined maternity services in 1997, its report, entitled First Class Delivery, found that the policies of the Cumberlege report were not being achieved. It said,

"there is a wide variation in the sort of service offered that cannot be attributed to women's own choices".

A key issue is what the Government have achieved since 1997. It is far from clear that we can confidently say that in 2003 maternity services live out those principles of choice, continuity in care and control. The Minister has said, on more than one occasion in your Lordships' House, that the principles of Changing Childbirth—the Cumberlege report—are now embedded in maternity services. That is a complacent view and not one that is shared by professionals or users. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Patel, said earlier that maternity services are in a mess.

I start with home births. They are not desired by all women, but a substantial number want home delivery—we do not know how many. The statistics for home births are at around 2 per cent, but that does not tell anything like the full story. The Association for Improvements in Maternity Services has repotted many instances of women being pushed into hospital delivery, usually at a very late stage in pregnancy, because they are told that no midwife will be available to support a home delivery. Those women have been denied real choice and have lost control of their birth arrangements. Some parts of the country achieve home birth rates of 12 per cent, or occasionally even more. One can deduce from that that unmet demand is at least 10 per cent. It is clear that in home births, choice and control for women is simply not happening.

We have heard from many people this evening that pregnancy and childbirth are not illnesses: they are part of normal human life. Yet maternity services have developed around a different concept. I mean no disrespect to the medical profession, and in particular to obstetricians, when I say that the medicalisation of pregnancy and childbirth is part of today's problems.

Of course we are proud of the low level of our maternal, neonatal and perinatal mortality rates, which are so much lower than when many of your Lordships were children. However, as an article in the British Medical Journal last April pointed out, these improvements are attributable to many causes. The article said:

"it cannot be assumed that access to obstetric care … has invariably had beneficial effects".

We have to be concerned about increased medicalisation and consequent decreases in normal births, by which I mean straightforward vaginal births without intervention.

Several noble Lords have already referred to caesarean rates, which are frighteningly high and still rising. They are well above the WHO's bench-mark level. The variations around the country that 'we have also heard about are even more worrying. Every unnecessary caesarean carries with it a raft of potential problems for both mother and child. My noble friend Lady Cumberlege and the noble Baroness, Lady McFarlane, both referred to the Audit Commission's estimate back in 1997 that for every 1 per cent of unnecessary caesareans, there is a cost to the NHS of around £5 million. Rolling that forward to today's prices, it is probably nearer £7 million. I have heard no recognition from the Government that this is a serious problem for which practical and urgent solutions are necessary.

Caesarean sections are not the only issue. There are other aspects of increased medicalisation, including instrumental deliveries and rates of anaesthesia and of episiotomies. As my noble friend Lady Cumberlege pointed out, some interventions tend to lead to more interventions, which makes the problem worse. It is clear that the rate of normal births is declining. That is not what women want or deserve.

What problems lie behind these features of modern maternity services? The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists will say that there are not enough senior obstetricians available and that this will get worse as the Working Time Directive takes hold. We have heard from my noble friend Lady Perry of the related problems for obstetricians.

That may well be part of the problem, but a much more serious problem is that from the perspective of the Royal College of Midwives. Many noble Lords have referred to the severe shortage of midwives. The noble Lord, Lord Chan, referred to the 2002 survey by the Royal College of Midwives, which shows the highest vacancy rate against funded establishment that the college has recorded since it started its surveys. It also shows great disparities around the country. We know that some areas of London operate at near crisis level. Perhaps more importantly, in the survey, 70 per cent reported that their funded establishments were too low to meet the demands of today's maternity services.

The midwifery shortages identified by so many noble Lords are very important because they reduce the prospects for continuity of care, which many noble Lords have explained is a crucial part of achieving normal births and high levels of patient satisfaction. We need more midwives if we are to improve the prospect of real choices being available to women—choices such as home births, but also births in other settings.

The shortages in midwifery are imposing massive burdens on remaining midwifery staff. That leads to the inevitable loss of staff morale and causes further midwives to choose to leave the profession. We cannot afford that. We will need more midwives if there are to be more community-based maternity services and more midwife-led maternity units. It is through those routes, backed up by appropriate acute services and service delivery protocols, that maternity services will be able to start to deliver the policy aims of women-centred services.

The Minister will be aware that community-based and midwife-led maternity services are "win-win" services. Studies have shown their popularity with women. More than that, studies show that they cost less and have outcomes at least no worse than acute-based services. Will he say what proportion of maternity services are currently midwife-led in England and, similarly, what proportion are community-based? Does he agree that those aspects of maternity care should be given priority in funding service delivery? Is he satisfied that primary care trusts give adequate priority to them in drawing up their commissioning plans? Is he satisfied that PCTs adequately consult users of maternity services when they draw up their plans? I hope that he will not be complacent on the matter, and will be able to set out what proactive steps the Government will take.

Many of the problems keep coming back to the shortage of midwives. The Minister will say that the Government have the target of a further 2,000 midwives by 2005. Early last year, a Health Minister in another place said that there would be an extra 500 in place by the end of 2002. Will the noble Lord say how many midwives there are currently and how many there were in 1997 —not just in terms of head count, but in terms of whole-time equivalents? What matters is not the number of midwives, but the amount of time cumulatively that they can contribute to maternity services. In particular, the problem with targeting returners is that they often come back into part-time work, so simply adding heads will not solve the problems. The figure that I have for whole-time equivalents is 18,050 at the end of 1997, and again in 2001. Will the Minister confirm those figures? Will he say whether there is any increase at all in that in 2002?

In May 2001, the Secretary of State for Health promised a national service framework for children and maternity services including, to use his phrase, "a gold standard" of a dedicated midwife 100 per cent of the time in labour, and choices for all women including home birth. That framework was promised by the end of 2002, but has not yet seen the light of day. As we have heard, Scotland and Northern Ireland are already ahead of us. Will the Minister say when the framework will appear? Will he confirm that it will include the two matters that I have just mentioned, which were 100 per cent dedicated midwife cover, and more choice including home birth? Will that framework promote normality in childbirth in the hope of offsetting the trends that have happened in our maternity services recently? I look forward to the Minister's reply.

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, on securing the debate. It is some time since we had one on maternity services, and the debate has been helpful and has raised a number of very important matters on which we need to make progress. As other noble Lords have mentioned, she played the key role in Changing Childbirth. She knows that, when the report was published, I gave it warm and wholehearted support. The Government, of course, remain committed to the principle of establishing a high-quality woman-centred maternity service.

I was looking for some optimistic signs in the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, but she was rather bleak about some of the outcomes that she thought had been achieved since her report was published. One can identify considerable signs of progress, although they are not as consistent throughout the NHS as she and I would have wished. However, that is progress none the less. I thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, was very cheery in that respect.

There are examples of fundamental changes. Information and communication to women have improved considerably over the past decade; there is more discussion with women about aspects of their pregnancy care; there is more emphasis on women seeing a smaller number of midwives; and many women carry their own notes. I am not in the least complacent; we need to confront some difficult issues. However, we should not underestimate some of the progress that has been achieved.

On strategic leadership—the fundamental issue of what strategy we have and how we are going to take it forward—the key decision has been mentioned by various noble Lords; that is, the announcement of the children's national service framework in February 2001, including maternity services. In the new architecture of the NHS the setting of national standards through the national service frameworks is just about the most effective way of ensuring consistency of service provision and quality in what is, as the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, suggested, a devolved healthcare system.

We have debated the balance between devolution and central direction. It is interesting that the Audit Commission report, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, found in 1997 that, despite the impetus that the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, gave to the Changing Childbirth report, there was very patchy implementation. I am convinced that if we wish to achieve the right balance between wishing to have national standards, which is absolutely right, and giving room for the service to breathe at local level, the development of the NSF is undoubtedly the way forward. The aim is to set national standards of care and to look at how maternity services can be more flexible, accessible and appropriate. It will also pick up the issue of the commissioning of maternity services and the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Chan, about establishing the network of maternity services, whether that involves primary, secondary or tertiary care. He rightly pointed to the need for an integrated approach.

We have formed a maternity external working group to advise on the development of the NSF. Appropriately, it is co-chaired by Heather Mellows, the junior vice-president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and by Meryl Thomas, who is vice-president of the Royal College of Midwives. The work of that advisory group is being taken forward through five sub-groups. In a sense, the pathway of those sub-groups covers the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, about what she wished to be covered, starting with pre-birth and involving birth.

I accept the points about home births. My understanding is that the figures have risen from 1 per cent in the 1980s to about 3 per cent, according to the latest data for 2000–01. I recognise that many more women would have wanted a home birth but that circumstances made that difficult. Undoubtedly, the NSF will need to look at that. It will need to consider post-birth and baby support.

The points raised about inequalities will also be covered in the national service framework. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, was right about breast-feeding. The statistics are overwhelming in indicating a huge variation between the different social and ethnic groups in this country. That matter has to be addressed. I shall come later to the issue of caesarean rates, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Chan, suggested, those rates also indicate that some of the same issues arise.

The NSF will also look at the question of user involvement, which I recognise as extremely important. Indeed, as part of the work of preparing and developing the NSF, today my department held a discussion with midwives and users about the experience and relevance of the maternity services liaison committee. I was able to visit the committee for about an hour and to listen to some feedback. Some very interesting ideas were put forward with regard to good practice and the effectiveness of some maternity services liaison committees. Reports of committees feeling that they did not have sufficient support to make an impact were also mentioned.

There is no doubt that the ability of the national service framework to allow us to set national standards and frameworks for the future will be critically important. We shall want them to explore some of the areas to which the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, referred. The noble Lord made some interesting remarks about how one dealt with particularly vulnerable parents—often young parents. I believe that the initiatives that we have taken in Sure Start plus show some of the ways forward, but we shall need to pick up the points raised by the noble Lord.

We want to explore all the areas which we know are important to women: a safe birth which is as normal as possible; a choice of place of birth, with home birth as a realistic option; appropriate support for women in labour and the feasibility of one-to-one care; improving the support and advice that women need when they are making decisions about how they are going to feed their babies—I very much accept the need to ensure that the benefits of breast milk are widely known—and the provision of appropriate information, presented in a variety of formats, to assist women and their families to make those decisions.

The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, is always asking me when we are going to publish reports. The first module of the national service framework covering children in hospital will be published shortly. The other modules will follow. I cannot give a precise date for the maternity service module, but obviously I hope that it will be as soon as possible. However, clearly it will take time to ensure that it is as thorough as we would all like it to be.

A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Patel, asked about one-to-one care by midwives. We have already said that that is our aim. The gold standard should be that every woman has access to one-to-one care. It is intended that the children's national service framework will set out how best we can achieve that gold standard and that it will give a timetable for doing so.

The evidence that we have from the midwifery practice audit report for 2000–01 of the English National Board for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting is that the percentage of units not able to provide one-to-one midwifery care to each woman in labour reduced from 28 per cent in 1999 to 22 per cent in 2000; in other words, 78 per cent provide one-to-one care to all women in labour. However, we shall look for further guidance on that from the national service framework.

The national service framework will consider the examples of good practice mentioned in tonight's debate. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, asked about the Albany practice. Of course, we shall be very interested to know of the experience of that practice and of other examples of good practice.

Before I deal with a number of specific issues which have been raised, I say to the noble Lords, Lord Chan and Lord Patel, that I recognise very clearly the issue of litigation. It goes somewhat wider than the maternity services module of the children's national service framework. But anyone looking at experience in the NHS at the moment has to be concerned about the cost of litigation, and, even more so, whether it leads to defensive medical practice. We are looking seriously at what we need to do to ensure that we move away from some of the current difficulties.

Despite a litany of gloom tonight there are encouraging signs of improvement. I am surprised that no noble Lord mentioned the £100 million capital allocation we have made to over 200 maternity units to modernise the environment. The money that has gone to the service has ranged from large to small sums, but it has all helped to improve the environment.

Good as that is, there is no question that unless we have enough midwives we are not going to get very far. All noble Lords have raised this question. There is no doubt that a great deal of work has to be done to get recruitment and retention up to the standard that we wish to see. We are offering more places for students to train as midwives. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, that compared with 1997 there are 226 more training places available. As regards the number of midwives, there has been an increase since 1997 of about 700, although the figures quoted by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, are also correct. That shows that we have to increase the effort in co-ordinating a recruitment, retention and return to practice strategy.

As regards the question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, that funding establishments are too few, we are supporting the use of what is described as birthrate plus, which is an excellent workforce planning tool. Many trusts are now using it. I hope that that will lead them to a more realistic assessment of the number of midwives required.

But if we recruit and train enough of them, we have to retain them. The noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and the noble Baroness, Lady McFarlane, discussed why it is that midwives leave the profession. I say clearly that we do not want midwives to feel that they are either de-skilled or unable to provide the care that they wish in all settings. I echo the wishes of noble Lords for midwives to have professional autonomy, to feel confident in their skills and to be in a position to promote normal birth. I am sure that that is the key to answering the question posed by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, as to how we should promote normal births. I am convinced that the key is in the autonomy and support that midwives are given, supported by appropriate midwifery leadership in management and with the continued appointment of consultant midwives with responsibility for giving clinical support.

I agree that the more women receive care from a midwife they know the better the care. The issue of one-to-one midwifery is tied up with the recruitment of more midwives into the National Health Service.

The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, applauded the appointment of consultant midwives and then regretted that that meant they were diverted from management and teaching tasks. We have 32 consultant midwives and they are doing excellent work. I believe that our ability to reward high calibre people to stay in practice is excellent. We need more than 32 consultant midwives. As regards teaching, I am very exercised about that, not for midwifery but for clinicians and nurses. It is an issue that we continue to discuss. Between the Department of Health and the Department for Education and Skills a number of new strategies have been launched. But in light of what the noble Baroness has said, I shall ensure that the midwifery teaching issue is picked up.

On management, I could not agree more with the need to ensure that we have strong midwifery management. We know that we have to do more to help heads of midwifery make as big an impact as they can within their local organisations. The Leadership Centre is exercised in ensuring that we do that. In relation to addressing the group of people that I met today within the national service framework, I have said to my officials that we need to think clearly about how we can help heads of midwifery make more impact when it comes to the trusts' boards making the right decisions for the development of services.

That issue is a common one between two governments. I do not believe that we have yet found a way of carrying that out as effectively as possible. I am absolutely sure that having good, strong head-midwifery leadership within each NHS trust is absolutely critical to achieving the right qualities at the local level.

I turn to medical workforce issues. I know that there are concerns in that area. The number of consultant obstetricians and gynaecologists in post has increased by 21 per cent over the past five years, but currently with the college we are exploring expanding the number of consultants.

The European working time directive has been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and other noble Lords. It is a major challenge. There is no question about that. We produced a circular on implementing the directive only eight or nine days ago. We have a programme of pilot projects in NHS trusts to develop and to test innovative solutions. There is no doubt that that will pose significant challenges on the National Health Service.

That brings us to the issue of configuration. We know that a combination of service and workforce development is having a major impact on the configuration of maternity services. Pressures such as the drive for improved safety, more efficient use of resources, better medical training and the directive have often tended towards greater concentration of services on to a smaller number of sites. But those pressures have to be balanced against local access to services and—particularly in maternity—promotion of normal pregnancies and births without unnecessary intervention.

I have no doubt whatever that we have to achieve the correct balance. I say that as someone who a year or so ago had to deal with the issue of the Hemel Hempstead maternity service, where we were faced with agonising decisions. There is no doubt that we must achieve effective configuration to gain the correct balance. We cannot allow a headway drive into centralisation to undermine so many of the units that are currently in place.

I was asked about the Maternity and Neonatal Workforce Group and when the report will be published. It will be published shortly and it will be taken forward. In the department we are also developing a configuring hospitals project which is picking up those issues, not just in relation to maternity services but in relation to the broader issue of configuration. It will also look at the particular focus of the challenges facing smaller hospitals and at creative options to ensure that the headlong rush into centralisation is not always inevitable.

Of course, I recognise the value of birthing centres and the value of midwifery-led units. I hope that the national service framework will enable us to explore those options and to encourage them further in the future.

On Malmesbury and Devizes, I am assured by the PCT that it aims to modernise services and that no decisions will be made without public consultation. I shall keep an eye on that matter in the light of the comments that have been raised today.

I cannot finish without turning to the issue of medical intervention and caesarean section rates. I accept that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, is right to say that the medical interventions taking place do not just cover caesarean sections. The reasons for their increase are complex. Over the past 20 years, technical advances have enabled obstetricians and midwives to identify complications at a much earlier stage, so that appropriate interventions that improve clinical outcomes can take place.

If noble Lords are asking me to say whether I am concerned about the current rates, I am and always have been concerned about them. I have made no secret of that. None of us can say that all caesarean sections are unnecessary. Sometimes they are very necessary. I am also aware of the variations between different parts of the country. However, the absolute evidence needed to draw hard conclusions is not available. That is why we have commissioned the Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists to undertake the largest ever national sentinel audit.

The initial result of that audit has provided valuable data. The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, raised the question of choice. That audit showed that 7 per cent of caesarean sections are performed at the request of women. This is a very difficult issue. I do not pretend to have any easy answers to it.

The issue of choice has been raised. It is important, but decisions have to be made by well-informed women with the appropriate unbiased information and in the light of the best clinical evidence available. All interventions must be based on sound evidence. I agree with the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, on the matter. That is why we have asked the National Institute for Clinical Excellence to develop guidelines for some of the most used interventions, including caesarean sections.

The noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, invited me to set targets for reductions in caesarean rates. She usually tells me that I set too many targets for the health service. I understand why she should want me to do this.

My Lords, I did not use the word "targets" in my speech. I asked what action the Government are taking to reduce the numbers of sections and, as a result of their actions, when they expect to see a decline in the rate.

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Baroness. I think that another noble Lord picked up her point and suggested targets. I understand why some noble Lords think that targets would be appropriate. I do not think that I can respond directly to that issue until we have the results of the NICE clinical guidelines. At that point one would then think about the strategies needed to reduce caesarean sections, if, in the light of the work undertaken by NICE, that is considered appropriate. But if noble Lords are asking me whether I have concerns about the current situation, I do have concerns about it.

The noble Baroness raised the point about the World Health Organisation. We have all used the figures of 5 per cent to 15 per cent. My understanding is that the World Health Organisation is now looking again at those issues. That will be helpful and it is to be hoped that, if done quickly, it will inform the work that we also need to take forward.

In the time available I have not answered every point, but I hope that I have convinced noble Lords that I, together with the Government, am not at all complacent about the big issues that face maternity services in this country. I believe that great progress has been made during the past few years. I again commend the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, for her outstanding work.

I believe that recruitment and retention strategies for midwives, the issue of leadership, the work of the national service framework and the work that we are doing with users will combine together to give us the national cohesive strategy that we all agree needs to be developed. It will be very much informed by the comments made and the points raised in this debate. I assure your Lordships that I will ensure that they are conveyed to those who are leading the national service framework.

My Lords, I should like to conclude this debate by thanking all noble Lords who have taken part. It has been a wise and interesting debate that has highlighted the great strengths of this House. In particular, I thank the Minister for his full response to the vast majority of our questions. There is no doubt about his personal commitment to the matter, and I thank him for that.

I welcome the introduction of maternity into the national service framework for children. That is an excellent move. I advocate speed on that, because the situation in the country is changing fast. Your Lordships have been enormously generous to me in this debate, and I thank you for that, but I want the Government to produce a maternity policy all its own. I want to see the son and daughter of Changing Childbirth, because it is when the Government embrace their own policies that we shall experience a real difference. People have been so generous and nice—not only in this Chamber but throughout the country—about the work that I did. But that was 10 years ago. Life has moved on and it is time that the Government put some strong political will behind the issue and improved the lot of women and children in this country. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.