asked Her Majesty's Government:

What are the foreign policy achievements of the European Union during the first half of the United Kingdom's presidency.

My Lords, as the noble Lord rightly states, we are only halfway through our presidency, and already much has been achieved. To date, we have opened negotiations with Croatia and we have reached the historic decision to open accession negotiations with Turkey, which is the realisation of a presidency and EU priority. Under our presidency, the EU has also played a key role in achieving successful outcomes at the UN world summit. It has established the first ESDP mission in Asia; built a climate change and energy partnership with China; set up a comprehensive framework for co-operation with India and agreed a visa facilitation and readmission deal with Russia. That is solid progress, on which we intend to build in the coming three months.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer, particularly the reference to Turkey, for which the Foreign Secretary, the whole team and Ministers should be praised for the work achieved in launching those negotiations.

There are many dossiers of course, so noble Lords must forgive me if I sound querulous. Why has the Prime Minister totally lost interest in the Middle East road map? Why has the presidency period not really been used up to now to revive and re-launch the long-awaited road map negotiations? Can it be used to do so until the presidency expires at the end of December? There is a background of increasing frustration among the Israeli public, who are more and more in favour of withdrawal from the occupied territories; and there is increasing anxiety and apprehension among Palestinians, who are literally beleaguered and are facing long-term injustice on a greater scale unless these matters are addressed urgently. Is it not the job of this Government as president of the European Union to persuade Israel to launch negotiations immediately?

My Lords, the Prime Minister has certainly not lost interest in the Middle East road map. Indeed, it is a key priority of our presidency. We supported the disengagement, and now we continue to work to reform the Palestinian institutions. I am glad that under our presidency the EU is set to double its aid to the Palestinians, because in supporting the Palestinians we can help them to create a stable Palestinian state and a secure state of Israel. We are working hard on that with James Wolfensohn and with our partners in the European Union.

My Lords, what is happening about the office of Minister for Foreign Affairs, which was to be established under the constitution? There were rumours in the papers a month or so ago that Mr Solana was comporting himself as though he was already in office. Can we have an assurance that in this and in all other respects the bureaucrats in Brussels are not implementing the constitution as if it had never been rejected by the voters in France and Holland?

My Lords, one should not believe what one reads in newspapers a great deal of the time. I can give the noble Lord the assurance that neither the bureaucrats in Brussels nor anyone else are implementing the constitution that was rejected by the people of France and the Netherlands.

My Lords, in view of the importance of the acquis in the negotiations with Turkey and Croatia, and in view of the statement by the British Treasury on the importance of deregulation in the European Union, will this be the occasion when one will reconsider the present state of the in the negotiations with Turkey and Croatia, and in view of the statement by the British Treasury on the importance of deregulation in the European Union, will this be the occasion when one will reconsider the present state of the acquis and its enormous implications, which surely must be candidates for deregulation? and its enormous implications, which surely must be candidates for deregulation?

My Lords, the acquis, as noble Lords will know, is the body of laws that have already been adopted by the European Union. While deregulation is important and we are seeking to ensure that the new laws passed by the European Union will benefit the Union rather than detract from its competitiveness, it is right that all new member states should have to observe the rules and regulations that have been adopted by member states to date., as noble Lords will know, is the body of laws that have already been adopted by the European Union. While deregulation is important and we are seeking to ensure that the new laws passed by the European Union will benefit the Union rather than detract from its competitiveness, it is right that all new member states should have to observe the rules and regulations that have been adopted by member states to date.

My Lords, will my noble friend assure me that the British presidency will advance those sensible parts of the proposed but now fallen constitution that will be of benefit both for the United Kingdom in progressing its policies and for the European Union as a whole? I have in mind, for instance, making public European Council meetings.

My Lords, if the European Council seeks to have its meetings in public rather than in private and all member states agree that that is a good thing, I cannot think why that should not be possible—if it is agreed by 25 member states. That would be sensible from my perspective, but it is a matter for the 25 member states.

My Lords, the noble Baroness's colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Drayson, who is on the Labour Benches with her, spoke this morning in support of the recent CICS report on the advantages of pooling military capability in Europe. A meeting of EU defence Ministers is taking place today under the UK presidency. Will we be taking an initiative?

My Lords, I regret that I cannot answer that question. I do not have any knowledge about the meeting, but I will seek to ensure that the noble Lord receives that information and that a copy of the letter is put in the Library.

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the EU's recently developed focus on poverty reduction and aid owes very much to British influence?

Yes, my Lords, I agree. That is why it is important that the UK presidency is taking a lead in ensuring that preparations for the Hong Kong ministerial meeting in December take into account the need for a pro-development agreement there.

My Lords, the website on the UK presidency of the EU states that one priority of the common foreign and security policy is consolidating stability and democracy in the Balkans. In light of that, what steps do Her Majesty's Government plan to take to address the ever increasing problem of the integration of the Roma within European Union societies?

My Lords, I know that great efforts are being undertaken to ensure that the Roma are properly integrated into society. Recently a stabilisation agreement process was launched with countries such as Serbia and Montenegro, and I am sure that the integration of the Roma will be an integrated part of that process.

My Lords, is the Minister aware that earlier this week, under the presidency of the European Union Committee of this House and of the European Scrutiny Committee in the other place, a conference took place here of the 25 European affairs committees of the national parliaments of the European Union? Is she further aware that during that conference an intense debate took place on the difficulties faced by national parliaments in scrutinising the common foreign and security policy and the European security and defence policy?

Does the Minister agree with us that formal agreements are needed between the governments and parliaments concerning the type of CFSP non-legislative documents that should be deposited for scrutiny, and that if there were a formal agreement it would be of enormous help in making the scrutiny of CFSP much more transparent in the Council, particularly in respect of political decisions made in advance of formal legislation? That is the serious problem we face.

My Lords, I was aware of that important meeting and I am sure that that is the best forum in which to discuss such issues. Our Government seek to do everything to improve the transparency of legislation and the legislative process.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

What progress has been made with the implementation of the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004.

My Lords, all the key provisions in the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004 are now in force and regulations establishing the Gangmasters Licensing Authority were made in March 2005. Defra consulted on draft exclusions regulations in February and appeals regulations in March. The authority commenced work on 1 April and is currently preparing a consultation paper on licensing standards. Both Defra and the authority are working to ensure licensing can be introduced from April 2006.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply. Is he aware—I am sure he is—that a report from his department indicates that between 420,000 and 611,000 temporary workers are employed on farms and in farm factories in the course of a year? Has the department any idea how many of these will be working for licensed gangmasters?

My Lords, before I answer the question, I remind the House what a vital role my noble friend Lord Carter played in introducing that Bill, now an Act, into this House when it was so necessary to do so.

My noble friend is quite right in saying that commissioned research into the numbers of people supplied by labour providers to the agricultural and food processing sectors gives the figures he mentions. That was the result of three reports in the public domain, from Precision Prospecting, a company that deals with these issues and works closely with the University of Cambridge. I do not know the precise answer to the question he asks, but I will find out and write to him.

My Lords, is it intended that there should be a distinction between the primary agricultural and food processing industry, and the secondary processing industry? It is a very grey distinction. Many of those who work in the primary sector subsequently transfer to the secondary sector. Is it clear that the secondary processing industry will be included in the effects of this Act where relevant?

My Lords, we have already had one consultation on what exclusions there should be to this Act. That obviously goes to the issue of primary and secondary considerations. It is a grey area, and we hope to have a second consultation on that issue. The vast majority of opinion as expressed in the first consultation was in favour of ensuring that those in secondary processing were also covered by the Act. We have not reached a final conclusion on that, however, and obviously the House will be told when we have.

My Lords, does the minimum wage legislation apply to people working for gangmasters and to those working temporarily in agriculture? If it does, what information is given to employees, particularly those from middle Europe, about the minimum wage and their rights?

My Lords, minimum wage legislation certainly applies. I trust that information is given to all those who work. The noble Countess seems to indicate that that is not always so. I will again go back and find out whether the information given is satisfactory. As the noble Countess knows, this is an industry which people enter and leave at all times. It is important, however, that they are told what their minimum wage rights are.

My Lords, I took the precaution yesterday of consulting the Library here about the sections of the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act which are not yet in force. I was informed that there are seven sections not in force in England and Wales, and four in Northern Ireland, presumably because the statutory instruments have not come forward. For example, they include sections relating to the prohibition licence of unlicensed activities; keeping a register of licences; and the exclusion of provisions for employment agencies. Why are these not in force, or have I been given incorrect information? There is a case, which has been highlighted in the past 48 hours, of someone in Lincolnshire who may not be prosecuted as a result of these sections not being in force.

My Lords, I am sure the noble Lord's information is correct. I do not argue with it. He should understand, however, that considerable progress in getting this Act onto the statute book was made very quickly. He will remember that the Act provided the legal framework to establish the licensing scheme, but did leave a lot to do through secondary legislation to establish a fully operational scheme. It is important to get that scheme right. This includes regulations establishing the authority; an appeals mechanism; licence conditions; the boundaries of the licensing arrangements; and the checks a labour user must make to establish whether a gangmaster is licensed. We are consulting—appropriately, in my view—on each of those regulations to ensure we get the detail right, but you cannot consult in a couple of weeks. That inevitably takes some time, and has to be done sequentially. We are pressing forward as quickly as possible to ensure that licensing can be introduced by 1 April 2006.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Whether, in the light of advice from experts on the risk of avian influenza being brought into the United Kingdom through the wild bird trade and bird fairs, they will seek a permanent ban on this trade during the United Kingdom presidency of the European Union.

My Lords, trade in all live birds from countries with highly pathogenic avian influenza is already banned. A permanent ban on the importation of wild birds from countries not affected with the disease is not scientifically justified, as the birds are imported under European Community rules that require them to be held in quarantine and tested for the virus.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his reply but it is truly worrying. Can he confirm that we are still importing birds from many parts of the world, despite the fact that this flu virus is travelling very fast; and can he further confirm that pet birds and birds for zoos from those parts of the world not covered by the ban do not even have to be quarantined at all; and that, of those that are quarantined, only a small selection are chosen to be tested for avian flu, even though the birds may be carrying that flu and showing no signs? These birds can then go off to pet fairs in the rest of Britain. Does he not think the Government had better seize the opportunity of the UK presidency to introduce a proper EU-wide ban, in the face of a serious threat?

My Lords, there is a negligible risk from legal trade, due to the EU controls in place. The wild birds allowed in under those controls come from registered holdings in the country of origin, where they are inspected by official vets, and on arrival here are subject to 30 days' quarantine with compulsory testing for both avian influenza and Newcastle disease. These controls ensure that any infected birds are detected before release.

The noble Baroness referred to pet birds. When these birds are brought in, they are effectively under house arrest. They are quarantined in their owner's home for a period of time, when there is every chance that there will be an inspection of those birds—though not every one of them. A lot of work has been done on this, and we believe that the present bird importation controls are appropriate.

My Lords, is the Minister aware that the American scientists who have recently reconstructed the virus responsible for the pandemic of Spanish flu that killed millions of people across the world after the First World War have found that that virus shares certain characteristic structural components with this bird flu virus now isolated in the Far East? In the light of this disturbing information, what progress are the Government making in producing and stockpiling relevant vaccine to protect the population?

My Lords, I am aware of the American report, and it is a concern. The noble Lord will know that the Government have taken the issue of the emergence of the H5N1 virus strain from Asia very seriously, and relevant departments are working well together. The House will understand, however, that judgments are made consistent with the risk; in other words, that our response to this serious problem is proportionate. There should be no complacency on the one hand but, frankly, there should be no scaremongering on the other, and this House and Parliament in general have a duty in that regard.

The noble Lord asked about doses of antiviral. I understand that 14.6 million doses of antiviral will be ready by December 2006. That is not to say that many are not in existence now, and the Department of Health is working extremely hard on that.

My Lords, the noble Baroness's Question rightly raises important issues about the postern door but the main gate is wide open. Is the Minister satisfied that the steps he has taken to monitor the arrival of migratory birds over the coming months will enable him to identify sufficiently rapidly whether the virus has arrived in this country?

My Lords, I am satisfied that the requirements that we have put in place in relation to migratory birds are appropriate and proportionate to the risk that we face, without diminishing for a moment the potential seriousness of the situation. The noble Lord will know that a new surveillance programme has been put into practice this week. It includes the examination of bird carcasses—a practice that has been in place for several years. Now, samples taken from birds caught alive are to be examined, as are samples from legitimately shot birds. We are looking at the situation every day to ensure that our response is appropriate.

My Lords, my noble friend read from his brief the words "negligible risk". Does that mean no risk?

No, my Lords, it means negligible.

My Lords, is the Minister aware of concerns publicly expressed only a couple of days ago by the World Health Organization at the lack of co-operation among scientists, which is hampering efforts to prepare for an avian flu pandemic? Can the noble Lord assure the House that the United Kingdom will use its good offices as president of the European Union to press for greater collaboration between international scientists in order to improve the flu vaccine research that is taking place?

My Lords, I was not aware of the matter raised by the noble Baroness but, because she has raised it and because of the manner in which she has raised it, I will certainly take the issue back and write to her with the department's answer.

My Lords, what is the reporting system and how does it work? If members of the public walking by lochs and so on find dead or dying birds, to whom do they report?

My Lords, believe me, I have the answer to this question but I think that it would take a little time to go through it. It is on the Defra website and I invite the noble Baroness, if she would be so kind, to find the answer there. Of course, I shall also write to her.

My Lords—

My Lords, I regret to say that we must move on. We are now into the 24th minute.

asked Her Majesty's Government:

How patients will benefit from the new National Health Service dental contracts due to come into force on 1 April 2006.

My Lords, patients will benefit from a more preventive approach to primary care dentistry. Dentists will no longer be paid for each item of treatment. This should clearly free up capacity for dentists to spend more time with each patient, including more time for preventive care. The new system of patient charges will replace more than 400 separate charges with a system of three bands, making the cost of NHS dental treatment easier for patients to understand.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply, but is there not a problem with this new three-band system, which I am told will be based on units of dental activity? It has not been trialled in any way. There have been extensive pilots of the new ways of issuing dental treatment but the charging system has not been piloted at all. Will it be made clear to patients exactly where they stand on this matter? I am sure that if the Government do not do so, programmes such as "Money Box" or the financial papers will make it very clear to patients that, if they wait longer and let more holes build up, they will get better value for money from their dentist. Can the Minister tell me exactly what the Government intend to do in respect of informing patients?

My Lords, the Government will ensure that in each dental surgery information is made available to patients explaining the three charging bands. It is important to emphasise that overall we will be collecting the same proportion of income from charges. The system should therefore be cost-neutral to patients over time.

My Lords, will the Minister confirm that now only 48 per cent of patients are treated by an NHS dentist and that the Government have effectively privatised the dental services within the NHS? Is this one of the reforms with which the Prime Minister wishes he could have gone further?

My Lords, I cannot confirm or deny the figure of 48 per cent, but I can affirm that this is not the privatisation of the dental service. We provide a high standard of care for people under the NHS.

My Lords, will the new contract encourage more dental surgeons to accept NHS patients? That is a problem in many parts of the country.

Yes, my Lords, it is hoped that more dentists will be encouraged to work within the NHS because we believe that that is a way of providing a better service to more patients.

My Lords, one of the aims of the 2002 Options for Change report was to provide incentives for promoting prevention and oral health advice and the Minister has said that that is important. Why, therefore, do the new contractual arrangements do nothing to encourage preventive care and do not specifically attract any of these units of dental activity? Furthermore, when will she appoint a new chief dental officer, because it is important to have someone in place at such a difficult time?report was to provide incentives for promoting prevention and oral health advice and the Minister has said that that is important. Why, therefore, do the new contractual arrangements do nothing to encourage preventive care and do not specifically attract any of these units of dental activity? Furthermore, when will she appoint a new chief dental officer, because it is important to have someone in place at such a difficult time?

My Lords, I cannot confirm when a new chief dental officer will be appointed, but I am sure that the noble Lord will be informed at the earliest opportunity. I well understand the importance of such an appointment.

On preventive care, because dentists will be providing units of treatment to patients rather than drilling and filling, as in the past, we believe that they will have much more time to spend with patients and encourage them in preventive care.

My Lords, I understand that the draft contract will require contractors to provide care and treatment to any patient. Does the Minister agree that, perversely, that might mean that NHS dentists will be unable to prioritise care to those who need it most, such as children, without risking a challenge of discrimination?

My Lords, dentists will be encouraged to work with their current lists, but the noble Baroness is correct in saying that they will also be encouraged to work with whoever needs dental care. We do not believe that that will endanger any sector of the population.

My Lords, I was encouraged by the Minister's belief that the new NHS contracts will increase the number of NHS dentists available to the public. My experience is that it has worked to the contrary. Will the Government monitor that situation? Do they have any targets and, if not, why not?

My Lords, the Government will be monitoring that situation most carefully. However, the point about the new contract system is that it is a devolved one. Therefore, there will be no central targets but each PCT will be encouraged to ensure that it is providing a high level of NHS dentistry within its area.

My Lords, given that the terms of the contract mean that more people will have to pay a higher price for basic dental treatment, how does that square with the Government's drive to iron out health inequalities? Will it not accentuate those inequalities?

My Lords, the noble Earl is correct; the first call at a dentist for an inspection will be more expensive, but the overall cost to patients for treatment will be lower. It must be remembered that those people who are presently excluded from costs will continue to be so. We believe that those people are most in need of such assistance and therefore the system will not be exclusive.

My Lords, in view of the Minister's answer about monitoring, how is it intended to assess the quality of outcomes, particularly since, as I understand it, there has been no piloting of the new bandings in any dental practice?

My Lords, the noble Baroness is correct that there has been no piloting of the bandings, but a lot of research has been undertaken into what their effect will be. The Government are confident that banding will not have a negative effect.

My Lords, with permission a Statement on Northern Ireland will be repeated by my noble friend Lord Rooker between the two debates today.

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

Moved, That the draft order be referred to a Grand Committee.—(Baroness Amos.).)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

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

Moved, That the draft regulations be referred to a Grand Committee.—(Baroness Amos.).)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

rose to call attention to the key findings and recommendations of Safeguarding Children: the second joint Chief Inspectors' Report on Arrangements to Safeguard Children and to the pending Government response; and to move for Papers. and to the pending Government response; and to move for Papers.

My Lords, I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have put their names down to speak in this debate on this important and authoritative report. I am aware of the limits of my own experience, and I am most grateful that a former chief inspector of prisons, a former director of social services, a former chief inspector of social services and parents of children with disability, together with many other experienced contributors, will be participating this morning.

I intend to highlight the importance of this report, attempt to put into context, give a definition of safeguarding, look at the sources of the information in the report, consider some of its themes, look particularly at social work and consider the report's recommendations and their implementation. The report has personal importance to me because I am sick and tired of seeing young people entering the doors of organisations such as Centrepoint who have been so damaged and have experienced such prolonged neglect that they can no longer accept help or be given it and who are eventually excluded from the hostel or simply drift back on to the streets again. If we could intervene more effectively to support children in their families and to support their families, some of these young people would avoid a very unhappy outcome.

I also tabled this debate for a personal reason: I am very concerned about those who work directly with children and families, and the report highlights particular concerns about social workers. I shall discuss those concerns in detail.

I note that your Lordships are concerned not simply with narrow issues concerning vulnerable children but with the general public good. I draw noble Lords' attention to the fact that we are an ageing population. In seven or eight years' time there will be as many people over the age of 65 as there are under the age of 16. According to Eurostat, by 2010 deaths in the EU25 will outnumber births. It is estimated that on current trends, by 2025 there will be a shortfall of 20 million workers across the European Union. Our children have never been more important to us in terms of the success of our economy.

When we fail to intervene on those occasions when it is possible to do so, and fail to support families and children early in their development, we pay a great price later. A survey in the 1990s pointed to the fact that on leaving care 25 per cent of young women were mothers and that within a year 50 per cent were mothers. The Social Exclusion Unit's report drew attention to the fact that 25 per cent of the prison population had experience of care. In a recent survey of a narrow survey group by the National Children's Bureau it was found that 20 per cent of children in custody had been through care and that a further 25 per cent had some experience of care. So for the first 20 per cent there had been particular statutory duties towards them.

The context of this debate is perhaps best set by the report of my noble friend Lord Laming into the death of Victoria Climbié. He pointed to the failures in accountability and to the failures in the sharing of information. Also, highlighted in the report were the circumstances in which the social workers operated. At the time Victoria's case was handled by Brent all the duty social workers had received their training abroad and were on temporary contracts. Several workers in the child protection team were also recruited on a temporary basis. It was a team under pressure, overbusy and very short of permanent and experienced staff. Given the caseload in June 1999, it was very hard for people to stand back and consider what was happening. That we had lost our ability to be social workers was the point underlined by my noble friend, Lord Laming. That was the situation in Brent. In Haringey, a social worker was supposed to manage a maximum of 12 cases and she was managing 19. There were very serious concerns about the quality of supervision.

The first report from the joint chief inspectors landed on our desks at a similar time to that report's publication. In the mean time we have had the 10-year plan for change from the National Health Service—the National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services. All these factors are fed into current government policy, and the Children Act 2004 established five outcomes for children, to which all agencies must work to improve the futures of our children.. All these factors are fed into current government policy, and the Children Act 2004 established five outcomes for children, to which all agencies must work to improve the futures of our children.

The definition of "safeguarding" is a coin with two sides according to the inspectors. First, it means to take all reasonable means to prevent harm to children by avoiding the circumstances in which they may be harmed; and, secondly, when their welfare is being undermined, it means to take action together, according to clear procedures and protocols, to take that child out of harm's way. The inspectors also draw attention to the comments of Sir William Utting—the need to be proactive in order to protect children's welfare. I remember well what Sir William Utting said in his 1997 report People like us. He said that the best protection for children is an environment of overall excellence.. He said that the best protection for children is an environment of overall excellence.

The sources of the report were the inspectorates which cover all our public services. They have undertaken specific reports into safeguarding. It also draws on the ongoing reports that they make of institutions. In the course of inspection this year I have visited a children's home, a local authority secure unit and an immigration removal centre. Inspectors have been nurses, teachers and former prison governors.

Perhaps there is some concern that inspectors are being asked to cover some areas with which they are not completely comfortable. I heard a children's home manager say she was concerned that the inspector did not have the experience to do the job that he was undertaking; but overall my sense is that professionals are looking very carefully and rigorously at what is being delivered.

Furthermore, the Children's Rights Director has consulted with children and has reported on children in boarding schools, and, very importantly, on children who are privately fostered; and recently I attended a meeting where he was consulting with young carers.

So, this report is the most authoritative source of information for us to see how things have changed since the 2002 report of my noble friend Lord Laming.

Themes covered by the report include how far prioritising and safeguarding has improved. In 2002 area child protection committees were often poorly funded and low priority was given to their work. Since then, the inspectors have found significant improvement in that area and they look forward to the establishment of the new, replacement local area safeguarding boards and the possibilities that they will bring with them. There is a distinct sense of improvement in safeguarding, but there are continuing concerns, especially regarding children with disabilities, children who are 15, 16 or 17 with mental health and chronic health conditions, 15, 16 and 17 year-olds placed inappropriately in custody and adoption placements.

I had experience some years ago of working with and caring for a child who was aggressive and large for his age. I was concerned that he might hurt other children or run away. It was only on the third day of working with that child that I learned from what he said that he had just been placed in a new adoption placement. It was scandalous that I did not know that that child was going through such a difficult time. If he had been excluded from that childcare placement because it had broken down, it might have jeopardised that new adoption placement. How would he have felt if that had fallen through?

The report considers the voice of the child. Children's voices are clearly being attended to far more effectively than in the past, although there is still considerable concern that what they say is not feeding through into action. There is concern about overly heavy-handed use of force to control behaviour. At the local authority secure unit that I visited, the inspector was careful not to step into the boys' rooms and warned me to be extremely careful but, at the end of the inspection, she said how remarkably behaviour had improved in the short time since her last inspection. She put that down to a change in the overall policy of behaviour management. One of the managers of several children's homes that were grouped together emphasised the importance of a direct relationship with young people. Good thinking can lead to the avoidance of the use of unnecessary force—sometimes it is necessary.

There have been improvements in identifying welfare concerns and acting on them. Although the overall number of children on the child protection register has not changed since 2002–04, in some areas there is better co-operation, avoiding leaving it until the stage when a child protection intervention has to be made. Children are being supported in their families by other agencies earlier on. However, significant concerns remain, especially for children with disabilities. A further specific and important concern is that thresholds in some authorities for child protection intervention are set too high because of resource problems. Thirdly, because some social services are unable to respond to families requiring support, other agencies do not refer children when concerns about their welfare first emerge. That means that some families are subject to unavoidable pressure. Children may experience preventable abuse or neglect and relationships between social services and other agencies may become strained. There is concern that there is not the capacity as things stand fully to implement the Government's agenda in this area.

There is considerable concern about asylum-seeking children, especially those placed in immigration removal centres. One understands that this area needs very careful management. There have been improvements in the workforce in some areas there and it is encouraging that this year there has been some improvement in recruiting field social workers. However, the report highlights the continuing difficulty in recruiting and retaining social workers. The vacancy rate for children's social workers has improved, from 11.8 per cent to 11.4 per cent; however, in the same period, use of temporary agency workers increased from 1 per cent to 2.3 per cent. That is an extremely expensive and unsatisfactory way to meet needs.

The crisis in social work has endured for many years, as my noble friend Lord Northbourne continually points out. That has very serious implications for children's welfare. Social workers do not receive the supervision that they need to do that important work. The Government need a stronger focus on social work. They need someone like Louise Casey, with her good work in the Rough Sleepers Unit on anti-social behaviour, to focus on understanding the problem and to address it with energy.

There is not time for me to speak further now. All the important recommendations of this authoritative report must be implemented effectively. I look forward to hearing from the Minister details of how implementation will take place, what sort of time-scale there will be and who will be responsible for implementing each recommendation. I see that my time is up. I look forward to the Minister's response.

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for securing the debate, with his usual commitment. It encourages us to look at how best to serve children, in the wake of numerous reports and pieces of legislation. I welcome that this is a joint inspectors' report, signalling again the intention to join up action. No doubt we shall discuss today the fact that putting bodies together does not necessarily mean joined-up action. Other elements, such as training and good will, are also necessary.

All five outcomes for children in Every Child Matters, referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, depend on children being safeguarded and feeling safe. But safeguarding is not just about protection; it is also about enabling children to develop self-esteem and self-discipline, and to be confident and independent. Various arenas can do that: families, schools, services, communities and so on. Joint and agreed strategies, with the child at the centre, must be in place. If one institution has a punitive philosophy and one an enabling philosophy there will be confusion. Joint training is essential., referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, depend on children being safeguarded and feeling safe. But safeguarding is not just about protection; it is also about enabling children to develop self-esteem and self-discipline, and to be confident and independent. Various arenas can do that: families, schools, services, communities and so on. Joint and agreed strategies, with the child at the centre, must be in place. If one institution has a punitive philosophy and one an enabling philosophy there will be confusion. Joint training is essential.

I want to focus primarily on substance misuse by young people. I declare an interest as chair of the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse and of the All-Party Group on Children. However, first I shall voice briefly some general concerns. Training for professionals across professions will be necessary if we are to succeed in creating genuine wrap-around services at local level. Child and adolescent mental health services will need to grow and be focused. Family support involving parents is part of safeguarding. I recognise that some children are damaged by families, but many families can be helped with the parenting role—Sure Start is a good example—and rehabilitated. Young people in our care systems and criminal justice systems are not well served, so we must act—I know that other noble Lords will refer to that. A report published yesterday by the Family Policy Alliance recommends that frontline professionals and practitioners should be valued, trained holistically, know about local resources, and be supported and properly remunerated—all essential ingredients.

Will the Minister try to ensure that substance misuse is always referred to in policy, when we talk about working with children and young people, protecting children, educating children and—a theme to which I shall return—working with families? The Government response to Hidden Harm, a report by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, recognises that the children of problematic drug users are often overlooked. Indeed they are, and there are about 300,000 of them. Of all child protection cases, 24 per cent are due to drug misuse in parents. We should note that that does not include alcohol: it refers to drugs misuse. , a report by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, recognises that the children of problematic drug users are often overlooked. Indeed they are, and there are about 300,000 of them. Of all child protection cases, 24 per cent are due to drug misuse in parents. We should note that that does not include alcohol: it refers to drugs misuse. Hidden Harm also recommended that, also recommended that,

"When revising child protection policies . . . full account should be taken of the particular challenges posed by parental drug use, with the consequent implications for staff training, assessment and case management procedures, and inter-agency liaison".

That was accepted by the DfES in a cross-government response, citing the development of local children safeguarding boards to address the problem.

This year, it is estimated that there were 11,000 under-18 year-olds in our drug treatment systems and, of course, many are untouched by it. About 20,000 young people become problematic drug users every year. Runaway children, estimated by The Children's Society to be around 70,000 each year, and young sex workers are also often connected to drug use. In Hidden Harm, an example is given of one child adolescent mental health service clinic where 80 per cent of referrals were connected to a substance misuse need., an example is given of one child adolescent mental health service clinic where 80 per cent of referrals were connected to a substance misuse need.

The DfES is supporting an integrated approach that is based on competent, professional judgments. That is very welcome, but we know from use of the old assessment frameworks for children in need that unless marginal subjects, such as sexual health or substance misuse, are incorporated specifically into the frameworks, they will fall off the end. Again, I say to the Minister that every initiative that we begin for children and young people must include substance misuse and must cross-reference to other initiatives.

The report Every Child Matters: Young People and Drugs signposts the move to the commissioning of substance misuse services for young people by children's trusts. Unless those services are specifically highlighted in guidelines, they will become marginalised. That will be reinforced by the lack of preventive or protective approaches. Joint area reviews will consider the substance misuse system through healthy schools, the number of 18 year-olds in young people's treatment services and the number in inappropriate adult services. That may address the commissioning aspect to some extent, but most substance misuse risk in young people is likely to occur in looked-after children, persistent truants and offenders who are just beginning their drug careers, who are not accessing services and whose interventions are not being assessed or inspected—again, a case for safeguarding if ever there was one. signposts the move to the commissioning of substance misuse services for young people by children's trusts. Unless those services are specifically highlighted in guidelines, they will become marginalised. That will be reinforced by the lack of preventive or protective approaches. Joint area reviews will consider the substance misuse system through healthy schools, the number of 18 year-olds in young people's treatment services and the number in inappropriate adult services. That may address the commissioning aspect to some extent, but most substance misuse risk in young people is likely to occur in looked-after children, persistent truants and offenders who are just beginning their drug careers, who are not accessing services and whose interventions are not being assessed or inspected—again, a case for safeguarding if ever there was one.

Substance misuse has implications for all the inspectorates responsible for the report under discussion and for all agencies responsible for children. The inclusion of substance misuse in legislation and reports concerning children would greatly help those people trying to help children in difficulty because of their own or their parents' problems with substance misuse.

My Lords, my noble friend is right to return to this subject in the light of the report from the chief inspectors. The report emphasised continuing difficulties in recruitment and retention of staff, which affect the safeguarding of children. In a briefing, the NSPCC underlined that those difficulties are most acute in social services in London and the south-east.

I would like to concentrate, as I did in my noble friend's previous debate in February, on the difficulties and problems facing fostered children and their foster parents. Fostering is the front line of public care, with approximately 40,000 children in foster homes on any one day. Those children share the problems which the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, then the Minister—I am glad to see him in his place—frankly admitted in the previous debate. They are eight times more likely to have serious special educational needs and 45 per cent of them may have mental health disorders as a result of past experiences.

These problems demand special qualities of love, sympathy and understanding from the foster parents. That is why selection, training and support are so important for these substitute parents; that is why it is so important to prevent the breakdown of placements for children who may already come from broken families. It is equally vital to avoid frequent moves from one foster home to another or to a care institution. Stability is everything, except when a child can return to its natural family. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, gave details of these points in our previous debate.

Good placements cannot be had on the cheap. I therefore welcome the extra £30 million that the Government made available for fostering last year, with perhaps, I believe, a new increase in this year. Can the Minister confirm that all social services are now offering adequate, or better than adequate, allowances to foster parents for their extra home costs, together with retaining fees between placements and full repayment of necessary expenses—for example, travel costs? Are extra funds generally available for parents fostering children with learning difficulties or behaviour problems? Are all fosterers receiving sufficient to enable them to make some pension provision for themselves?

It seems to me that the crude shortage of foster parents is likely to go on as long as their total remuneration is still inadequate. The shortage was put at 10,000 such families in the previous debate, both by me and by my noble friend Lady Howe; the then Minister said it was only 8,000. Can we please be given the latest and best estimate of the extra numbers needed? The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford spoke about co-operation between the Churches in Essex and social services over recruiting suitable carers. Is this still flourishing and has it been extended to other areas?

I ask again: have the Government studied a manifesto for change, published by the Fostering Network last December? Do they agree with its conclusions? Will they identify best practice and work to make it general? Improving the rewards, support and training for foster parents will raise their status. Better still, it will reduce the shortage and thus enable children to be placed near their relations, friends and existing schools. It is possible to gain results that are a win for all concerned. When this happens, many subsequent teenage problems of truancy, anti-social behaviour and crime will be prevented. My noble friend Lord Listowel, again, touched on that., published by the Fostering Network last December? Do they agree with its conclusions? Will they identify best practice and work to make it general? Improving the rewards, support and training for foster parents will raise their status. Better still, it will reduce the shortage and thus enable children to be placed near their relations, friends and existing schools. It is possible to gain results that are a win for all concerned. When this happens, many subsequent teenage problems of truancy, anti-social behaviour and crime will be prevented. My noble friend Lord Listowel, again, touched on that.

Such cost effectiveness must surely commend itself to the Government. I therefore come back to my starting point by saying that retention of competent social workers needs to go hand in hand with major improvements in the conditions and remuneration for foster parents.

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this important debate on safeguarding all children and thank my noble friend Lord Listowel for instigating it. I must declare my interest in this subject, of course, as president of the Royal Mencap Society and also as the grandfather of a little lad aged four with Down's syndrome.

Although I also welcome the joint inspectors' recognition of the particular vulnerability of disabled children, we should feel tremendous shame at their statement that these children,

"are much more likely to suffer abuse and neglect than other children".

Shame, but not surprise. We already know from research that disabled children are at least three times more likely to be abused or neglected than other children, and through its network of staff and its phone helpline, Mencap is aware of a significant number of cases where inadequate safeguards have exposed children with a learning disability to unacceptable levels of risk.

An example of this is a young woman with a learning disability who was assaulted on more than one occasion at school. Her mother said, "She couldn't tell us she had been hit and others wouldn't believe her anyway, so the perpetrator got away with it. Nothing has happened and as far as I know whoever did it still works there".

Research and practice tell us that there are a number of reasons why disabled children are more vulnerable to such abuse and neglect. Some of these reasons are based on the lack of value we, as a society, place on disabled children, for we fail to will the resources and policies which could support the staff and families in their vitally important caring roles.

I endorse wholeheartedly the recommendation of the joint inspectors which would ensure that all staff working with disabled children should be trained and supported to recognise immediately the signs of abuse or neglect and then know precisely what their next steps should be. But before that can happen, all staff who are in contact with children with a learning disability need further training so they can communicate effectively with these children, especially those who do not use speech when they communicate. In addition, all services, whether they are mainstream or specialist, must update their systems to reflect the vulnerability of these children rather than expect the children to fit the system.

Furthermore, as part of the forthcoming Working Together guidance, I would want to see the new local safeguarding children boards review local systems, procedures and training to ensure that disabled children are adequately safeguarded. The importance of such a review is underlined by the joint inspectors' revelation that four out of 10 residential schools are failing to meet the national minimum standard for child protection systems and procedures. guidance, I would want to see the new local safeguarding children boards review local systems, procedures and training to ensure that disabled children are adequately safeguarded. The importance of such a review is underlined by the joint inspectors' revelation that four out of 10 residential schools are failing to meet the national minimum standard for child protection systems and procedures.

We already know that disabled children are more likely than other children to be living away from home, and often such a long way from home that it is extremely difficult for parents to monitor the quality of the care that their son or daughter is receiving at a residential school or home. Distance in this case does not lend enchantment but often extreme anxiety and misery.

But there is a further issue. What about the vulnerability of the nine out of 10 children with a learning disability who are not living away from home but are cared for at home by their own family? For this much larger group of children, a major issue is family stress. Families have to cope with consistently high levels of responsibility over long periods and often for a lifetime. Our society does not provide these 24 hours a day, seven days a week, lifetime carers a level of family support which would protect family relationships. In its most extreme form, this lack of support has tragically resulted in cases of parents actually killing their children because they could no longer cope.

In 1999, Mrs Turnbull killed her two profoundly disabled sons because she feared they would be taken away from the family home and placed in residential care. She said, "The truth is I could not take any more and I knew they could not cope without me". The independent review reported:

"Although staff had individually identified that the Turnbull family were under pressure and stressed, the cumulative effect of caring for two profoundly disabled sons over 20 years, more recently in unsuitable accommodation, was (in our view) not fully acknowledged".

Mencap's Breaking Point report highlighted the fact that families with a severely disabled child were receiving on average less than two hours' support per week. When we neglect these families and fail to provide them with the right level of support, it all too often results in family break-up and even abuse and neglect. These unfortunate children are then additionally disadvantaged and made still more vulnerable. It is a simply dreadful situation. report highlighted the fact that families with a severely disabled child were receiving on average less than two hours' support per week. When we neglect these families and fail to provide them with the right level of support, it all too often results in family break-up and even abuse and neglect. These unfortunate children are then additionally disadvantaged and made still more vulnerable. It is a simply dreadful situation.

I look to hearing the Government's response to the joint inspectors' report and to the concerns raised in this debate. I hope, and indeed expect, that this response will herald the actions which the Government intend to take to ensure the very necessary improvements to safeguard disabled children. To leave the second joint chief inspectors' review mouldering on a mountain of ignored Whitehall paper would be a national disgrace.

My Lords, as an ex-military man I am speaking in this debate only because, in paragraph 5.7 of the report to which my noble friend Lord Listowel is drawing your Lordships' attention, it is recorded that reports by the House of Commons Defence Committee and the Adult Learning Inspectorate indicated that there have been deficiencies in the safeguarding arrangements for young people of 16-plus who are recruited into training in the Armed Forces. None of the recommendations, understandably, refers specifically to child protection; but as the report being debated implies that outside welfare inspections focusing on the safety, protection and welfare of young people under 18 in the Armed Forces would be a good thing, I felt someone should put the whole question of leadership, motivation and morale of young people in the forces in some sort of perspective.

Of course, few of these people in their middle and late teens voluntarily entering the armed services would really wish to be thought of as children, nor should encouraging them in that belief be the job of the military training machine, which, recognising the risks and challenges of the profession of arms, should be trying to "make men of them"—and I use the term, of course, in the broadest sense. But having said that, there is always the sanctity and importance of the individual, whatever the age; and the younger and more vulnerable they are, the more care, attention and understanding may be necessary in their management.

First, let us look at the facts. The services, generally speaking, do not recruit young men and women before they are seventeen and a half. The major exception is the Army, which has two junior regiments, one at Harrogate for the technical arms and one at Bassingbourne. Those have been set up, quite properly, to encourage recruiting and give apprentice and leadership training with a longer-term aim, perhaps, of providing the senior artificers, warrant officers and sometimes officers of the future. As things stand at the moment, both those young soldiers regiments of about 400 each are subject to periodical inspections by the Adult Learning Inspectorate, as I believe are all units carrying out recruit training. I am sure that the Ministry of Defence accepts this completely, but personally I wonder how helpful and necessary those inspections are, as they are often conducted—as I suppose is natural—with greater emphasis on protecting the juvenile from any of life's trials and tribulations than on the development of character and robustness, and perhaps with little regard to the military code and the stresses and strains likely to be faced in future.

If the training machine is doing its job properly, which in most cases I believe it does, it should be building up in the young recruit of whatever age the confidence in the organisation and efficiency of the unit, and the discipline to develop the individual's willpower and—most important of all—the individual's self-respect and self-esteem, as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, mentioned. All those are essential ingredients of a high morale, and they should allow these young people to face up to the future with confidence and a glad heart, to overcome whatever challenges lie ahead.

In the services, it should be a question not of children mattering but of every individual soldier mattering. Two-way communication between leadership and led, about future intentions and justified grievances, is a very important factor in fostering high morale. Field Marshall Montgomery—Monty—and Nelson realised that only too well. That may need even more emphasis with the younger recruits, not least to tide them over the strangeness of being away from home for the first time. Love—platonic love—is also an essential ingredient in any leadership worthy of its name and should be there too; but it must be tough love, which tests, stimulates and inspires, and not one that simply wraps in cotton wool and makes life easy. Being kept fit, achieving things, getting satisfaction from that achievement and making a positive contribution to the group are all the stated aims in the "every child matters" programme; these days, you have to have a programme for everything. But these are part and parcel of building a high morale in which physical abuse or degradation of any sort should have no part whatever and indeed would be utterly counter-productive, although in a profession as potentially hazardous and risky as the Armed Forces any emphasis on keeping the individual recruit, even a minor, "safe from injury" must be compatible with rigorous, well organised and well supervised training with, of course, clear cut safety rules. For without some degree of risk in training, real or imagined, a true sense of achievement is bound to be limited. I say this having spent a large part of the earlier part of my life training young soldiers.

If things have gone wrong in the past in a training establishment, as some events and reports seem, for whatever reason—shortage of staff, poor living conditions—to indicate, and young people have suffered, I submit that it is the leadership and the chain of command as a whole which had, I hope temporarily and locally, "lost the plot" about the best way of building high morale. The solution I suggest should lie not in resorting to inspections by an alien, albeit well-meaning, organisation more concerned with protecting than with motivating and inspiring, but in making sure that the chain of command brings the leadership in any and every training organisation right up to scratch with proper supervision by officers, warrant officers and senior NCOs who are enthusiastic about the job and are qualified to do it and who have a clear concept of the meaning of morale and the best way to achieve it.

Get the training positive, well organised and progressive; get the leadership and supervision right; build up that confidence, discipline and self-respect, then results will ensure that every individual matters, the welfare of the young will be safeguarded and the watchful eye of a "nanny knows best" organisation would be quite superfluous. Those who cannot respond and react to that positive and committed form of leadership, and who are there only because of the over-zealousness of the recruiting staff, probably have no place in our wholly volunteer forces.

My Lords, it is what is not in Safeguarding Children that I want to talk about. There is absolutely nothing in it about safeguarding children from those local authorities whose speciality seems to be stealing people's children on the flimsiest of pretexts and offering them for adoption. that I want to talk about. There is absolutely nothing in it about safeguarding children from those local authorities whose speciality seems to be stealing people's children on the flimsiest of pretexts and offering them for adoption.

I refer your Lordships to an article in the 30 August by Cassandra Jardine in which she mentions a number of cases which had come to her notice. This was no surprise to me as cases have been coming to my ears over the last few years, but when I drew a Minister's attention to a particular one, I got nowhere.Daily Telegraph on the leader page on on the leader page on

On 14 August there was a horrifying case reported in the Mail on Sunday of two children taken from their parents by Essex County Council because the mother had "a slight learning difficulty". After being taken into care one of the children developed hydrocephalus or swelling of the brain, possibly genetic but possibly caused by an injury. As a result the would-be adopters—oh yes, they were already lined up!—did not want them after all. So those children, who had suffered the hell of being removed from a perfectly happy home, were condemned to be brought up in care, with all the danger of abuse, loneliness and misery that we all know perfectly well a childhood in care entails. Neither is a thought given nowadays to the misery of the parents whose beloved children have been torn away from them. of two children taken from their parents by Essex County Council because the mother had "a slight learning difficulty". After being taken into care one of the children developed hydrocephalus or swelling of the brain, possibly genetic but possibly caused by an injury. As a result the would-be adopters—oh yes, they were already lined up!—did not want them after all. So those children, who had suffered the hell of being removed from a perfectly happy home, were condemned to be brought up in care, with all the danger of abuse, loneliness and misery that we all know perfectly well a childhood in care entails. Neither is a thought given nowadays to the misery of the parents whose beloved children have been torn away from them.

When I voted, to the horror of many of my colleagues last year, in favour of allowing gay couples to adopt children, I did so because I believed that it would reduce the number of children being brought up in that most wretched of situations—in care. Now I am beginning to believe that I have been completely conned by both the Government and the local authority social services, and that this was a plot between the Government and the local authorities to enable the local authorities to steal more children and offer them for adoption.

The only ray of light that I have seen among all the incomprehensible jargon that has landed on my desk is a paper called Disclosure of information in family proceedings cases involving children: response to the public consultation, which was published by the Department for Constitutional Affairs in July. It is almost incomprehensible too, but I hope that I am right in thinking that it advocates more openness in family court procedures, so that accused parents might be able to find out what the evidence against them is, which at present they cannot do. I do not think that anything has happened yet, and I have no reason to suppose that it ever will., which was published by the Department for Constitutional Affairs in July. It is almost incomprehensible too, but I hope that I am right in thinking that it advocates more openness in family court procedures, so that accused parents might be able to find out what the evidence against them is, which at present they cannot do. I do not think that anything has happened yet, and I have no reason to suppose that it ever will.

The whole area of childcare is of very great concern to me. None of us wants any more cases such as that of Victoria Climbié, but things are now going too far the other way, and local authorities are now so frightened of having another case like that that they can hardly bear to leave any child in a home that does not conform to their politically correct, cornflake packet, Janet and John ideal. I part completely from them over that, because I believe that even quite a bad home is infinitely preferable to being in care, or even being taken away from everything you have ever known to be adopted by strangers. Things have to be very bad indeed for that to be preferable.

I call tell noble Lords from my own circle of acquaintance that—because of the propensity of doctors in cahoots with social workers to believe the worst—the wife of a young friend of mine, when their son aged five did something silly and banged his head and concussed himself, as children are so wont to do, did not dare take him to their own GP, but put him in the car and drove him 150 miles to Edinburgh to her father, who was a GP. Lucky her to be able to do that! Few have that option in this nasty nanny and police state that we now seem to be living in.

My Lords, I begin by joining others in congratulating the noble Earl on securing this debate in such an important area. He is a real champion for children, and he has earned the respect of the whole House by his determination to ensure that their plight, especially that of vulnerable children, is constantly before us.

This debate comes at a crucial time in the development of children's services, and in particular the concept of safeguarding. The report recognises, as the noble Earl outlined, that safeguarding children has not been fully or sufficiently defined in law or government guidance. Personally, I prefer the concept promulgated by Sir William Utting in 1997 in the report People Like Us, which defines safeguarding as a distinct activity in,, which defines safeguarding as a distinct activity in,

"taking pro-active steps to keep children safe",

as against the more narrowly defined child protection concept of,

"keeping children safe from harm such as illness, abuse or injury".

It may be that the discussion around the new draft of Working Together will give an opportunity for further consideration, and the Minister may wish to say something to the House about how the new guidance will address some of the issues raised in the debate. will give an opportunity for further consideration, and the Minister may wish to say something to the House about how the new guidance will address some of the issues raised in the debate.

Why is this so important? We need to continue to develop a common language around safety to help different professionals work together. It has been apparent in Committee on the Children and Adoption Bill that measurement of safety is a complex area. The minimisation of risk in one part of family life may increase it in another. Reducing contact with a parent where there is domestic violence may be a reasonable measure, but the risk of violence, balanced with the value of contact, may raise other questions when looking at the interests of the child as a whole.

Common understanding is even more important as we move to consider yet another stage of change in the structures of services in the inspectorates. There is a myth that if you make people work in the same structure they will be more open with each other and communicate at a different level. Cultural change in organisations is much more complex than that. The work of the inspectorates illuminates those issues, showing examples of good practice where agencies are working together better to safeguard children.

I am particularly pleased that more effort is now devoted to listening to and consulting children. I take this opportunity to congratulate Roger Morgan, the Children's Rights Director for England, and the Commission for Social Care Inspection—CSCI—for the way in which they have spearheaded consultation with children of all ages.

I am clear that engaging all agencies who work with children in ensuring their safety will take training, new policy frameworks and excellent leadership to be achieved. While the report demonstrates that the priority given to safeguarding children has increased, together with an increase in the status of the work and good practice, there is still a worry about the most vulnerable groups of society. I had hoped that that work would have been consolidated, so that those areas could be properly addressed by the continuation of stability in the inspectorates.

There are still considerable concerns about the differing thresholds applied by social workers in their child protection and family support work, and about the understanding of the role of social workers by other agencies, as has been outlined and will be spoken about again by other noble Lords. I support what has already been said about the role of social workers and foster carers, the lack of value that we apparently place upon them and circumstances under which they work. I see this in my role as deputy chair of CAFCASS where referrals are of a wide variety of competence.

Until recently, CAFCASS had hoped to be inspected by CSCI in order to be more integrated into the Every Child Matters agenda, rather than focusing entirely within the court system. Indeed, CAFCASS is already acting on the recommendation in the safeguarding report to increase the participation of children in the family court system. But the proposals set out by the Government in agenda, rather than focusing entirely within the court system. Indeed, CAFCASS is already acting on the recommendation in the safeguarding report to increase the participation of children in the family court system. But the proposals set out by the Government in Consultation on a single inspectorate for children and learners gives me cause for serious concern. gives me cause for serious concern.

The proposals would establish an "enlarged Ofsted" that would encompass the current roles of Ofsted, with the children's social care inspection currently with CSCI and the Adult Learning Inspectorate coming together. The proposal lacks intellectual rigour and appears to have been a policy made on the hoof, rather like national social care inspection being turned into CSCI two years ahead without any thought about the organisational implications of making that work.

I have spent my entire working life in social care; I have seen fads come and go and currently the Government seem to think that adult social care and children's social care should be split up. I have yet to meet anyone in social care who agrees with that proposal. I am not interested in keeping things as they were—I believe in change—or in fighting for vested interests. I am interested in ensuring that children are properly safeguarded. The commission shines a light on the social care services that are being provided to some of the most vulnerable and difficult children in our society, albeit a small percentage of the total.

Ofsted looks at education services for all children. CSCI ensures that there is a relentless focus on the individual child and some of our most vulnerable children—that is at the heart of its culture. Ofsted, appropriately, has a somewhat more utilitarian approach of the greatest good for the greatest number. Culturally they are years apart. It is not about structures of inspection bodies, but about the culture of the people working for and running those organisations. I am yet to be convinced that safeguarding will not be put at risk, and that all that will be lost under the Government's proposals.

Will the Minister address a specific question? If we really want to focus on children's services, why is children's health not to be part of the new children's inspectorate, the enlarged Ofsted? After all, successful outcomes for many children using social care will depend on high-quality health services. It should be remembered that many children on the Child Protection Register are less than three years old.

If the Government decide to pursue this policy, let us hope they ensure that a report of this standard comes to the House, to continue an understanding of what is happening, because all such children's lives and futures demand better safeguarding—the best safeguarding our society can offer.

My Lords, I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Listowel on securing this important debate on safeguarding children—in particular, vulnerable children. I will focus on some aspects of the care of young children and briefly mention minority ethnic children leaving care.

Progress has been made in the three years since the joint inspectors' first report in 2002. As a result of the Government's Green Paper Every Child Matters, arrangements are being developed between local authority departments of education and cultural services, social services and NHS primary care trusts, in order for local teams of staff with a range of skills to provide partnership services for all children from April 2006. A management structure will ensure that information about vulnerable children is shared with the team and monitored at regular intervals by supervisors. This is the plan for my locality, the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, serving 80,000 children. I look forward to better outcomes for children and families in this new arrangement of partnerships, which will be informed by good practice in other parts of the country., arrangements are being developed between local authority departments of education and cultural services, social services and NHS primary care trusts, in order for local teams of staff with a range of skills to provide partnership services for all children from April 2006. A management structure will ensure that information about vulnerable children is shared with the team and monitored at regular intervals by supervisors. This is the plan for my locality, the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, serving 80,000 children. I look forward to better outcomes for children and families in this new arrangement of partnerships, which will be informed by good practice in other parts of the country.

I welcome this report of the second review of the joint inspectors. They make recommendations to improve the procedures and arrangements to safeguard children, aimed mostly at statutory services. However, services can be commissioned by authorities from providers in the voluntary and private sectors. All agencies should therefore implement the recommendations in paragraphs 3.11 to 3.14, aimed at the recruitment of staff with adequate training and appropriate skills—in other words, to communicate effectively with children, identify potential child protection concerns, detect signs of abuse or neglect in children, track and monitor behaviour patterns and follow appropriate child protection procedures.

There is sufficient evidence that safeguarding children should begin from birth, and the Sure Start programme implements this principle. It serves families living in economic deprivation, usually with associated problems of poor education and harmful lifestyles, such as drug taking.

The report does not mention specific services for the under-fives, which are vital to reduce harm to children living at home. I want to identify a nursery for babies and young children that serves vulnerable children in Birkenhead, based at the Wirral Multicultural Centre. I declare an interest, as I am vice-president of that centre. This small nursery takes 21 babies and children from different ethnic groups, although the majority are from white backgrounds. Age groups cared for range from birth up to five years of age. Their mothers use this nursery because they are entering employment, are teenage mothers attending school, or are drug users on treatment requiring respite care. All receive assistance from government services, including Sure Start. The nursery is open from just before eight o'clock in the morning, to just after six o'clock in the evening.

This newly built nursery, which opened in September 2003, is covered by closed circuit television—CCTV. Parents who ask are shown clips of their children in the nursery. CCTV is particularly useful for the manager in monitoring children's care routines. It protects both children and staff. These young children are listened to by nursery staff. What they say about themselves and their home is recorded and discussed in staff meetings after operating hours. Children are encouraged to help each other, and to develop independence.

During the first year of the nursery's opening, mothers bought from shops pre-packed food—usually yoghurt, cheese, crackers and sometimes hot dogs—for their children. Since September this year, cooked food with no preservatives or additives has been provided by the nursery. The cooks who provide this food also supply the local hospital's child patients and can provide special food for children with allergies, as well as ethnic food preferences. Nursery staff members are convinced that the change to cooked food has improved the behaviour and attention span of children attending the nursery. This improvement may be because these children's stomachs are now full of healthy food.

Some of the nursery staff have NVQ level 3 qualifications, including training in child protection, and some are students on NVQ courses. Staff changes occur regularly, however, as trained staff receive under £11,000 per annum, significantly less than a hairdresser in Birkenhead. This unsatisfactory salary scale for nursery workers is determined by the fees paid by the local authority for each child and sends the message that government—local and central—values safeguarding children less than the public value their hairdressers. I ask the Minister to consider a review of salaries for trained people who work to safeguard our children in nurseries.

Finally, the disproportionate representation in public care of children and young people from some minority ethnic groups has long been documented, but their subsequent life chances and experiences after leaving care have been largely neglected by researchers. There is now a report, published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, on the experience of young care leavers from different ethnic groups, documented in a survey of 261 young people by a team from Royal Holloway College at the University of London. Some of their conclusions include that:

"Many young people experienced disruption and disadvantage during and after care; however white young people fared the worst in terms of placement instability, early departure from care, poor educational outcomes, homelessness, and risk taking behaviour including criminal activity and drug use. Caribbean and mixed-parentage young people were also at a high risk of disadvantage. However, placements in families which reflected their own ethnic background helped to instil stability and counter the effects of disruption for some Caribbean youngsters".

I trust that the Minister will mention how the Government might pay more attention to some of the recommendations from this report, as well as the experiences we are describing today.

My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for securing this important debate. He is a great champion for vulnerable children, and we all owe him a great deal. I am also pleased that this debate will be replied to by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I am sure his approach from an educational, child-centred perspective will open our eyes to better ways of solving some of the problems we are discussing here today.

I also congratulate the Government on the new arrangements for children based on the philosophy of "safeguarding", which allow all services for children to be seen as a whole. Doing so highlights how deeply unacceptable some practices are and how different standards apply to different categories of children—for example, children in the justice system.

One great step forward is the commitment to consulting children. The Youth Justice Board has been fulfilling its obligation to do this; children were consulted about their views on being in custody and how they would like their life there to be improved. Noble Lords will find this summarised in the Youth Justice Board's Secure Estate Bulletin of September 2005. The children said, among other things, of September 2005. The children said, among other things,

"We think the staff should be properly trained. We want to be kept separate from adults. We would like to be held close to home".

They asked for education and training that was useful, and they worried about what would happen to them when they left custody. They said:

"It is important for outside inspectors to keep a close eye on what is going on in the places where we are held".

I am sure that the Minister will wish to see those aspirations realised.

The inspectors' report raised a number of issues about children in all forms of custody. First, they noted that insufficient priority was given to safeguarding vulnerable boys and girls of 15 and over in young offender institutions who have been placed there, the inspectors say, inappropriately. In the House, we have discussed many times the placing of vulnerable children in inappropriate places of punishment and the sometimes tragic consequences when we fail. I hope that the Minister can help me to establish whether we have made any progress in the area.

As I understand it, the number of children in custody is the highest since December 2002. I read in the press on 4 September—the Minister might confirm whether it is accurate—that the chief executive of the Youth Justice Board had said that overcrowding had led to a large number of juveniles ending up in prison-run institutions that, she says, are not appropriate for vulnerable children. I understand that all the local authority secure beds at the disposal of the Youth Justice Board are full. I read that, only last Wednesday, there was a disturbance at Hindley Young Offender Institution. They say that it was a disturbance; it looks a bit more like a minor riot. The consequence is that about 70 beds—70 prison places—are out of use. That increases the pressure on places generally.

We know that a large number of the young people in young offender institutions are classified as vulnerable by the local youth offending team. Can the Minister confirm that the number of vulnerable children so classified is about 900? As the available local authority secure beds are all full, some—if not all—of those 900 will be in young offender institutions. Can the Minister tell us whether any of those 900 were held in Hindley and were affected by the disturbance? How many of them are being held inappropriately? Can the Minister report to the House on the outcome of discussions that a number of noble Lords present today held with his predecessor, the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton of Upholland? They arose from the sad case of the suicide of Joseph Scholes, and concerned the possibility of legislation to allow a wider variety of placements for vulnerable children sentenced to custody, so that the Youth Justice Board can fulfil its safeguarding responsibilities by placing vulnerable children more appropriately. We thought that there would be a youth justice Bill including such a measure; is that likely to be the case?

The inspectors also expressed concern about the use of physical control, strip searching and segregation in all the custodial institutions, including the secure training centres run by security companies, which take children from the age of 12. On physical control, the Minister may have seen the announcement about the new Government-approved arrangements for physical restraint. I read about it in a newspaper report, so I would be grateful to know whether it is accurate. It spoke of nose tweaking and thumb and rib distractions, apparently involving the deliberate infliction of pain. It says that, when three staff are holding a child, it is preferable that they do so with a nurse present to keep an eye on the child's head. Is the Minister satisfied that the new arrangements enshrine the best principles of safeguarding children and good childcare practice?

Another issue raised by the inspectors is the considerable concern felt about children in immigration removal centres and the lack of proper arrangements for their care and protection. The recent report by the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, on Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre notes that some children were being damaged by detention and that child protection procedures were not in place. Can the Minister tell us whether that situation has improved?

Can he also comment on the recent reports of the treatment of the three children of the Vucaj family, who were, it is said, pulled from their beds in their home in Glasgow in their pyjamas in a dawn raid by 16 immigration officers, who were apparently in uniform and wearing body armour? One of the children was handcuffed. They were all put into some method of transport and taken away to England—to great protests, I may say, from many people in Scotland, including the Children's Commissioner. Can the Minister confirm whether any or all of those facts are correct, and can he indicate how far, in his view, such treatment of children accords with the spirit of the Every Child Matters programme? programme?

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Listowel for securing this opportunity for the debate. We all applaud his terrier-like tenacity in everything that he does on behalf of children.

We would also all wish to applaud the improvements that have been achieved since the inspectors last reported in 2002. To mention just one, clearly far greater attention is at last being paid to obtaining the views of children and young people—not least when arrangements are made which will directly affect their lives and, in some cases, safety. During a period of almost constant change in the working practices of all those involved in the vital job of safeguarding children, such progress has been a great success.

However, as the inspectors made plain, there are a number of areas where concerns remain, and those need to be addressed urgently. For example, the huge variation in the degree of priority given to the safeguarding of children remains unsatisfactory. One illustration is that, although virtually all our 43 police forces have clear child protection and guidance procedures, child protection itself is not a priority in 18—or 41 per cent of—police authorities.

Another example is the wide variation of threshold applied by local authorities and other involved organisations in deciding—indeed, even in recognising—when action is necessary. The inspectors point to staff recruitment problems and to the wide variations in the training provided even on how to recognise signs of abuse or neglect. Yet, if the safeguarding aims of the 2004 Act are to be achieved, surely it is vital for the agreed protocols to be set at a national, rather than local, level.

The concept of "safeguarding" was very well defined by Sir William Utting as,

"taking proactive steps to keep children safe".

As the inspectors remind us, the 2004 Act imposed on agencies a duty to safeguard and promote their welfare. So the inspectors are surely right to be concerned about the need to achieve the right balance between universal and other preventive services.

Clearly a huge financial and staff cost is involved in the reorganisation and, above all, the satisfactory integration and co-operation between the different levels of required provision for children already at risk. For that reason, I am particularly concerned to know whether there will still be sufficient resources for continued expansion of the all-important pre-preventive action, such as the old Sure Start.

Concern about that has already been expressed in the Education and Skills Select Committee's ninth report. Significant changes already made to Sure Start might well undermine important preventive work that has been going on with deprived, although not yet fully at risk, families. We should surely be striving to expand that kind of work, the essence of which is action involving, and listening to, parents, the local community and voluntary organisations. While I am on that subject, given the shortage of specialist trained staff, why are the Government not giving financial support to voluntary organisations such as Learning Through Action, which runs valuable "keeping safe" interactive workshops in schools? Apparently, it has been turned down by the DfES because what it does is non-statutory, and those distributing the lottery funds have turned it down because they do not fund statutory work. Something has gone a little wrong there.

Preventive action must be the best hope of lessening the huge cost to the state, let alone the wastage of talent of far too many lives which end up within the penal system. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me that my concerns are unfounded.

I now want to say a word about the importance of extra support for looked-after children and young people, whether they are in the care of local authorities, in secure children's homes, secure training centres or young offender institutions, and especially when they are placed outside their own home area. Along with many of your Lordships, to say nothing of the United Nations, I start from the premise that prison is not the place for these vulnerable young people. The fact that 29 such young people, including two this year—one even since your Lordships' House last met—have committed suicide since 1990 should emphasise that conclusion.

Sadly, the number of these often very disturbed children in YOIs, many with a history of self-harming, increased from 3,130 last year to 3,423 now. Those figures include girls. That is an increase of 9 per cent, despite the fact that the Youth Justice Board set itself a target of a 10 per cent reduction over the same period. Frankly, this whole situation is becoming a disgrace. The Minister can hardly be happy with it, not least as reoffending by young prisoners is apparently almost at the 90 per cent level.

So what are the Government's plans for creating appropriate specialist institutions for dealing with the, sadly, growing number of vulnerable children needing secure, certainly, and far more specialist and individualised education, training and care than prison can possibly provide them with?

I turn now to other groups of children who are being looked after. I find very disturbing the apparent assumption that in some areas, once committed to the care of the authorities, the child will, by definition, be safe. How I wish it was so. The children themselves rightly identify a wide range of risks to their safety, which make them more vulnerable than if they lived at home. Seemingly, a wide range of individuals and organisations used by councils to provide "care" of this kind have not in the past been covered by regulation. Perhaps the Minister can tell the House what plans there are in this regard for the future.

The report also rightly emphasises the specific extra need for children in care to have contact with reliable and trusted adults. As paragraph 5.23 points out, reliable adults are important,

"especially for children in out of area placements in foster care, children's homes or residential special schools".

So it is particularly sad to see that these children often have infrequent contact, even with a social worker from their placing council. Indeed, in 2003, only half the councils had even allocated all their looked-after children to a social worker. Still more disturbing, we are told that social services often fail to arrange for a looked-after child who is not in touch with his family to have an independent visitor. The inspector's report recommends that, subject to the individual child's wishes, local authorities should consider providing that. Surely local authorities should do more than just consider such action. A young person from a deprived background, out of touch with his family, badly needs someone reliable to take his side—someone who can be safely confided in and preferably, over time, become a friend. I can remember speaking on this very point some years ago in your Lordships' House. This is exactly the kind of role that suitably trained volunteers, such as those working with Sure Start, could take on. I hope that the Minister will give some reassurance on that point.

My Lords, I join all those who have congratulated my noble friend Lord Listowel on obtaining this important debate. Like others, during the time that I have known him, I have come to admire the determination and depth of his interest in this very important group of our population.

I declare two interests. First, I was Her Majesty's Inspector of Prisons in 1999 when the then Chief Inspector of Social Services was required to conduct the first safeguarding review. I immediately responded to that. I first inspected prisons in 1995 and when I discovered four 15 year-old girls in Holloway prison with no possible way of looking after them, I determined that we ought to be doing something about children in the prison system. I asked social services inspectors to come with me to compare the conditions with what should have been provided in social services' accommodation. I employed a full-time consultant who had been a director of social services and of the National Children's Bureau.

In 1997, I published a report called Young Prisoners in which I made two points. First, that I did not believe prison was appropriate for children. Prisons are adult places and staff are trained to look after adults, not children. If children need custody, it should not be in the prison service. The second issue which worried me—and it still worries me—is that I called for someone to be appointed as director of children or of young offenders in the Prison Service to be responsible for what was done with them wherever they were. I called for that continuously until 2001 and I have continued to do so. I notice that one of the recommendations requires that the National Offender Management Service and the Youth Justice Board should process good practice, but they will never do so unless someone is responsible for it. in which I made two points. First, that I did not believe prison was appropriate for children. Prisons are adult places and staff are trained to look after adults, not children. If children need custody, it should not be in the prison service. The second issue which worried me—and it still worries me—is that I called for someone to be appointed as director of children or of young offenders in the Prison Service to be responsible for what was done with them wherever they were. I called for that continuously until 2001 and I have continued to do so. I notice that one of the recommendations requires that the National Offender Management Service and the Youth Justice Board should process good practice, but they will never do so unless someone is responsible for it.

As regards my second interest, currently I am a member of an inquiry being conducted by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, into the use of restraint and seclusion in secure children's homes. During the course of that, we have visited virtually every such home in the country and I am sure that when the report is published it will be of interest to your Lordships.

Like others, I approach the subject with concern about what will happen to the report. I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is here on behalf of the Minister for Children and Families who resides in the Department for Education and Skills. But on reading the report, one realises that it affects the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, with his responsibility for community safety and local government. One realises that it also affects the Secretary of State for Health, who has a responsibility for social services. One realises that it affects the Home Secretary, with his responsibility for the Prison Service, the Probation Service and the Youth Justice Board as well as the immigration and detention service. Then, quite apart from the essential presence of the Chancellor, the Department for Constitutional Affairs, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport all have an involvement in what is required.

Like my noble and gallant friend Lord Bramall, I have a military background. We were taught and brought up on a chain of command, with responsibility from top to bottom, to ensure that things happened. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain exactly what the chain of command is for implementing all the many recommendations in the report which bear on many other ministries. In 1999, my fellow chief inspectors and I published a report entitled Casework Information Needs in the Criminal Justice System listing the items of information which were required by, unable to be obtained by, or obtained only with difficulty from the constabulary, the prisons, the probation and social services, the courts and the magistrates' services. It ended up on the ignored shelf in all the ministries to which we had directed it because none of them could work out who was responsible for actioning what we had outlined. Information remains sadly missing in many aspects dealing with safeguarding children. listing the items of information which were required by, unable to be obtained by, or obtained only with difficulty from the constabulary, the prisons, the probation and social services, the courts and the magistrates' services. It ended up on the ignored shelf in all the ministries to which we had directed it because none of them could work out who was responsible for actioning what we had outlined. Information remains sadly missing in many aspects dealing with safeguarding children.

In addition to my concern about the absence of a director for children in the Prison Service, I am greatly concerned about the lack of training of staff to look after children, particularly the lack of training people who are described as personal officers of key workers. I find that surprising. In 1996, I discovered that the Trust for the Study of Adolescence had organised training for those working with boys at Her Majesty's young offender establishment at Lancaster Farms and with girls at Her Majesty's young offender establishment at Drake Hall. It was a very good course. I and all my inspectors went though both of them and I invited the then Home Secretary, Michael Howard, to join us in one of our training sessions. He did so, admitting that he had not quite realised how much was involved. However, it is strange that although that course ran in 1996, we find the organisation congratulating itself on introducing training for trainers in 2005. What has been happening? Staff must be trained to look after children, otherwise they will not be safeguarded.

Finally, when I was chief inspector there were no action plans on what was meant to be happening in prisons. I arranged with the then Home Secretary, Jack Straw, for a protocol which required the Prison Service to produce action plans at nine, 18 and 24 months. I followed them up with unannounced inspections to see that they were being actioned. At the same time, I arranged for the same work to be done with the Youth Justice Board, then chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, who is not here today. But that has not happened with the board.

Unless we have an action plan that is dated and lists who is to do what and by when, this will not be the only report on safeguarding children still awaiting action. In two or three years' time, we will be back again considering yet other unactioned recommendations. If I have one plea to the Minister, while sympathising with the fact that he represents so many, it would be to lay an action plan before us which we can monitor to see that our children are safeguarded in future.

My Lords, perhaps I may remind noble Lords that this is a time-limited debate and that we are now very tight for time.

My Lords, are we not doing well on the Cross Benches? The job of giving one's own children the love and care that they need is already tough. Sometimes it has its compensations. However, looking after other people's children can be much more difficult, especially when they have been emotionally or cognitively damaged by their earlier life. The relatively low chances of reversing that damage sometimes make it even more depressing.

As I read the report, it screamed at me that we as a nation are asking too much of those whom we employ to do the job of looking after other people's children. The report clearly shows that there are not enough people who, under the present terms, want to care for damaged children and children at risk; there is not enough time and money being put into training them; society does not adequately value their work; and, in some cases the organisation and leadership are not adequate. Those are generalisations; many admirable and dedicated people work in the service. Some services in some areas are working well, but some are not.

It is evident from media coverage that we as a society expect a flawless service in the protection of children. Up to a point, it is right that we should do so. But it is no good expecting that throwing more work and responsibility at already over-stretched services will provide the answer to that problem.

In passing, I say to the noble Baroness, Lady, Morris of Bolton, who seems to be alone on her Benches, that if she would care to offer me the leadership of the Conservative Party, I would undertake a policy of one year without any new legislation or regulations.

I should like briefly to suggest one or two ways forward. In doing so, I am assuming that in reality the money and human resources to build the perfect state service will never realistically be available in the face of the current level of demand and the increase in demand that we must anticipate. I am talking mainly about the preventive action mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, because every child who needs to be taken into care is a failure of our society.

First, we should think again about what parents contribute and what they could contribute to the safety of their children. We should do more to engage parents in securing the safety of other people's children. An obvious example of this is the lollypop ladies and gentlemen who help children across the road after school, but that is only one of many examples one can think of. Today we do very little to prepare parents for, and to support them in, their difficult task of bringing up their children and securing their safety. Let us do more there. We could do much more to reduce the flow of sad children into the care of the state if we were more positive in supporting committed parents.

Families and neighbours are important too. We could do much more to support the solidarity of families and communities. Grandparents could live near to their families instead of on the other side of town; local authority housing policy could quite simply be changed. There are many other ways. Then there are communities. How can we engage communities more in looking after other people's children as they used to? In the days of the slums, people knew who other people's children were, they saw if they were getting into trouble and they would care for them. People knew people. People now live in tower blocks where nobody knows anybody.

Turning to the caring services, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, referred to morale. The success of armies in the field and of businesses depends greatly on morale. What can we do to raise the morale of the army of good people that is working to safeguard children? Today, morale is very low in many of those services. What about leadership? Are we attracting really able people into key roles and are we motivating them appropriately?

My final point relates to what one of my sons calls "the army of safety Hitlers". Somewhere in the corridors of Whitehall, there seems to be a group of people who believe that if there are enough rules, regulations and inspections, perfect safety is possible. Sadly, that is not true in the world we live in. Of course, some regulations are necessary, but endless detailed directions, checklists, rules, inspections and the fear of litigation can be counterproductive because they can drive good people out of the caring professions. I know that they are doing so in the youth service. I do not know about the other professions, but I suspect that some people are leaving and less people are tempted by the job.

Leadership is about assessing risk and then balancing risk against advantage. I should like to see an account drawn up of which is better for the safety and wellbeing of children: children's services dominated by prescription and fear of litigation, or children's services attracting and motivating the most able and dedicated workforce possible. I think I know the answer.

My Lords, I was very pleased to see the priority given to the mental health aspects of care in this welcome report. I was particularly pleased to see the emphasis on the mental health of 16 to 18 year-olds and that often neglected group, those with challenging mental health problems in secure settings. I shall comment on some aspects of the mental health difficulties of young people. I identify myself with the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Rix, about children with learning disabilities and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, about substance misuse, because it is clear that the problems of substance misuse and mental health are rapidly becoming indivisible in young adults, and that reflects the state of children.

The report describes the all too familiar gap between children's and adult services for mental health, a trench between systems of care into which young people often fall. The main problem is that the problems of young people are not seen as a priority by adult services, which are geared up largely to manage people with psychotic illnesses, which has, quite rightly, been the emphasis in the development of services in mental health for the past few years. But when matters go seriously wrong and young people need an in-patient bed, all too often there is no appropriate service for them.

There are insufficient specialist beds. At the moment, around 260 admissions of children under 18 on to adult wards are reported every year to the Mental Health Act Commission. This is almost certainly an underestimate due to underreporting. The Mental Health Act Commission has repeatedly drawn attention to this issue, and it was again raised in evidence to the recent joint scrutiny committee on the draft Mental Health Bill. There are insufficient specialised in-patient facilities and they are unevenly distributed around the country. In some areas, such as the north-east and the north-west, local clinicians find themselves hard-pressed to provide an acute admission directly into dedicated bed. Of course, there is no point in having specialist beds if there are no specialist staff. The Royal College of Psychiatrists reports a serious shortfall in the number of specialist children and mental health—CAMHS—psychiatrists, which, on its best estimate, is likely to take at least four or five years to reverse. So, many children and young people in need are treated in facilities far away from their family and friends.

Although the Government are investing a very welcome £300 million in increasing local facilities, it is not happening fast enough. I am pleased to say that my own strategic health authority area in London has been one of the beneficiaries of this investment and we will soon be self-sufficient locally. But I know that there are many other areas where progress is slower.

In regard to the treatment of children in these facilities, I was very pleased to see the recent NICE guidance on treating depression in young people emphasising that cognitive behavioural therapy was often superior to antidepressant medication. In the UK, we are not yet at the point where the prescription of medications is quite as high as it is in the United States, but we are rapidly going that way. We must invest in training people how to manage and assist people through difficulties and emotional problems without the use of medications that have long-term effects.

Young people treated on adult wards are regrettably often harassed by adults on those wards. They have illegal drugs pressed on them and they can be abused in various ways. The criminal backgrounds of patients on adult wards are not checked and are quite often a characteristic of their admission. It is quite possible for an adult patient with a history of child abuse to be on the same ward as a child patient. The National Children's Bureau and the Children's Legal Centre suggested that children can also be at risk from the staff on adult wards because their background checks are not conducted to a standard comparable to those for staff on children's wards.

There is currently no guarantee that children misplaced will ever see a CAMHS specialist, and this has implications for the quality of care they receive. Similarly, specialist mental health services in secure accommodation are variable and there can be culturally diverse approaches, with social care professionals espousing a social model and those from the NHS espousing a medical model; of course, they are bound to clash. But since troubled children and young people need consistent approaches which encompass the best of both models, the more we can jointly manage agreed protocols for tackling individual children's problems the better.

The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, has regularly and often spoken of the need for young people to develop an attachment to a person with a consistent long-term role in their lives. We are miles off being able to give that. One of the few things that is likely to end their cycle of disadvantage is developing good long-term relationships themselves.

I spent many years of my life visiting the special hospitals for mentally-disordered offenders, such as Broadmoor and Ashworth. One striking characteristic was the shocking proportion of patients who had never lived outside an institution from birth. That will be the outcome if we do not get the facilities of teaching and training right now. There have been improvements and there have been very welcome and appropriate investments, but we need more concentrated efforts and faster delivery of the essentials nationwide, particularly if 16 to 18-year olds are to get their mental health problems appropriately dealt with. Can the Minister reassure us that that comprehensive and fast nationwide coverage of facilities will be provided?

My Lords, I add my warm congratulations to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for this timely and important debate. The noble Earl, as we all know, is a doughty champion on behalf of vulnerable young people—would that there were more like him.

This has been a powerful debate which has touched on many important issues. I wish to make three points. First, I take the opportunity to thank the Government for their positive response to the report of the Victoria Climbié inquiry. In my view, the consultation paper Every Child Matters and the Children Act 2004 together hold out the possibility of a new beginning for services for children and families. I put it that way because I fear that the Children Act 1989—an admirable piece of legislation—was never properly implemented. We must learn lessons from that. and the Children Act 2004 together hold out the possibility of a new beginning for services for children and families. I put it that way because I fear that the Children Act 1989—an admirable piece of legislation—was never properly implemented. We must learn lessons from that.

The 1989 Act was deliberately framed to recognise that children and families have a wide and diverse range of needs, yet during the Victoria Climbié inquiry time and time again it was clear that discussions both within departments and between the key agencies were not about Victoria but about whether she qualified for a service. It seemed that only if everyone was convinced that this child was being deliberately harmed would a response to her be made.

It is essential that all the services are helped to break free from this narrow vice-like grip of child protection and that they are helped to recognise that the legislation requires them to do an assessment of the needs of any child who may need help of one kind or another. This is not solely a question of resources, but the value that we as a society place on the proper development of each and every child. There is a need for more resources and more qualified staff, but we must beware of assuming that bad practice is always down to lack of resources.

I remind your Lordships that in the 10 months that Victoria was alive in this country she was known to no fewer than four social services departments, three housing departments and two police specialist child protection teams. She was admitted to two different hospitals and was referred to a centre managed by the NSPCC. It is to the great credit of the first department of social services to which she was referred that it volunteered that lack of resources was not an issue. Had that department done a proper assessment of Victoria's needs, it is possible that none of the other agencies would have become involved and the outcome for Victoria could have been so different. Bad practice is very costly. In the case of Victoria, she paid for it with her life. More resources are needed, but we do not need more of the same. In future we must have an entirely different approach to the needs of children and families.

Secondly, if I were the Secretary of State at the DfES—and it is to the benefit of everyone that I am not—I would want to know what levers for change I have to achieve this change for children and families. I would discover that one of the few levers is that of the inspectorates. There seems to be a belief in government that local agencies are inspected too often. That is a myth. I hope that the Minister will inquire how many years can elapse between inspections of the same service in any particular authority. I say that because in my view the gap is too great.

The implementation of recent legislation is not about a few structural changes. If that were the sole aim, I fear that nothing will have changed. Instead the implementation demands a fundamental change, not only in values but in policies and in practices. It will take years to achieve and success will depend upon robust and determined leadership. Ministers need to know the reality of what is happening at the front door of the key authorities that have already been touched on in this debate. It is vitally important that neither they nor we live in a fool's paradise.

Nothing should be done to weaken specialist inspection services. On the contrary, until such time as the Government can be assured that these changes are embedded everywhere I suggest that the inspection services should be given more resources and wider powers. Without that I fear that we may in future be talking about other tragedies.

Thirdly, the Government have placed an emphasis on supporting families and developing parental skills. I suggest that the Government start by looking at the performance of the state when it takes on the parenting of children and young people. I fear that the record on that is very poor. I invite the House to consider the number of those young people who end up in penal establishments, on drugs or in the mental health services and then compare that with the reality that less than one per cent of them progress to university education. That is just not good enough. We must be more ambitious for these young people—ambitious for their health, their education, their development and the support they receive as they move into adult life. The splendid organization, A National Voice, is campaigning to get rid of bin bags because all too often that is all a young person has when he leave cares—a bin bag with his total possessions.

The journey from the Victoria Climbié inquiry to the implementation of Every Child Matters is a long and arduous journey. The Government have set the agenda very well. This report by the inspectorates sets out some clear indicators for us all to follow. I hope that the Government will show great courage and determination in securing the full implementation of these changes so that in future every child will not only matter but will feel that he matters and will develop his full potential and develop self confidence to become fulfilled and useful members of our society. is a long and arduous journey. The Government have set the agenda very well. This report by the inspectorates sets out some clear indicators for us all to follow. I hope that the Government will show great courage and determination in securing the full implementation of these changes so that in future every child will not only matter but will feel that he matters and will develop his full potential and develop self confidence to become fulfilled and useful members of our society.

My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for the opportunity to debate the serious findings of the joint inspectors' report and to hear from the galaxy of expertise that we have heard today. This, the second report of the eight inspectorates, shows that a lot has improved since the first report, mainly thanks to the Every Child Matters agenda. We need to give enormous credit for the focus, determination and skill of those involved in children's services. Few professions can have such a beneficial effect on the future of our population if they get it right. Few take such criticism if they get it wrong. agenda. We need to give enormous credit for the focus, determination and skill of those involved in children's services. Few professions can have such a beneficial effect on the future of our population if they get it right. Few take such criticism if they get it wrong.

However, the report also shows that children in England are being let down by some aspects of children's services. The good news is that children are increasingly being listened to and involved in decision making by some services; but not everywhere. I would like to pick out just a few areas of concern that struck me on reading the report and listening to the debate this morning. It is a fundamental problem that agencies are still not recognising children's needs and giving appropriate help, protection and support for disabled children being a particular concern.

At the same time, the Home Office is cracking down on children across the country, with its tough package of ASBOs, curfews, dispersals and fixed-penalty notices, and now mini ASBOs, while youth services are being cut. Children with autism and obvious social and behavioural difficulties are quite inappropriately being issued with ASBOs and named and shamed in the local and national press. The anti-social behaviour crackdown makes sure the child and his family wear the label of "criminal" or "failure" rather than learning that systems are there to help them and safeguard their welfare.

Even the media are now becoming concerned about the increasing criminalisation of our children. ASBOs may be civil orders, but breaking them is a criminal offence and gets the child involved with the criminal justice system. When the standard of proof for issuing an ASBO is so low and when we have children who really need help criminalised in that way, we must be concerned.

The inspectors found that, in some places, social services operate high thresholds for getting involved with families, so children and young people are being left without the support to which they are entitled. We must ask ourselves why that is. Could it be the same situation as we have had for many years with statementing in education? The child is not statemented because the officers believe that there is no money to fulfil their statutory needs should they be given a statement. Similarly, the thresholds for family support services are high because if they were lower, the authority believes that it could not cope with the financial burden. Special schools report particular difficulties in getting services for their pupils. As we know that children with special needs are 250 per cent more likely to be excluded from school than other pupils, that is very shortsighted.

Then there is the matter of someone to turn to. Looked-after children value and need contact with their social worker but, as we have heard, a review of 30 councils showed that only half had allocated all looked-after children to a personal social worker. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, I believe that that is quite wrong. Those children need one person that they can relate to and trust and who really knows and understands them.

The report pointed out that most children in family proceedings have little or no say in what happens to them. I have recently been assured by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth of Breckland, that that is changing and I welcome that. However, the Adoption and Children Act 2002 introduced new measures for children to be represented separately in family proceedings. Those have not yet been implemented. Only yesterday, I asked the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, when they would be implemented. He was unable to reply to me yesterday; I wonder whether he can do so today.

The messages of the report and the powerful speech by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, about children's safety and welfare in custody could not be clearer. They warrant an immediate government commitment to reverse the very high number of children in custody and the end of Prison Service custody for children, in line with international human rights standards. More than half of those children are officially designated as vulnerable—vulnerable to physical abuse and drug misuse, as referred to in the striking remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. The Howard League believes that all children in penal custody should be regarded as vulnerable simply by the nature of their incarceration. During 2003 and 2004, more than 21,000 children were admitted to Prison Service custody, with between 3,000 and 3,500 in custody at any one time—more than almost any other developed country. The inspectorates reported that these children can then,

"become exposed to significant risks of bullying and intimidation by other children and of self-harming".

Seven per cent of children in Prison Service custody say that they feel unsafe all the time. It is impossible to safeguard a child kept in a Prison Service establishment, even from the staff, if the recent Guardian report referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, about pain being inflicted on children as young as 12 is anything to go by. This is supposed to be a civilised country. We should not be using that kind of restraint on children. Here again, the idea of someone to relate to is not happening. The personal officer system in young offender institutions, where children get an allocated prison officer, is "seriously underdeveloped"—an understatement by the inspectors. report referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, about pain being inflicted on children as young as 12 is anything to go by. This is supposed to be a civilised country. We should not be using that kind of restraint on children. Here again, the idea of someone to relate to is not happening. The personal officer system in young offender institutions, where children get an allocated prison officer, is "seriously underdeveloped"—an understatement by the inspectors.

Another unacceptable aspect of the treatment of children in custody is routine strip-searching when they arrive at young offender institutions, when young people are at their most vulnerable; and the use of segregation and single separation, when children are made to stay in their rooms. What better way of increasing the already appalling amount of self-harm and suicide? The noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, again reminded us of that. Since 1990, 29 children have died in penal custody. It is a disgrace that there has not been a single public inquiry about any of them. How are we learning from those tragic events? I ask the Minister that question.

It does not get much better when they leave prison. The Howard League tells me that poor planning and support for children on release from custody is widespread. It cites cases of children being placed in bed and breakfast accommodation or even told to go to night shelters. And we wonder why 82 per cent of them reoffend.

The inspectors also reported that children have very few opportunities to bring problems with their treatment to the attention of the authorities. I was surprised and horrified to read that less than 50 per cent of residential special schools have met national standards for responding to children's complaints, and children in young offender institutions very rarely complain since "expectations are low". That is hardly surprising. These are children who are not used to being listened to; why should they waste their breath complaining? We need to create an entirely different culture for such children.

Every Minister should read the section on asylum-seeking children and realise the harm and injustice that is being done to those children. For example, those in private fostering situations could be in "extreme risk", according to the inspectors. It is true that where their child protection needs are recognised, asylum-seeking children are given the same help as other children. However, the inspectors state:

"there is doubt about whether all concerns are adequately identified, including whether children are subject to trafficking for sexual exploitation or under-age girls are kidnapped for forced marriage".

The inspectors criticise the

"centralised administrative procedures which are not independent".

Only a few months ago, the Council of Europe's Human Rights Commissioner condemned the detention of asylum-seeking children and the ministerial review system, saying:

"It is perverse that the burden should lie on the child or his family to take arduous steps to challenge their detention, rather than on the Immigration Service to prove its continuing necessity to an independent authority".

I echo the great concerns of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, about the ability of the children's workforce to implement the Children Act 2004 adequately. I am really worried by what I read about recruitment and retention of a properly checked, trained and skilled workforce. This situation is not new, but it has got worse as the duties, expectations and responsibilities have increased during the past few years—due to what is very welcome legislation. The Government must resource the consequences of their legislation. I of course accept what the noble Lord, Lord Laming, said—it is not just about resources, it is about practice as well—but he also agreed that resources are short. Sadly, the Government often do not do that and children's services are unfortunately a prime example. I would have greater respect for the Government's intentions if they were to do so for a change.

I call on the Minister to say what will be done about the inspectorate. The report is valuable, as was its predecessor. Will the process be done again two or three years down the track? We believe that early intervention and support for children and families by well-trained, integrated services are the answer, but that is another debate. I look forward to hearing the Minister's reply. He appears to have to answer on behalf of about eight Ministers to all the questions that have been put to him.

My Lords, in the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, some of the most vulnerable in our society have a passionate and dedicated advocate. I, too, thank the noble Earl for securing this debate on the vital issue of safeguarding children. I also take this opportunity to thank the associated bodies and the chief inspectorate for their thorough report. I must say that I found the young person's guide especially helpful. Big words and pictures are just the kind of reports that I like to read.

How much I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, that safeguarding is also about building self-esteem and confidence in children. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, talked about fostering being in the front line. I agree and think that foster parents and adoptive parents are simply heroes.

The noble Lord, Lord Rix, in his customary role as champion of the disabled, gave us cause to feel shame at how children with disabilities and their families are treated. The speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, also gave us cause for serious concern. And who could fail to be moved by the powerful speech of the noble Lord, Lord Laming? Uncomfortable as the remarks of the noble Lady, Lady Saltoun of Abernethy, may have been, a number of people share her worries. If ever transparency were needed, it is in adoption. That is why Theresa May as shadow Secretary of State for the Family and for Culture, Media and Sport has called for an investigation, for the sake of everyone involved.

To the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, in her plea for the use of voluntary organisations, and to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, in his call for an accountable action plan, I say, "Hear, hear!". To the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, nominations for leadership of the Conservative Party close today, and I think that he would make an admirable candidate. Today's debate has been as wide-ranging as it has been thought provoking. I would love to have been able to mention every speech, as all noble Lords brought to the debate a wealth of knowledge and insight, and I shall enjoy revisiting it in Hansard.

I wish to focus on how we look after children in care, away from their home, and to emphasise the failing status of looked-after children. Looked-after children are being sent hundreds of miles from home, away from their friends and all that is familiar. As the report highlighted, some councils fail to monitor individual placements of children living away from home, especially outside their area. Is it any wonder, therefore, that 45 per cent of children in care aged 15 to 17 suffer from a mental disorder? That figure is over four times higher than that for all children. Yet mental health provision for looked-after children is lacking, in particular for the 16 to 18 age group. It seems that some children have been treated more equally than others.

The problem will only worsen. Councils that are dispersal centres for unaccompanied children face an expensive and unknown future. They are to be congratulated on the care that they give to often scarred and traumatised children who have witnessed the most appalling atrocities, in many cases even the murder of their family. Those scars run deep and will require months and years of therapy. As we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, our child and adolescent mental health services are already overstretched.

The report tells us that some agencies still give "insufficient priority" to safeguarding children. Thresholds of protection differ from area to area, often due to poor application of local resources. Continuing difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff restrict ability to safeguard children. I join all noble Lords who asked for the raising of the status of people who look after our most vulnerable children. The report illustrates that Her Majesty's Government's approach to safeguarding children, as shown most recently in the Green Paper Every Child Matters, is well intentioned, but that so far the reality is far from the dream., is well intentioned, but that so far the reality is far from the dream.

Likewise, nominally "looked-after children" find themselves caught in a nightmarish reality. Up to 13 per cent of the 78,500 children currently in care were moved to a new placement three times last year. Twelve per cent were children under the age of two, when emotional attachment and stability are so important. We all know as adults the stress of moving just once, so we can only imagine how stressful it must be to move, not just from your home, but from the people you had come to trust at the same time. We would not accept that for our own children and we should not accept it for the children in our care.

The damage done to such children is unthinkable. BAAF describes it as a,

"legacy of wasted potential [that] is appalling".

I had the privilege to speak at the BAAF fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool. Felicity Collier spoke of something that affected me profoundly. She said how distressing it was to move children, especially babies, from their familiar environment. Babies function at a sensory level, so touch, smell, feel and sound are vital to their development. But if you move them away from the touch, smell, sound and the feel they know, they panic. They panic so much that, research into their brains has shown, some of their neural pathways close down and never reopen. That is a very sobering thought.

In both this report and its predecessor, the question of safeguarding children revolves around minimising risk. How encouraging to see in the report that safeguarding children has climbed right up the agenda of local government, the health service and the justice system. Yet it is alarming to consider the extent of work still to be done and the risk posed to children caught in the interim. It is hard to minimise the risk to children, when the places in which they spend time are not properly monitored. There are still no known plans to review safeguarding arrangements for children in unregulated settings. Provisions have yet to be made to register children in private fostering, to register asylum-seeking children, and to make sure that they are cared for. But let us not just settle for adding to the lists of children in danger. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, early intervention is important. It has been shown to reduce the number of children on the child protection register by identifying potential problems before they occur. Although the overall figure has remained the same since 2002, there have been significant reductions where local governments have implemented new policies.

In Kent, children's services have been revolutionised. The local authority has such a "can do" attitude that it fills you with hope—I must add that it is a Conservative council. Officials have taken early intervention very seriously. They believe that there are such long-term consequences of children coming into public care that you must take every opportunity to stop it happening in the first place. They have adopted the New Zealand model of family group conferencing, where they invite the nuclear and extended family to get together. They have even flown people in from other countries because the cost is worth it if you resolve the problem. When everyone is together they say, "Look, this is our problem and it's your problem. What are we going to do about it?" Not only is it an amazing process but it throws up amazing results, because it is a cultural shift and it puts some of the responsibility back on the family. They have financially supported extended family members to help.

They have also introduced a group of mature women who have successfully raised their own families and who will go to live with a dysfunctional family to help them to sort out their problems and introduce stability. All that is designed to keep the family together. But if at the end of the day it fails, they move swiftly to a presumption in favour of adoption. And they are successful. Against a rising national trend of children coming into care, their figures are falling. So they are using the money that they are saving on keeping children in care to put back into early intervention, so setting up a virtuous circle.

What action is being taken to use early-intervention services across the country? Also, what action will be taken to ensure the stabilisation of thresholds, and will alternative provision be made for low-priority cases that come beneath the threshold? What we need most to help solve the terrible spiral surrounding children in care is a clear route map with honest and achievable goals.

It is a shame that we do not have the Government's response to the report before us, as while we wait, some children will continue to be denied the life that they deserve.

My Lords, as several noble Lords have noted, I am representing here about 10 departments and 30 agencies. That gives me the most onerous job that I have had in my short life in your Lordships' House, particularly since, in the chain of command to which the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, referred, I am at about the rank of a lance corporal. However, I will at least do my best to answer their points and to give the clarity of response that they called for.

The House is indebted to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for enabling us to have such an excellent debate on the extremely important issue of safeguarding children and young people, and, if I may say so, for the constant attention that he pays to those vital issues in this House.

The report by the joint chief inspectors concerns many of the most vulnerable children in our society—those with special needs and disabilities, those in the justice system, those who are looked after by local authorities and those who need protection from abuse and neglect. We have a duty as a society to promote their welfare and the Government are entirely at one with the noble Lord, Lord Laming, in his powerful words to the National Social Services Conference two years ago, which he reiterated today. He said:

"Surely our energies must be devoted to ensuring each child will feel secure and will grow with confidence and be enabled to achieve its full potential. We may not achieve this for every child but without the ambition to do so we will fail ever more children".

That is the Government's ambition too. We share the noble Lord's ambition for every child. The report by the joint chief inspectors rightly raises our sights higher in the quest to achieve it.

We will respond to the report by the end of the year—we received it only just before the summer—giving reasonable time to ensure that we give a full reply. This debate, and the many constructive points made by noble Lords on all sides of the House, will be taken extremely seriously, not only by my right honourable friend Beverley Hughes, the Minister for Children, who is the overall ministerial lead on these issues—and therefore at the top of the chain of command that we discussed earlier—but also by ministerial colleagues in the Home Office, the Department of Health, the Department for Constitutional Affairs, the Ministry of Defence and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, all of which have areas of responsibility covered by this report.

There is obviously a limit to what I can say today by way of detail in our response since it is not complete. But I can assure your Lordships that our response will include a specific action plan which will be incorporated into the forward work programmes of the relevant departments and their approach to the next comprehensive spending review as it gathers pace next year.

We are also looking carefully—this responds further to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham—at how we can measure progress in that vital area. We already have an outcomes framework, including performance indicators, for the Every Child Matters programme. We are now examining how we can put in place better indicators of progress on safeguarding children in particular. We will commission research into the scope for new performance indicators in order to drive the improvement without introducing perverse incentives. The trouble always with indicators and targets is that they can have that effect. I hope to be able to give your Lordships more information about that work when we publish our response to the joint inspectors' report later in the year. programme. We are now examining how we can put in place better indicators of progress on safeguarding children in particular. We will commission research into the scope for new performance indicators in order to drive the improvement without introducing perverse incentives. The trouble always with indicators and targets is that they can have that effect. I hope to be able to give your Lordships more information about that work when we publish our response to the joint inspectors' report later in the year.

The report that we are debating has its roots in the 1998 White Paper, Modernising Social Services,, which began the process by which the chief inspectors were asked to report periodically on children's safeguards. Since then there have been two joint inspectorate reports—the first in 2002, the second this July. There have also been a number of other reports raising important cross-agency issues, particularly the report from the noble Lord, Lord Laming, on the terrible Victoria Climbié case, and Sir Michael Bichard's report, more recently, on the Soham murders.which began the process by which the chief inspectors were asked to report periodically on children's safeguards. Since then there have been two joint inspectorate reports—the first in 2002, the second this July. There have also been a number of other reports raising important cross-agency issues, particularly the report from the noble Lord, Lord Laming, on the terrible Victoria Climbié case, and Sir Michael Bichard's report, more recently, on the Soham murders.

The current report acknowledges that the landscape of children's services has changed significantly since 2002. The 2002 report found that the commitment to safeguarding declared by senior managers did not translate consistently into effective work to safeguard children in practice. Too often it was seen as a low priority, with agencies under pressure, major problems with information sharing, and few area child protection committees up to the task of ensuring that safeguards and risk management were in place sufficiently across all agencies at local level.

The report by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, which followed soon after, raised a whole series of similar concerns. Both reports played a seminal role in the Government's subsequent work to reform children's social services through the Every Child Matters programme and other important initiatives, such as Sure Start, which have attracted significant funding. Of course, I accept the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that with additional resources we could do still more, but there have been very significant additional resources in those services in recent years. That work began with an audit of police, offender, health, education, and social care organisations, and a new emphasis on child protection throughout those areas. programme and other important initiatives, such as Sure Start, which have attracted significant funding. Of course, I accept the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that with additional resources we could do still more, but there have been very significant additional resources in those services in recent years. That work began with an audit of police, offender, health, education, and social care organisations, and a new emphasis on child protection throughout those areas.

The report that we are debating today, three years on, finds that progress has been made. The first of its three conclusions is that,

"since our first report in 2002 the priority given to safeguarding children across agencies has increased and children are being listened to and consulted better. Agencies are also working better together to identify and act on welfare concerns".

We welcome that conclusion, but we are certainly not complacent, nor is local government—whether controlled by the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats or by Labour, because, in my experience, there is an equal commitment across the parties in this area—or the various central and local agencies responsible. We note and intend to act on the report's second conclusion, that,

"the policy commitment to safeguarding is not always reflected in practice and some agencies still do not give [it] sufficient priority".

We also note, and will respond to, the report's third conclusion as to specific concerns, including disabled children, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Rix; children living away from home, who have been mentioned by many noble Lords; and some children in health and secure settings.

However, let me emphasise, as did the noble Lord, Lord Laming, the longer-term reform programme which we put in place following the first report, the impact of which has still to be fully realised. The noble Lord, Lord Laming, said that it was a long and arduous journey to put in place the measures that have followed from the 2003 Green Paper, Every Child Matters. That was exactly the right way to put it: it is a journey on which, I believe, we are only just embarking at the moment. I entirely agree with the noble Lord's comments on how finance and investment is one issue, but the whole culture that animates these services is at least as important to produce the change in the improvement that we would wish, including—I cannot agree with this too strongly, which reflects so much on what the noble Lord, Lord Rix, said in his passionate speech—what we expect and, therefore, what we provide for children with disadvantaged, disabled and other backgrounds, including looked-after children who have such a great contribution to make if they have the opportunity, the recognition and the esteem to do so.. That was exactly the right way to put it: it is a journey on which, I believe, we are only just embarking at the moment. I entirely agree with the noble Lord's comments on how finance and investment is one issue, but the whole culture that animates these services is at least as important to produce the change in the improvement that we would wish, including—I cannot agree with this too strongly, which reflects so much on what the noble Lord, Lord Rix, said in his passionate speech—what we expect and, therefore, what we provide for children with disadvantaged, disabled and other backgrounds, including looked-after children who have such a great contribution to make if they have the opportunity, the recognition and the esteem to do so.

The 2003 Green Paper sets out our aim that every child, whatever his or her background or circumstances, should have the support needed to meet five specific outcomes; namely, to be healthy, to stay safe, to enjoy and achieve, to make a positive contribution and to achieve economic well-being. That would do precisely what the noble Lord, Lord Laming, said, which was to get us out of the vice-like definition of child protection and on to an agenda that pays regard to the proper development and potential of each and every child.

The Every Child Matters: Change for Children programme is driving changes to the whole system of children's services locally and nationally in order to build new and better services around each child and his or her family. Some of that is structural change which is underpinned by requirements for collaboration, data provision and information sharing. In particular, education and children's social services departments are being brought together in single children's departments in each local authority, under a director of children's services and a lead council member. That is intended to ensure not only better integration between those two areas of social services and education, but also—the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, asked for my views as an education Minister—to ensure a much more powerful focus within schools and the education system on the needs of the most vulnerable children and their potential. programme is driving changes to the whole system of children's services locally and nationally in order to build new and better services around each child and his or her family. Some of that is structural change which is underpinned by requirements for collaboration, data provision and information sharing. In particular, education and children's social services departments are being brought together in single children's departments in each local authority, under a director of children's services and a lead council member. That is intended to ensure not only better integration between those two areas of social services and education, but also—the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, asked for my views as an education Minister—to ensure a much more powerful focus within schools and the education system on the needs of the most vulnerable children and their potential.

We are particularly concerned about looked-after children in the education system—a point very close to the heart of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel—whose average performance at school is, frankly, deplorable at present. In 2005, barely half of looked-after children leave school with any qualifications whatever and only 9 per cent gain five or more good GCSEs, which, of course, is a cause of so many of the social problems with which we have to contend thereafter. As Minister for schools, I take that very closely to heart. That is why, for instance, we have made a significant change to the admissions arrangements for schools in order to give looked-after children priority in the allocation of places. It is often a first requirement for a school's admissions policy, so that looked-after children from the most deprived and challenging circumstances come at the front of the queue where, so often in the past, they came at the back.

Those new children's departments in local authorities are in turn the cornerstone of new children's trusts in each locality, which also includes all the key commissioners of local children's services. They are also central to the new statutory local safeguarding children's boards, which, from next April, will replace the existing non-statutory area child protection committees. As the noble Lord, Lord Chan, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, said, those local safeguarding children's boards will not only bring enhanced requirements for local co-operation, which includes the police, the prison and probation services, local authorities, primary care trusts and other health trusts, but, subject to a current consultation, will also take on new responsibilities to prevent as well to tackle abuse and neglect. That will, for example, include a specific new duty, subject to the current consultation, in the sensitive but crucial area of investigating and reviewing child deaths so that local and national agencies learn the lessons.

However, structural improvement is only one part of the picture. Structures do not provide services to individuals—people do, and as so many speakers have pointed out during the debate, it is the leadership quality, motivation and training of professional staff across all the services we are discussing today which will ultimately determine the calibre of the services themselves. Let me dwell for a few moments on the vital social work profession in particular, which the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, made so much of in his speech, as did so many others.

At the outset, I join the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in paying warm tribute to the social work profession and to the work being done across the country in the social care sector. Indeed, I believe that the whole House would wish to join in that tribute. There is invariably publicity when things go wrong in child protection, but too little is said to acknowledge and praise the outstanding work done by child protection teams across the country in protecting thousands of children from harm every week. In my ministerial job, I am very conscious of the great progress we have made over the past decade in raising and in some ways transforming the reputation and status of the teaching profession in this country, with all the positive effects that that has had for recruitment and performance. For example, applications to teacher training institutions for secondary teaching have increased by 70 per cent over the past six years. As I see it, we are now embarked on a similar process of transformation with the social work profession, a profession every bit as vital as teaching to the future success of young people with difficult family circumstances or other disadvantages to contend with. My department regards this as an equal priority.

There are some developments we can welcome. The most recent survey of local authority social services departments reported a modest increase in the numbers of local authority field social workers in England, a reduction in vacancies for children's social workers and a reduction in turnover. There has also been a strengthening of professional training and status. Social work is now a degree-level profession, and over the first two intakes in 2003 and 2004, more than 7,000 students have started. We have introduced both protection of title and registration for social workers, so that today some 70,000 social workers are registered with the General Social Care Council.

But recruitment and quality remain real issues that are pressing in many areas, and there is much more to be done. In April, we published our Children's Workforce Strategy which set out specific options for consultation. Those include opening up new possibilities for consultant-level social work, developing options for fast-track routes into social work for graduates who have a background of relevant knowledge and skills, and getting the Commission for Social Care Inspection more directly involved in observing front-line social work practice. On the point about inspectorates raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, rather than seek to reply now I suggest that I should arrange for her to meet David Bell, perhaps with me, so that we may discuss her very real concerns about the future of inspection in this area when Ofsted takes over. I hope that David Bell will be able to satisfy her that the concerns she raised will be fully met.

To turn the ideas floated in the strategy paper earlier this year into action, in July we established, under the joint lead of Liam Byrne, the social services Minister in the Department of Health, and Beverley Hughes, the children's Minister, a ministerial group to work up specific proposals for the reform of social work. Most important of all, these will seek to develop new and better entry routes into the profession, including both graduate and work-based routes, by looking at the example of the teaching profession with its highly rated Teacher Training and Development Agency, its innovations such as the successful Graduate Teacher Programme and the successful recruitment experience with nurses, the police and the medical profession over recent years, together with workforce reform in all these areas, including the use of para-professionals. I believe that all this action will be widely welcomed by noble Lords and I shall keep the House informed as the plans are developed further.

Two other areas related to social services were touched on repeatedly in the debate—thresholds and monitoring the safety of looked-after children. I shall touch briefly on these. Serious concerns were expressed about social services departments which set their thresholds too high. In some authorities this may turn in part on resources and workforce capability, or at least the perception in those authorities that they are inadequate. But as the noble Lord, Lord Laming, sought to stress, there are also issues about better understanding and co-ordination. That is why we are proposing that threshold policies and procedures will be a key responsibility of the new local safeguarding children boards. We intend that the work of the boards will develop a better understanding in each local area of when to make referrals between services—for example, where there are concerns that a child is at risk of significant harm or where a child may need other kinds of support—and that these issues will be taken fully into account when developing thresholds.

On the duty of social workers to monitor the safety of looked-after children, two particular issues were raised—frequency of visits and the important role of independent review in this area. Regulation 35 of the Fostering Services Regulations 2002 requires a responsible authority to satisfy itself that the welfare of each child in foster care continues to be suitably provided for by the placement and to make arrangements to visit the child. During the first year this needs to be at least every six weeks. Subsequently it must be at intervals of not longer than three months. My department is also considering whether such a safeguard in respect of those children placed in children's homes—another issue raised in the debate—will be required as part of our review of the national minimum standards of children's homes.

In terms of monitoring, the joint inspectors' report recognises that the role of the independent reviewing officer can be important to ensuring that looked-after children placements are monitored effectively. We agree with that. All looked-after children must have a statutory review of their care plans at prescribed intervals. We have introduced through the Adoption and Children Act 2002 a statutory duty for local authorities to appoint independent reviewing officers to review the care plans for all looked-after children. Moreover, since last September, all review meetings must be chaired by an independent review officer.

I have several issues to cover in my remaining three minutes, so I shall touch on as many as I can. I also promise to write to noble Lords to set out in greater detail any issues that I have not been able to respond to fully in the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Rix, raised the needs of disabled children and their particular vulnerability. The National Working Group on Child Protection and Disability, membership of which is drawn from child protection and national disability organisations, as well as experts from the field, published its report, It doesn't happen to disabled children!, which highlighted many of the issues raised by the noble Lord in his speech on the safeguarding of children with disabilities. Following publication of the report, the Government have funded the Council for Disabled Children to take forward a project looking at the specific safeguarding needs of disabled children to ensure that they are given equal and effective protection within safeguarding systems, and to produce guidance and new materials for local safeguarding children boards when they start next April. We will take this work very seriously, and I assume that the noble Lord is keeping in close touch with it. I shall see that he is further informed., which highlighted many of the issues raised by the noble Lord in his speech on the safeguarding of children with disabilities. Following publication of the report, the Government have funded the Council for Disabled Children to take forward a project looking at the specific safeguarding needs of disabled children to ensure that they are given equal and effective protection within safeguarding systems, and to produce guidance and new materials for local safeguarding children boards when they start next April. We will take this work very seriously, and I assume that the noble Lord is keeping in close touch with it. I shall see that he is further informed.

The joint chief inspectors' report we are debating today also finds that not all disabled children have sufficient opportunities to express their views and concerns, an issue raised across the services we are debating. The Government want children and young people to have far more say about issues that affect them both as individuals and collectively. That is why, as of this March, the first Children's Commissioner was appointed. I join the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, in welcoming this development and the work that the commissioner is doing to give children and young people a voice in both government and public life at large in a wholly new way. The commissioner will pay particular attention to gathering and putting forward the views of the most vulnerable children and young people in society, and will promote their involvement in the work of organisations whose decisions and actions affect them.

The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, raised a series of concerns about foster carers, who play such a valuable role in looking after children. On the estimates of the numbers that are needed, I am advised that the fostering network estimate of 8,000 is the one we share. On the many issues raised by the noble Lord regarding recruitment targets, guidance, fees and incentives to meet foster care costs, we are engaging in a national consultation early next year before issuing targets and guidance. That will specifically include a review of the issue of fees.

Turning briefly to the issue of mental health, I should say that the Department of Health is working with Professor David Hall to produce specific guidance on effective transitions from child to adult healthcare which accord with best practice. I have a great deal more which I could say on this, but I shall set out the detail in a letter to the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy.

In conclusion, let me emphasise again that we are embarked on a major programme of reform. There is more to do, and we shall set this out when we publish our action plan to the joint chief inspectors' report later in the year. This debate has made a valuable contribution towards helping us form the key priorities of that action plan and I thank all noble Lords who have taken part.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his very helpful, detailed and constructive reply. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate and ensured that this most important report has received the careful attention it deserves. I am particularly grateful to my noble friends on the Cross Benches, 12 of whom have spoken today. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Laming, for rearranging his commitments to enable him to speak today.

I should like to amplify briefly a comment I made on supervision of social work staff. In social care it is very important to recall that supervision is not simply ensuring that the correct procedures are followed. The supervisor should be capable of helping the person directly working with the vulnerable parent or child to reflect on their practice—to think and to understand what is happening. This is a point which, I am afraid, may be slightly missed by the current workforce strategy. If the Minister could take back to those involved in this work that they should perhaps put slightly less emphasis on competence and more on reflection, that would be most helpful.

I was very pleased that the Minister took time to consider the issue of social work. Clearly what is happening is positive. He will, of course, recall that there is currently a 20 per cent vacancy rate in London for social workers, so I am very pleased that such urgent action is being taken in this area.

I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

My Lords, with permission, I shall repeat a Statement about developments in Northern Ireland during the summer made by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State in another place. The Statement is as follows:

"First, I know the House will want to join me in marking, with sadness, the passing of two very significant figures from the Northern Ireland political stage, Mo Mowlam and Gerry Fitt. They were politicians of great courage, passion and, above all, humanity, and we all, in different ways, feel their loss.

"On 28 July, we saw the statement by the IRA that its leadership had ordered an end to its armed campaign. As I said in my letter to Members of both Houses at the time, that was important, indeed historic.

"But, of course, it was crucial that the words were carried through in actions, actions that had to be independently verified. Two weeks ago, the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning reported that the IRA had placed its arms completely and verifiably beyond use.

"Not many years ago, unionists and republicans were agreed on one thing at least: the IRA would never give up its guns; it would never give up its explosives: 'Not a bullet. Not an ounce'. But the 'impossible' has happened: the war machine that brought death and destruction to thousands of people in Northern Ireland, Great Britain and beyond—and indeed to this Parliament—has gone. It is something that all Members of this House have wanted to see happen for so many years, and many feared they never would.

"But, as immensely significant as IRA decommissioning undoubtedly is, there is more to be done in demonstrating that the IRA has put paramilitary activity behind it for good.

"The next formal report from the Independent Monitoring Commission, focusing on paramilitary activity, is expected in the next week or so. That will give an indication of whether progress has been made in meeting the equally important requirement for a verifiable end to all paramilitary and criminal activity. But as it will have covered only several weeks since 28 July, the two Governments have asked the IMC to produce an additional report in January to reinforce the crucial verification process.

"The Government believe that the interests of everyone in Northern Ireland are best served by local decision making through a devolved assembly. That requires the rebuilding of trust and confidence and we recognise that that will take time. But if these IMC reports confirm an end to IRA activity, then the time will have come to move the process forward.

"The summer also saw a murderous loyalist feud, the vicious attacks on the police and Army by loyalist paramilitaries and sickening sectarian attacks, including obscene threats to desecrate graves in Carnmoney cemetery—all of which disfigured Northern Ireland in the eyes of the world.

"Of course this outrageous behaviour appalled the overwhelming majority of people in the unionist community and I very much welcomed the opportunity to stand with the honourable Member for North Antrim in his constituency, which had seen sectarian attacks on schools, and join him in condemning this barbarous behaviour.

"It has taken a long time for the republican movement to acknowledge that violence does not pay. It is high time that the loyalist paramilitaries learnt it too. My decision last month to specify the UVF/Red Hand Commando sent out a clear signal to those who would persist with that philosophy that they are wrong and that they must stop immediately.

"There remains outstanding the question of whether a financial penalty should be imposed on the PUP following the recommendation made to me earlier in the year by the IMC. I intend to watch developments carefully over the next few months, in particular the role that the PUP plays in attempting to secure peace and stability in the loyalist community, before reaching a decision on this in the context of the January report from the commission to which I have referred.

"With my deputy, the honourable Member for Delyn, David Hanson, I have been visiting loyalist communities, meeting community representatives, clergy, teachers and local residents. Where any community has legitimate concerns, we will address them. But it is equally important that there is political leadership to enable these communities to join in the huge progress that Northern Ireland has made in recent years.

"The summer also demonstrated beyond doubt that there is one organisation that we can all rely on to uphold the right of everyone to live in peace. Officers of the Police Service of Northern Ireland have displayed exemplary courage and professionalism in protecting life and preserving order, despite being attacked with live rounds, blast bombs, petrol bombs and other missiles. We should be under no illusion, following the Whiterock parade, that loyalist paramilitaries were clearly intent on murdering police officers. Police videos also showed some Orangemen taking off their collarettes and hurling rocks at the police front lines—behaviour that I know the vast majority in the Orange Order deplore.

"Even with those vicious attacks on them—and let us not forget that nearly 100 of them sustained serious injuries in a single weekend—the police remained committed to their task. But they can be effective only if they receive the support of all sections of the community in Northern Ireland. Time and time again they have demonstrated their determination to protect all the citizens of Northern Ireland. It is time that everyone in Northern Ireland acknowledged this—from Sinn Fein to the Orange Order to the loyalist communities—and got behind the police to support them in doing their job.

"The transformation of policing in Northern Ireland in line with the Patten reforms is one of the great success stories of the Good Friday agreement. It has led to the policing arrangements in Northern Ireland being admired around the world as a model for change. We remain fully committed to that model in the future.

"A key element in that success is the role played by the Policing Board. I can tell the House today that I have decided to reconstitute the board from 1 April 2006, with political appointees selected in proportion to the 2003 election results using the d'Hondt formula.

"So what do the months ahead hold for Northern Ireland? The Government will continue to do all they can to facilitate progress towards restoration. But we hope that all Northern Ireland's politicians will seize the opportunity that this summer's developments present.

"The Government will also take forward work in implementing those aspects of the Belfast agreement where work is incomplete or ongoing. We will, for example, continue to support those bodies and institutions that work for the benefit of Northern Ireland on a north/south and east/west basis.

"Some areas of the joint declaration of 2003 were dependent on acts of completion by the IRA. And difficult though some of these will be for some people to accept, there should be no surprises since the Government have long made clear that certain developments would follow on such acts of completion.

"First: normalisation. In the 2003 Joint Declaration, the Government set out proposals to normalise the security profile across Northern Ireland when there was an enabling environment. Following the IRA statement, I published an updated programme, on the advice of the Chief Constable and the General Officer Commanding.

"I want to assure the House that my first and over-riding priority—and that of the Chief Constable and the GOC—remains the safety and security of the people of Northern Ireland. We will not do anything that will compromise that. But the security arrangements we have in place must be in proportion to the level of threat. The normalisation programme published in August, a copy of which I have had placed in the Library, will see the creation of an environment that will allow the return of conventional policing across Northern Ireland, something which all sections of the community should welcome.

"The other commitment set out in the Joint Declaration was that we would reinvigorate discussions with the political parties on the shared goal of devolving criminal justice and policing. The Government will want to explore the scope for doing that over the months ahead. In the meantime we will bring forward enabling legislation for later implementation, when there is agreement among the parties in Northern Ireland.

"We will also take forward plans to appoint a victims' commissioner. I very much hope to make an announcement about this shortly because the many victims of Northern Ireland's troubles deserve much better recognition and support. We will never forget them.

"The House will know that we have undertaken to legislate to deal with the position of individuals connected with paramilitary crimes committed before the Belfast agreement, dealing with those suspects categorised as "on the runs". As the House will recall, these proposals were published alongside the Joint Declaration as long ago as May 2003. This is not an amnesty. Nevertheless, the implementation of those proposals will be painful for many people. I fully understand this. But the Government believe that it is a necessary part of the process of closing the door on violence for ever.

"Notwithstanding the recent turbulence, huge progress has been made this summer. We need to build on that progress.

"The people of Northern Ireland have shown remarkable patience and resilience over the years. We owe it to them not to be deflected from doing all we can to see a peaceful, stable and prosperous Northern Ireland in which all traditions are cherished and respected. They deserve no less".

That, my Lords, concludes the Statement.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement of the Secretary of State in another place. I join him in his tribute to Mo Mowlam and Gerry Fitt. I got to know Mo better while she was chairman of the Millennium Commission than I did when she was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, but I knew Gerry well for many years.

My first meeting with Mo was when I was representing the commission in Stormont and she was due to announce the project later known as the Odyssey. She did not seem to be in the vicinity, so I went off to look for her. I found her in her office in Stormont, wig on the table, office in a fairly shambolic state, on the telephone to her husband trying to sort out details of a house she was trying to move out of or into—I did not discover which. But in a few moments, we were arm in arm, walking down the corridor, and she was a real pro on stage launching the project.

My first memory of Gerry was when I came to Belfast and was honoured at the City Hall, having won a gold medal. Gerry made a welcoming and congratulatory speech. Little did I think that I would spend as long as I have with those two notable characters in politics. We shall seriously miss them both for their warmth, determination and humour.

I, too, welcome the IRA decommissioning statement. Better late than never. It is a pity it did not happen five years ago; but it did not, and now we have to move forward and make the best of what we have.

Does the Minister agree that while the announcement on IRA decommissioning was undoubtedly welcome, it is only a first step on the road to building the trust and confidence that is necessary if we are eventually to see a restoration of devolved government? As the Secretary of State says in his Statement, there is more to be done—a few brief words encompassing half a world. In the light of that Statement, does the Minister share my view that further steps are now essential if the republican movement is to demonstrate clearly an irreversible shift to exclusively peaceful and democratic politics?

Does the noble Lord agree that all forms of criminal activity must come to a complete and permanent end and that this must include beatings, shootings, intimidation, racketeering, smuggling, armed robberies and the exiling of people from their homes? Does he also agree that it is no longer acceptable to have Sinn Fein Ministers in the government of Northern Ireland who are not prepared to accept the legitimacy of the police and the courts? Will he please make it clear that support for the police and criminal justice system is an absolute requirement of serving in a newly formed Executive?

On the devolution of policing and justice, does the noble Lord agree that this could happen only in circumstances where the Executive and Assembly had shown themselves to be stable over a period of years?

We strongly join the noble Lord in condemning totally the attacks that took place last month. Not only are such activities wrong, and can have no place in a democratic society, but those who carry them out do nothing but undermine the cause they claim to support. We once again congratulate the officers of the PSNI on their courage and professionalism in the light of these horrendous attacks by loyalists of all people. Will the noble Lord give the House an assurance that the police and all other criminal justice agencies will pursue those responsible with the utmost vigour?

Most people in Northern Ireland feel a sense of disgust at the way in which the so-called loyalist brigadiers appear to strut around the place with impunity. We support the Secretary of State's action to specify the UVF/Red Hand Commando. Will the Minister make it clear to the House that no effort will be spared in tackling these thugs and gangsters and the criminal empires from which, in a number of cases, they all too visibly profit. We hope that the agency will get some of those profits back.

On policing, will the Minister give the House a cast-iron guarantee that no person about whom there is credible intelligence of involvement with an illegal paramilitary organisation will be allowed to join the PSNI, the part-time reserve or the proposed police community support officers or any other wing of the criminal justice agencies?

I note what the Secretary of State says about the reconstitution of the Policing Board. Will the Minister elaborate a little on that? Who will be on it and why is it taking until next April to reconstitute a board which has already been out of date for some six months?

Furthermore, on the subject of "on the runs", will the noble Lord confirm that the legislation we believe will be introduced later this month or next will include proper provision for those seeking to return to Northern Ireland to appear in court and enter a plea in the normal way? Will he undertake not to risk devolving criminal justice until Sinn Fein is fully on side and the Assembly is well tried and tested?

We await with interest the appointment of the victims' commissioner. Victims certainly need more care and attention than they have had to date.

Our position concerning the OTRs is well understood. Will the noble Lord give the House an assurance that not only is there no amnesty, but that each and every one will have to go through the due process of law, even if it leads only to a conviction, sentence and immediate release on licence?

Finally, the Secretary of State mentioned restorative justice. Will the noble Lord assure the House that restorative justice will remain firmly within the criminal justice system and that there are no plans to subcontract it to the thugs of west Belfast or other similar areas?

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. I join the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, in adding to the observations made in the Statement relating to the loss of Gerry Fitt and Mo Mowlam. I knew Mo Mowlam 20 or 30 years ago, when she was a lecturer at the University of Newcastle, and I was immediately struck by her vibrant and attractive personality. That was something that stayed with her and helped her in her role of midwife to the Belfast agreement. Gerry Fitt was known to all of us as a very courageous and doughty political leader. He had qualities that were very necessary to the restoration of a democratic society in Northern Ireland. We shall miss them both.

We on these Benches welcome the IRA statement of 28 July, and its act of decommissioning in September. Those were truly significant acts; the stumbling block of decommissioning that has held up the political process since the signing of the Good Friday agreement seven and a half years ago, has been finally if belatedly resolved. However, the process has been damaged in the mean time by the refusal of the IRA for so long to give up its weapons. It will take some time to rebuild the trust that has been lost.

We look forward to the publication of the forthcoming IMC report and will study it very carefully to assess whether there is still IRA involvement in criminal activity or in paramilitary beatings across Northern Ireland. Does the Minister agree that one way in which the IRA can help others to gain trust in its good faith is by publicly stating that anyone who has been exiled from their home by the IRA during the course of the troubles is free to return home safely and without fear of retribution?

We welcome the decision of the Secretary of State to specify the UVF. While it is important for the Government to be aware of genuine grievances from the loyalist community, does the Minister agree that it is essential to be firm with paramilitary groups to show them that violence does not pay and that they should properly present their grievances through debate and political dialogue? We welcome the reference in the Statement to the attitude of Unionist leaders to the violence over the summer, but it must be even stronger. They must exert more influence and demonstrate greater leadership, as should the officers of the Orange order. It is their half of the community that spawns loyalist paramilitaries, so it behoves them to deal with it more forcefully.

We on these Benches certainly associate ourselves with the praise given to the police, who frankly displayed exemplary restraint during the period of loyalist riots and must be commended for it. But while we agree with the devolution of policing and justice functions to the Assembly, when it is restored, can the Minister guarantee that that will not happen until the Assembly has proved to be effective and sustainable? Does he agree that the worst thing for policing in Northern Ireland would for it to be devolved, only for control to revert to Westminster a couple of months later if the Assembly were to collapse again under another political crisis?

Finally, I endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, said about legislation for on-the-runs. It is vital that the needs and views of the victims come first. Can the Minister give us that guarantee, as I am sure that he will, and can he also state categorically that those who make use of this legislation will be released on licence and that the Government will be firm in revoking those licences if it is shown that a person becomes involved once again in violence?

My Lords, I am most grateful for the two responses from the Front Benches to the Statement. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, about it being better late than never; but it has happened, that is the point, and it is no good saying that it is not going to happen or that it has not happened. It has happened—late, but it has happened. We have to seize the opportunity. As the Statement from my right honourable friend made clear, it is a first step—a major momentous first step, but still a first step, and there are other issues.

As the Statement said, we need to have two IMC reports because this month is too close to the end of July, and we had the decommissioning report only in September. So it would not be reasonable to take only one report, and we have requested a second report in January. That will in some ways be the key to seeing the overview, because I cannot prejudge what will happen with the report this month.

On the point about all criminal activity needing to end, there is no qualification: it has got to finish, and it has got to be normal. I do not want to say "normal" like England, Scotland and Wales—but that is normal. Here we have communities that have difficulties that have to be dealt with, but not in the way in which they have had to be dealt with in Northern Ireland. We can recognise the difference. It has got to be normal; there will be no acceptance of criminal activity or vigilantes, or anything like that. That has got to end. What is more, we must be told that it has ended by the independent authorities.

As for the police and the courts, there are things that we want to happen in the next few months. We want Sinn Fein members to take their place on the policing board, and we see no reason why they should not. That will be one to decide at the appropriate opportunity. I am not going to prejudge the issue about what should happen if they do or do not; the fact of the matter is that the board must be reconstituted under the d'Hondt formula. Sinn Fein would have the opportunity to take two seats, I believe, because under the process there would be four for the DUP and two each for the other three parties. We want Sinn Fein to take those two seats up, and there is no reason why they should not—but I believe that we should save all other comments until that decision arrives. I believe that that would be the best way in which to approach that matter.

As for the devolution of criminal justice matters, we must be absolutely clear on that matter. We will create the legislation that enables it to happen, but it will not happen until both Houses—because it will come to both Houses—are satisfied that there is an environment that is sustainable in the long term. As has rightly been said, it would be negative beyond belief to do it and then have to pull it back in a short period of time. We have gone through the process once; the Assembly has been suspended for three years; when it is up and running again, it must be for the long run. There must be no time limit—it must not be thought, "Give it another go and see how it goes for a short period". It has got to be up and running and sustainable.

On the issue of who will join the police and the community support officers, we are following the Patten proposals. As the Secretary of State said, there is no chance of people being in the paramilitary one day and in police uniform the next. That will cover those convicted and those associated with terrorism; it will simply not be allowed. We want a police service that people can trust, so there has to be a building of confidence, with the normal process of applying to join the police—and the normal criteria for joining the police will apply to the community support officers as well.

As for seeking out criminality and the proceeds of crime, the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 passed through this House, the same as in the other place. It started off when I was a Home Office Minister when I was in this House, although it was probably a bit low-key. It was one of those Acts of Parliament that not too many people bothered with as it went through. But the instrument that Parliament established under that Act is probably the most powerful public servant in the realm—the person who heads up that recovery agency—because we are going for the Mr Bigs all over. This is not a Northern Ireland issue alone; the problem is all over the UK and includes the drug barons and everybody else who gets other people to do their dirty work for them and who never turn up in court, who have the lifestyle of a criminal. That is what the Assets Recovery Agency is for. No effort will be spared in pursuing the issue.

As for the on-the-runs, I must ask the House to await the publication of the legislation, because it has not been published—and until it is finally published, one cannot be absolutely certain about it. I realise that the issue will be contentious, and I do not make light of it at all, but we are not talking about an amnesty. There will be a process of licensing involving the criminal justice system and the courts. If that is breached, full sanctions will be imposed, which may involve imprisonment. It will be a difficult process. We need to do it to enable us to put the past behind us but to have it codified. It is not simply a matter of wiping the slate clean. A process will operate within the criminal justice system.

As regards the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, on restorative justice, the answer is "yes". The police will carry out investigations. The schemes will deal with low level cases of criminal behaviour, not major ones. They will be referred by the statutory criminal justice agencies. The PSNI will be informed of all referrals. The police will be aware of all the referrals. They will determine whether it is necessary to instigate an investigation in individual cases before they are referred to the PPS for a decision on their suitability for restorative action within a community based scheme. Therefore to that extent the police are part of the process of restorative justice.

I turn to the proposals for the "on the runs" with regard to the ordinary courts and the criminal justice system. They are designed to deal with the specific situation that arises from moving out of conflict. We see the proposals that were published just over two years ago as a way to achieve that. We are not talking about the ordinary courts; a special process will be set up in the legislation but it will be part of the criminal justice system and will involve licensing.

I have covered many of the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Clifton. Time is required to enable trust to be built on all sides. Statements are okay. The statement made in July was very welcome, but after that we needed action. We believe that we have seen action in the form of decommissioning and the accompanying statements. Confidence building on all sides is taking place. There will be calls for everyone to make all kinds of statements. I shall not call for that. However, the parties concerned know that if they are to take forward the process with a degree of trust, it is beneficial for them to bend over backwards to show the other community or the other tradition that they are serious in what they say. Issues such as that of people coming back to Northern Ireland free of the fear of being attacked are very important. Such attacks are part of criminal activity which is outlawed under the schemes that we are discussing. If we are ending all criminal activity, there should not be a problem. However, the organisations concerned know what needs to be said to build confidence. With good will and a degree of trust, which has not hitherto existed, that can be achieved.

We have a golden, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here and it would be very sad if it did not work out. People of good will are involved. We shall have to wait to see what happens. However, the independent monitoring commissions form part of the comfort blanket for all sections of the community, including both Houses of Parliament, and will enable us to take the necessary decisions.

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for making the Statement. I wholeheartedly condemn the despicable violence that occurred and was witnessed throughout Northern Ireland over the summer.

I wish to comment on the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Clifton. The Ulster Unionist Party, and I as president of the Ulster Unionist Party, absolutely deplore that violence. We are for law and order and we support the PSNI.

I should also like to pay tribute to Mo Mowlam and Gerry Fitt. I refer especially in this House to Lord Fitt. Lord Fitt and I differed on many things but we were firm friends. I was honoured that Gerry felt that I was a friend of his. We differed on the big political debate in Northern Ireland—obviously, he was a nationalist, I was a Unionist. We differed on many economic issues. We certainly differed on social issues. Gerry's social drink was a large gin and tonic; mine was a small gin and tonic.

If I may lighten the mood for a moment, Gerry Fitt represented West Belfast for many years in the other place. His constituents attacked him when he showed that he was against violence. A photograph appeared in the local papers when Gerry's house was attacked violently one night. The photograph showed Gerry, having risen from his bed, wearing a singlet and with a gun in his hand, protecting his wife and family. Thereafter, the wags in Belfast called Gerry, "the fastest gun in the vest".

I understand that General de Chastelain is scheduled to return to Northern Ireland at the end of this month. Will the Minister confirm that he is doing so to facilitate loyalist decommissioning? Which loyalist group is General de Chastelain planning to meet first? Will the Minister confirm that leaders of Sinn Fein/IRA, Messrs Adams and McGuinness, were made fully conversant of the plans to disband the three home service battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment before the officers and men of those battalions were so informed?

My Lords, I am grateful for the statement by the noble Lord regarding support for the police, particularly in view of his important position in the Ulster Unionist Party. I say without qualification that that is extremely welcome. I realise that the noble Lord did not have to say that. However, it is important that it was said and is on the record.

I, too, recall the photograph of Gerry Fitt mentioned by the noble Lord. At that time Gerry Fitt and I were both Members of the other place. It showed some Members of the other place at that time what democratically elected Members of Parliament had to put up with. We did not understand that. Our constituents did not behave like that although of course not everyone agreed with what we did. If we did not understand what went on in Northern Ireland before, we understood it after seeing that photograph.

I am sorry but the noble Lord's other questions are a no-go area for me. I will not confirm one way or the other whether the general is returning this month, who he will see and why he is coming, if, indeed, he is coming. I am in no position to confirm who was told about the Royal Irish Regiment at what particular time of the day. I have no knowledge of that and, if I had, I suspect that I would probably refrain from recounting it. However, I genuinely do not have that information and I shall not offer to write with it either.

My Lords, I never had the pleasure of meeting Mo Mowlam but, like other colleagues in the House, and, following my noble friend Lord Smith of Clifton, I send my heartfelt sympathy to her family. She was an extraordinary person, albeit I saw that only from afar.

However, I remember Gerry Fitt extremely well. Indeed, during my very first debate on Northern Ireland, when I tried to persuade the House that I knew just about everything about policing that anyone could possibly know, Gerry leaned over from the Back Benches, poked his finger at me, and said—I hope that noble Lords will forgive me as I cannot imitate his accent—"What you know about policing in Northern Ireland is nothing". That put me very firmly in my place.

I wish to add my voice to those who have rightly praised the conduct of the Police Service of Northern Ireland during the past few months and, indeed, for as long at it has been constituted. It deserves that praise; its staff have been absolutely extraordinary. I thank the Minister for making the Statement. I refer to the normalisation programme, which will see the creation of an environment that will allow the return of conventional policing across Northern Ireland. To prevent the very serious criminal activity that is occurring now and to make policing "normal" will require a very considerable amount of support and resources. I know that I keep banging on about it, but Northern Ireland is a special case. I did not believe it was as special a few years ago, but I do now, and they really will need a lot of support and help. Will the Minister assure me that this help and support will be given?

My Lords, the answer is "yes". Therefore, I do not need to qualify it. I am grateful for what the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, has said about Mo Mowlam. I was in the House when Mo arrived, and she went on to a Standing Committee and opposed the poll tax from the Back Benches when I was helping to lead for the opposition. That is where I got to know her. She was a one-off; there is no question about that.

The noble Baroness is quite right; the policing situation is different. We want it to be as normal as possible, and the resources will be made available.

My Lords, I first associate myself with the tributes to my good friend Gerry Fitt and to Mo Mowlam. I also unreservedly join in the condemnation of this summer's obscene loyalist violence.

As far as the rest of what is contained in the Statement is concerned, I regret that I am more sceptical than I have ever been—perhaps cynical would be a better word. There are implications that the Statement carefully avoids. Does the "cold house for Unionists" statement by our previous Secretary of State Paul Murphy have even the slightest significance with relevance to the attitude of the current Secretary of State? I allude particularly to his determination to disrupt the grammar school sector of education and to structure post-primary arrangements according to proposals from advisors who have no experience of, and no involvement in, state sector education.

Why is the state sector, which caters for a majority of Protestant children, being structured according to proposals coming exclusively from members of the Roman Catholic tradition, which has its own educational arrangements under the aegis of the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools? I have defended their right to have those arrangements, but does the Minister expect that the Government's approach will engender confidence or contribute to peaceful stability in the Unionist community?

I have one other question. Is the admitted £1.4 billion avoidance in motor and heating fuel duty tolerated by the Government during the past four years to be allowed to continue as part of the IRA's pension policy? Finally, has the price of disarmament been not only surrender to IRA financial expectations but to arrangements for the subjugation of the basic interest in human rights of Unionists?

My Lords, I clearly welcome again without qualification the statement that the noble Lord made on the violence that occurred during the summer. He speaks with great experience, and I am extremely grateful. As for the rest of the contribution made by the noble Lord, he started off by saying that he was sceptical bordering on cynical; he showed that. I am not going to go down that road, as I said on Monday during the Question.

Words such as "surrender", "subjugation", "victory" and "defeat" have got to be the language of the past. There is success for every part of the Northern Ireland community in the future. There can be success in getting normalisation. There can be success in building a normal community for everyone. There can be some success for every part of the community, and people need not feel or be told by others that they have either been surrendered to or subjugated, when we can pick out degrees of success.

It is true that there will be reform in Northern Ireland, and a whole series of announcements will be made in the near future. They were not part of the Statement today, and I will resist the temptation of going down the road of giving an early taster.

My Lords, I warmly welcome the Statement. I shall just say a brief word about both Mo Mowlam and Gerry Fitt. Mo Mowlam was my boss in Northern Ireland for more than two and a half years, and I have enormous respect and admiration and affection for her. She did a superb job there. She was brave; she knew what she wanted to achieve and—my goodness me—she did achieve it. Many people in Northern Ireland are alive today who would not be alive were it not for the contribution Mo made to the peace process in Northern Ireland.

I have known Gerry Fitt for a long time; about 20 years or so. Some of the anecdotes that I would like to tell about Gerry are probably better told over a drink in the bar than here. If any noble Lords would like to hear them, I have some very good stories about Gerry, which he would be the first to want told, and I would be happy to do that.

On a more serious point, I have a question about policing for my noble friend. It is being said by Sinn Fein politicians that the changes in policing in Northern Ireland are not appreciated, understood, realised or accepted by people in local communities, who feel that there has been no change. Clearly, the changes since the Patten report was implemented have been remarkable and radical—perhaps the most radical changes to any police service in the world. What can the Government do to put over more than has been done so far about the nature of those important changes, which are beneficial to all individuals in Northern Ireland, whether from the Protestant or the nationalist communities?

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend, who had distinguished service as a direct rule Minister in Northern Ireland. I cannot really go beyond the Statement to answer his question on policing, except to say that there have been major changes, and he accepts that. The major changes in policing in Northern Ireland have not been fully appreciated by all sections of the community.

In a way, this is where the issue of seeing the deeds and the action is just as important in getting a normalisation process—so that there is policing across all communities, there are no "no-go areas", and the police are there to serve all sections of the community. Changes in the recruitment practices of the police, and in other areas, are ongoing. We support the Patten reforms. I suspect that it will take time, but if other activities and actions can be done to make the point that my noble friend raised in all sections of the community, I will make sure that they are drawn to the attention of my colleagues who are dealing with policing on a day-to-day basis.

My Lords, I was unfortunate enough not to have been here for the Statement, so I cannot ask any substantive questions, much as I would like to do so. I would like to take the opportunity to express my great admiration and respect for Gerry Fitt. He was funny, brave, he had enormous integrity, he was full of charm, and for me it was one of the great experiences of my time in this House to have known him.

My Lords, I identify myself with the remarks made by the noble Baroness. I knew Gerry for more than 40 years. I shared a constituency with him, to his considerable success. The party with which I was involved had not as much success in that area. While we had known that Gerry had not been well for some time, nevertheless his passing has left a tremendous hole that cannot be filled. His colourfulness in Ulster politics will be badly missed. He had that amazing ability to defuse any situation, nasty or otherwise, by turning a joke—usually on himself.

I am delighted to hear that the Minister is visiting local Unionist communities and trying to find out exactly what their problems are. I remind him that a number of us have worked for a lot of years in a very determined way to minimise the efforts of the paramilitaries and to bring some kind of order to Protestant community areas. I have raised this issue with the Minister before. We put our necks on the line politically and possibly in terms of security to do that, but we got no support whatever from the Government, while the sort of activities that we were trying to do were heavily subsidised and funded for the nationalist community by the Department for Culture, Arts and Leisure and the Department for Social Development—with money that in my view was not initially allocated for that purpose. If money could be found for nationalist festivals and nationalist community activities but not for Unionist activities, is it any wonder that there is a tremendous sense of grievance in the Unionist community right now?

My Lords, I reinforce both contributions. The beautiful comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Park, require none from me. Regarding those of the noble Lord, Lord Laird, I appreciate that there has been a history but I make it clear to him that we as a team of Ministers intend to work as much as we can through the elected democratic representatives in Northern Ireland, whether they are councillors, Members of the European Parliament or Members of the other place, so that there is no easy route for the self-appointed, usually empty-barrelled community leaders who fail to get an initiative. We are pledged to work as much as we can through the elected representatives in making contact with all shades of community opinion, particularly those with grievances.

My Lords, perhaps I may give a one minute tribute to the noble Lord and the Statement that he repeated. We are all enormously encouraged by his comments and I listened carefully to the comments of my noble friend on the Front Bench and those of the noble Lord, Lord Clifton. I was interested when the Minister said that there would be no amnesty and he reassured me greatly that at least some measures would be taken to ensure that people who have committed what would be considered as crimes anywhere would be taken very much into account.

The Minister mentioned history. Indeed, is it not seven years since the great Good Friday Agreement? Perhaps he and my noble friend on the Front Bench will know of the little island of Rathlin just off the north coast, where Robert Bruce saw the spider fall, fall and fall again. Perhaps the Minister and members of the Government might take that into account; keep on going and he will succeed.

Religion also has a great part to play in Northern Ireland. I took a great lesson in religion from the honourable Member for North Antrim many years ago. I hope that he will consider the tale of the prodigal son. What we have heard today, and what much of the news has been about is that various Members of another place and, perhaps, political leaders of all communities have not had the most perfect record, yet now they receive benefits and limelight and have come a long way. That is excellent news. But I hope that he will remember all those—as in the tale of the prodigal son—who had the shining face of Ulster that he will remember.

The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, will remember—I think the Minister works in the place in which I had the honour of working—that agriculture is the number one industry. He might have seen one face, Dr McCracken, from Northern Ireland, the president of the British Veterinary Association, who is one of the people who has been normal. I hope that the Minister will remember Dr McCracken telling us about measures regarding bird flu and the rest. I hope he will remember him along with the progress that has been made.

My Lords, again I greatly respect another former Northern Ireland direct rule Minister. I know that this place has many of them who have had far more experience of the issue than I. The matter does require patience. It can be frustrating sometimes—far more in the past than now, because there is a period of optimism due to the changes that have occurred. We are in a totally different situation than we were prior to July and the announcements in late September. We must be positive. There is success in this for all sections of the community and we must sell it on that basis—not to spin it but to sell it. There is success for every section of the community in taking forward the normalisation process in Northern Ireland.

rose to call attention to the extent and consequences of the logging operations in the world's rainforests; and to move for Papers.

My Lords, it is a great privilege to have the opportunity to introduce this debate. The threat to the world's rainforests is both real and serious. This is not a new issue, nor is it by any means simple. In 1988, His Royal Highness Prince Philip vividly identified the conflicting and competing claims on these forests, when he noted how,

"to the eyes of conservationists the great natural rainforests are objects of beauty and delight and the habitat of a vast range of plant and animal life. They are also vital components of the world's climatic conditions and the carbon dioxide/oxygen cycle. But to the governments of countries struggling with internal hunger, poverty and unemployment, with external debt and with a plethora of well-meaning advisers and foreign aid programmes, the forests represent wealth in a fairly easily convertible form".

On 6 June this year, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, in answer to one of my questions, set out the probable long-term consequences for world climatic conditions of the progressive destruction of rainforests. Those include a greater rate of increase in global mean temperature; increased emissions and a lower rate of removal of carbon dioxide; reduced local evaporation rates leading to local changes in temperature and rainfall; changes in patterns of wind and ocean circulation; greater risk of local flooding; regional increases in low-level ozone pollution; and increased production of dust affecting climate through both absorption and reflection of light.

An example of the knock-on effects of tree clearance was contained in a report in yesterday's Times on the drought in the Amazon region. It stated: on the drought in the Amazon region. It stated:

"Scientists say that the impact of the drought has been worsened by deforestation—a fifth of the original rainforest has been cut down in recent decades. Cleared areas release less moisture into the air and are less able to hold water in the ground when it does rain, causing excessive run-off. The smoke from fires used to clear forest is also thought to inhibit rainfall".

Yet 2004 was the worst year ever for the destruction of the Amazon rainforests. The dangers of excessive deforestation are well known in government circles across the globe, but the short-term view of individual national interests makes effective international action extremely difficult. Consider, for instance, the cases of China and Japan. Both countries are determined to protect their own native forests, yet both are huge importers of timber. Demand in China is enormous and increasing. It is also unscrupulous about taking vast quantities of illegally logged timber, such as ramin, which reaches that country by a variety of means.

During the past decade many attempts have been made to regulate and control timber production and trade. I was extremely grateful for the Answers given on 4 July to my questions by the Lord President of the Council—who I am glad to say will reply to this debate—when she set out in substantive form the vast range of initiatives that have been commissioned and actions that have been taken to try to regulate and control timber production and trade. For example, there has been the Tropical Forestry Action Plan, the UN Forum on Forests, the EU Forests Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade partnership, the World Bank's programme on forests and the work of the World Agroforestry Centre. In 2002 the Royal Institute of International Affairs reported the outcome of its valuable study for controlling the international trade in illegally logged timber and wood products.

There have been a bewildering number of initials and acronyms, and I would love for somebody to bring them together one day. There are almost as many of those bodies as there are trees in the rainforests. However, in spite of all the effort that has been made—it has been considerable over the decades—the sad fact is that forest destruction continues unabated.

The picture is a grim one. At least half the world's rainforests have been felled in the past 50 years. Every minute, another 20 hectares are lost. Trees are destroyed which are literally irreplaceable. Take the case of the sapele in Africa, much of it being felled through selective culling. Apparently it is impossible to encourage any form of natural regeneration. These trees are often between 400 and 800 years old. They rise to a height of as much as 50 metres. In the process of their extraction, roads are built and heavy machinery is introduced. The lower storey beneath the canopy, comprising many valuable plants, is burnt. The forest canopy itself harbours over 40 per cent of all life on the Earth's surface—a fantastic figure. That canopy is breached with disastrous consequences and long-term implications. The result is that plant species, natural medicines and wild animals are threatened with extinction, some of them even before their existence is known to science.

The human costs are also huge. As many as 500 million people depend directly or indirectly on rainforests for their food, water, building materials and medicines. Some of them have a history of forest habitation extending back over many generations. They play an important part in the complex forest ecosystem yet, all too often, they are quite literally pushed aside. Their culture and customs are lost, their homes destroyed and their way of life is gone.

This terrible toll is the price exacted to meet the world's hunger for timber, and to make way for cattle ranches, soy bean farms and oil palm plantations. Little consideration is given to the consequences for plants, animals, people and the environment.

Noble Lords will recall that the millennium development goals are to maintain global diversity, to alleviate poverty and to eliminate chronic diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria. To achieve these, the part that forests can play, particularly in poverty prevention, should not be overlooked. Forests provide a means of sustenance for at least 80 per cent of the world's poorest people.

This is seen clearly in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The rainforests there are the second largest on Earth. Some 35 million people—75 per cent of Congo's national population—live in and around the forests. The forests are also home to thousands of plants and animal species. They are all now under threat of destruction. The irony is that this is at the behest of the World Bank. The Rainforest Foundation, which my son and I support—as does, incidentally, the Department for International Development—has been challenging the bank's policies in this case. They have been campaigning particularly on behalf of the indigenous, so-called "pygmy people". The foundation's director, Simon Counsell, is to give evidence next week on this matter to a Select Committee in the other place.

The World Bank is actually requiring the DRC Government to sell off 60 million hectares of rainforest for industrial logging, in the hope of boosting the economy ruined by years of civil war. In this instance the bank's policies are thoroughly misguided, and it should reconsider them. The UK executive director of the bank should insist on the closest scrutiny of all aspects before agreeing to the project, and in the mean time there should be a moratorium.

There is no single or simple answer to all this. Good examples of what can be done are the recently introduced system of regulation and control of timber products through the Forest Stewardship Council's certification scheme, the Timber Trade Federation's most welcome code of conduct and the Government's scheme, the Central Point of Expertise—which could, incidentally, be usefully extended to local government and be adopted by the private sector, where far too many are too ready to trade in illegally felled timber products.

Many other initiatives have been taken, but I urge that particular attention be given to the development of non-timber products such as medicines and fruit. These could become a substantial international trade, and would reward those countries engaged in good forestry practice. We also need proper auditing of all resources, not just of timber, but of finance. Good auditing and management are sine qua non. Corruption and malpractice are all too rife throughout this trade.. Corruption and malpractice are all too rife throughout this trade.

We should also bring the indigenous people more into partnership, with learning how to manage these forests. We need essentially to recognise the fact that these people have defined rights in international law. They understand what goes on in the forests, and if we have the wisdom to listen, we could learn.

I hope that, in time, through an extended programme of research and education such as that now being carried out by the Centre for International Forestry Research, there will be better understanding of the significance for life on Earth of the last remaining rainforests. The level of ignorance is still huge, and the potential loss incalculable.

The Government have been doing a lot in central Africa, Indonesia, Cambodia and Brazil, through their various partnership actions. I applaud their efforts, but, naturally, quite a lot more should still be done. If the future of rainforests can now be given even higher priority and commitment, there will be the real hope that in this millennium we will move away from exploitation and come to focus much more on conservation and protection.

I look forward to hearing the contribution from other noble Lords in this debate. Once again I thank the Minister in advance for taking part, and I look forward to her reply. I beg to move for Papers.

My Lords, the very name of Eden resounds with meaning. It combines solid political experience with the magic of the biblical garden and of the global environment, as we have heard. The noble Lord, whom I have known for many years since childhood, has considerable experience of south Asia and other parts of the world, and it is wholly appropriate that he should be introducing the urgent subject of the rainforest.

The noble Lord has set out all the arguments admirably and has given us some astounding statistics. I thank him for giving me the opportunity to mention one aspect of illegal logging and timber production—the use of slave labour, in the Brazilian rain forest in this instance.

All noble Lords will know that the Amazon region is under threat not only environmentally but from grave abuses of human rights by loggers and landowners. Fortunately, President Lula's Government have recently taken giant steps towards the environmental lobby, but the region is so vast and uncontrollable and finance so limited—in part because of macroeconomic constraints and national debt—that every initiative seemed dwarfed by the overall task. The main concern of human rights agencies is the plight of illegal workers who are being forced or enticed into logging and ranching operations, becoming the slaves of the loggers and ranchers and the unwitting agents of the destruction of the rainforest.

Many of the culprits are simply clearing land for agriculture, with an eye to the lucrative meat and soya exports, as well as timber exports. We know from many different sources—researchers, priests and NGO staff, some of whom take considerable risks to find out—that workers from the back streets of cities in Minas Gerais find themselves, through fraudulent offers of transport, food and high salaries, in the power of the gatos or middle men. They literally lose their identity. They are suddenly transported hundreds of miles and end up isolated in camps such as the charcoal or middle men. They literally lose their identity. They are suddenly transported hundreds of miles and end up isolated in camps such as the charcoal batterias in the Mato Grosso. A friend of mine has described the conditions there, talking of the tree stumps and the wreckage of the forest, the red and eroded earth, the overpowering, choking smoke, and the workers moving like ghosts in and out of the smoke around the ovens, their lungs full of ash, heat and charcoal dust. Several writers have described the debt bondage into which contracted forest labourers easily fall, when they have borrowed money for food or essential needs against earnings that seem never to materialise. in the Mato Grosso. A friend of mine has described the conditions there, talking of the tree stumps and the wreckage of the forest, the red and eroded earth, the overpowering, choking smoke, and the workers moving like ghosts in and out of the smoke around the ovens, their lungs full of ash, heat and charcoal dust. Several writers have described the debt bondage into which contracted forest labourers easily fall, when they have borrowed money for food or essential needs against earnings that seem never to materialise.

Frequently, aid workers who try to expose such conditions are shot or threatened with violence. Only last February, in a famous case, a 73 year-old American nun, Sister Dorothy Stang, was murdered in Para state, where she had campaigned for people's rights and the protection of the Amazon forest for 30 years. Four rural community workers who had also stood up against illegal land-grabbing, ranching and logging were killed soon afterwards. The government sent troops in, but the murders were only symptomatic of an endemic land tenure system that favours the owners and their gunmen and can be altered only through legislation.

In spite of that, the most recent policies of the government are held up as a model in Latin America. In March 2003, President Lula launched a national action plan for the eradication of slavery, which created new penalties for those using slave labour. It initiated legislation to expropriate land for the use of landowners, and it drew up a blacklist of 101 companies that have used slave labour and are now denied any state support. Meanwhile, the ILO has a range of projects that help to ensure compliance with ILO Convention No. 29 on forced labour. In December 2003, the Brazilian Congress approved amendments to the penal code widening the definition of slavery and increasing the sentences. In February 2004, further amendments were approved by the Chamber of Deputies, expropriating land belonging to slave owners. The amendments have been held up in the Senate, and there are fears that senior politicians wish to play down the problem of slavery.

Meanwhile, a special mobile inspection group has been quite successful in releasing slave labourers. It freed about 5,000 in 2003 and 2,700 last year. Much of the credit for that is due to the CPT, the Pastoral Land Commission, which is highly respected and receives and acts on initial complaints from the public. The use of mobile courts has enabled the group to impose immediate fines, freeze bank accounts and ensure the co-operation of farm owners. However, the group's work is limited by the lack of resources and the high level of impunity that continues to exist. That is what I wish to address. Sentencing and policing have been a problem. The minimum penalty is only two years in prison. In Brazil, short sentences under four years are often commuted into social service, such as making a donation to charity and even house arrest. The federal police are not always, as they should be, able to accompany the special group on raids, and prosecutors are themselves targeted and receive death threats. In January last year, three government officials and their driver were murdered while investigating farms in Minas Gerais for this purpose.

For all their efforts, the Brazilian Government are already missing their own target of eliminating forced labour in the Amazon region and elsewhere by 2006. Anti-Slavery International, of which I am a council member, recently urged Brazil to give more support to its campaigners and prosecutors and to implement its plans for land reform and social programmes to prevent workers being trapped into slave labour.

Will Her Majesty's Government do what they can to back up the recommendations? We are, after all, a major trading partner of Brazil and one of the importers of Brazilian timber and farm products. Are the Government satisfied that there is proper certification of timber produced according to international labour regulations? One important effect of certification has been the formation of a national buyers' group. The Forest Stewardship Council has also set new national standards and has encouraged civil society's participation in forest policy development. I know that the Government support that. Civil society must include all those who are engaged in the industry, not just the local communities and indigenous groups. Will DfID, which has supported the Brazilian rainforest since 1993, give some priority not only to the local community but to the eradication of forced labour and the improvement of labour standards in the rainforest? Will the Foreign and Commonwealth Office raise this issue during its regular human rights dialogue with Brazil? Similarly, Defra could take it up during its dialogue on sustainable development. Perhaps the noble Baroness could kindly pass on these requests to her colleagues.

I want to say a final word about national parks in Brazil and elsewhere. Some projects which come under the name of "national parks" are very far from the image of the national parks that we have in other countries, as they are in regions that are still prone to illegal loggers and ranchers and are unprotected from the local militia. Last February, the Brazilian Government announced the temporary prohibition of clear-cutting activities in an area of 8.2 million hectares—which, in terms of the figures given by the noble Lord, Lord Eden, obviously may save some areas of rainforest—and a national park spanning 3.7 million hectares in the state of Para. That is a welcome move, provided that the Government can also provide the proper protection.

My conclusion is that rainforests are about people as well as forests and that Brazil, having made a promising start in 2003 and notable changes, is now, for many reasons, showing a worrying lack of commitment to ending illegal logging and forced labour. It will need much more encouragement and material support from the international community if it is to comply with UN conventions in the future.

My Lords, I express my grateful thanks to my noble friend for providing us with the opportunity to discuss this hugely important subject today. I also thank him for his fascinating introduction. All the statistics that he gave were extremely profound. It is always an honour to follow the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich. Everyone in the House knows of his great experience in these matters.

As has been said, these unique ecosystems are in great peril. Their demise is not just a tragedy for those of us who are romantic conservationists, if I may use that term, and who value them for the aesthetic benefits they bring to the world; more importantly, the loss of rainforests is a disaster because they are part of the natural engine which maintains the natural processes of life on which we—mankind—rely for our very survival. These forests not only provide timber and non-forest products, but are critical in maintaining water cycles and soil fertility and soaking up the carbon dioxide that we produce.

It is not only rainforests that have these important functions. I have been astonished to realise the common role that many of our wild places around the world share with rainforests. My particular interest is heather moorlands, and I declare an interest as owning land in the north of England, where managing that particular ecosystem is part of what we do. These peaty lands play an equally important role in providing soil stability, regulating water flow and sequestering and storing carbon dioxide.

So why, if rainforests are not only valuable to our survival but a stimulant to our collective soul, are they under such a threat? The answer, I am afraid, is that we have completely failed to incorporate that worth and potential into the local and global economies. Through charities, we have spent millions of pounds on rainforest conservation, but we have tended only to increase the fiscal incentives behind their destruction and have completely failed to create a value and trade in the products and services that will ensure their survival. I fear that the loss of our natural areas—upland and wetland, as well as forests—in the UK is a symptom of that same disease.

Experience across the world—in rainforests, savannahs, moorland and tundra—has shown that the most effective way to prevent damage, encroachment and unsustainable poaching is to ensure that the local communities obtain, through economic activity and trading, more than they would benefit from exploitation. That seems to me to be the key. Indeed, it is the ethos of a rather remarkable organisation called the African Parks Foundation, which, after only three years, manages more than 500,000 hectares of public national parks in four African countries. It is reversing extensive conservation and ecological damage by making these places the economic engines of local communities, and showing that transparent business and employment opportunities that stem from them can be greater from sound environmental management than from the poaching and extraction of timber. This new approach to conservation is being used by a number of other organisations and, indeed, governments around the world with, I am glad to say, much success.

However, the economic potential for wilderness is huge. It is a benefit that we currently take for free and we actively resist creating a trade, whereas we happily pay for the products which can most lucratively be obtained from destruction. Examples are numerous: soil fertility; clean water; biodiversity; and, perhaps most pertinently for these times, carbon dioxide. There can be little doubt that we are all feeling the effects of climate change and that dangerous change is being driven by our overproduction of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide.

Reducing emissions must be the mainstay of our concerted global action, but it must be supplemented to a significant degree by increasing the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by our natural areas—our forests, moorlands and wetlands—and by mitigating future rises in emissions from the destruction of these natural areas.

Interestingly enough, a typical hectare of riverine forest in the Amazon basin absorbs 20 to 30 tonnes of carbon per hectare each year. An African savannah woodland will absorb 25 to 50 tonnes of carbon per hectare each year. This activity really has a value and we should be enabling a trade in that commodity so that we can provide a fiscal incentive to rehabilitate and maintain these areas at home and abroad.

What can be done? While we ask the poor of Africa to adopt new technologies to reduce their emissions and to reforest their degraded lands, we explicitly prohibit the trade of such carbon credits in Europe as part of our drive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—primarily carbon dioxide—into the atmosphere. This is an unhelpful state of affairs. The poorest of the world poor at last have a legitimate product which, it is hoped, can be exploited to their advantage. While we set emission targets and permit that trade of credits between companies within Europe, and we allow credits that result from technological change originating from our own research patents, we have banned the trade of carbon credits that originate from reforestation in the developing world. That is not only unfair but misguided. It is anti-competitive and counterproductive.

There is a huge opportunity to be gained from our rainforests and other wild places in the world. I am interested to see that in Costa Rica steps have been taken in this direction where, by the simple expedient of paying for carbon sequestration and charging for clear and consistent water, a government organisation, Fundecor, has increased the area covered by rainforest, ensured the continued production of ecosystem goods and services required for future growth, and brought the rural poor into the economic mainstream. If it is done in Costa Rica, it could be done elsewhere.

This is an important issue, as my noble friend Lord Eden said. In highlighting the plight of rainforests, he has given us the opportunity of touching on a potential solution for wilderness generally. I hope that in the near future we will have the opportunity in this House of debating the whole issue of ecosystem services. These natural services are the key to life and their current demise could be the cause of our extinction. I cannot think of a more important matter on which we should focus.

Finally, I draw to the attention of the noble Baroness the Lord President of the Council the fact that, in my capacity as a member of European Union Sub-Committee D, I asked the Secretary of State, Margaret Beckett, when she gave evidence to the committee on the UK's EU presidency priorities, what opportunities she saw in opening up the carbon emissions trading scheme to other continents. She gave me some encouragement. In response to me, she said,

"but I would also say that there is a very strong willingness in the Commission and among member states . . . to try to draw in and to work with people in developing countries".

I hope that the noble Baroness can confirm that that is the case and that the UK Government will extend the emissions trading scheme to incorporate other continents and so benefit the people who are suffering, as my noble friend so ably described.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Eden of Winton, for choosing to give us the opportunity to debate such a vital matter. This is an issue that impacts on every aspect of life as we know it and is not merely a problem of forest loss alone. While deforestation accounts for approximately 14 million hectares per year, only about a third of that is being offset by new forest or natural reforestation. But those new forests mainly excel in the provision of industrial roundwood. Hence, the world is losing around 9 million hectares of forest each year. That is mainly in the tropics and includes some of the most biologically diverse forests. Indeed, the World Conservation Union's red list estimates that almost one third of all threatened species are found in tropical and sub-tropical forest habitats.

But that is only the tip of the iceberg. At least as great a threat comes from the degradation of remaining forests. Only in places such as the Congo and Amazon basins do large uninterrupted swathes of forest remain. Elsewhere, the World Resources Institute estimates that 60 per cent of remaining forest is now fragmented into isolated blocks and, even more alarmingly, 60 per cent of fragmented blocks is being massively degraded. One can only imagine the effect all this is having, since what remains will contain less biodiversity, will supply less clean water, will store less carbon and so on. I am speaking about half a billion hectares that are now subject to a spiral of ongoing degradation by burning and the removal of the last few logs by an over-capitalised logging industry.

To try to put this in perspective, the world's forests are home to up to 90 per cent of terrestrial biodiversity. Critically, 90 per cent of the world's very poorest people depend to some degree on tropical forests for their livelihoods. An example is Ghana, which is probably loosing $100 million per year because of illegal logging and failure to enforce the law. To put that in perspective, it amounts to about half the Ghanaian Government's education budget each year.

So what is to be done? Combating deforestation has traditionally been a technocratic matter, predicated on establishing improved management and conservation systems. Now there is a growing realisation that, while a good scientific base is still important, the real challenges are much more political. Forest governance systems are dysfunctional in so far as 80 per cent of forest lands are still state owned and present, in size and logistics, an impossible challenge to urban-based management. Poor local communities have traditionally had little or no part to play. Having been marginalised from directly and legally benefiting from the forest, they have sometimes contributed to the problem as they struggle to maintain their livelihoods. However, there is now a slowly emerging trend towards decentralisation and towards involving local communities and enabling them to benefit directly from the forest. Where this has occurred there is better management, and logging, potentially, can be more effectively controlled. But that requires proper resourcing, a simple transfer of responsibility is not enough. Local communities need to be helped to develop adequate administration and management skills. Such help would be crucial.

The private sector—so often lambasted as the architect of forest loss—must also be recognised as a key player. It can be prevailed upon and has shown itself capable of startling turnarounds. I saw an example of that in Costa Rica. The private sector is a reality and its logging operations in the tropics need to be certified for good-quality management by bodies such as the Forest Stewardship Council. That will have an effect if the clear message from developed countries goes out that they will only accept timber from legally verifiable and well managed sources.

We should welcome the voluntary partner agreements that the European Union is negotiating with a number of tropical countries. However, it would be wrong merely to salve our consciences by finding means to eliminate illegal timber coming into our domestic markets. We must invest, and invest significantly, in the establishment of good forestry governance and move towards sustainable forestry management in tropical countries.

Finally, on the issue of investment, it is regrettable that, while loss of tropical forest has not abated and while so many poor people in rural areas still rely on goods and services that forests provide to sustain their livelihoods, international aid spending on tropical forests has declined drastically over the last decade, including that from the United Kingdom.

Notwithstanding the excellent work done by aid agencies, such as the Department for International Development, governments in developed countries, including the United Kingdom, are making less money available to support developing countries that seek to curb deforestation and to promote sustainable forest management. These figures are alarming. Recent studies indicate that overseas development assistance for the forest sector could have declined by as much as 50 per cent during the 1990s. That trend continues into the current decade.

Again I give my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Eden of Winton. I hope that our Government have listened and will give a lead to developed countries that currently are not pulling their weight in terms of adequate financial support in the area of forest conservation.

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Eden of Winton on securing this debate. It is an enormous privilege to take part in it. I have been particularly struck by the fact that all speakers have emphasised that there are three aspects to this problem—environmental, economic and social. All speakers have spoken eloquently. Fortuitously, after the wonderful introduction by the noble Lord, Lord Eden, each speaker has concentrated on a different angle. I do not want to repeat the point those speakers have made but simply to endorse them.

The noble Lord, Lord Eden, strikingly gave us a history of the plans, initiatives and strategies that have gone into trying to address what is not a new problem, and he underlined the fact that despite all these good intentions and strategies the problem continues unabated.

So it is with a heavy heart that I speak about this problem this afternoon. I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Peel, that we really must recognise the value that these lands offer the world. Economic measures may well be an extremely powerful way to ensure that preservation and conservation happen in a way that a purely environmental approach has been unable to secure.

Into that equation we must add the fact that the economic consequences of doing nothing and allowing deforestation to continue are very high. The World Bank estimates that they amount to about $15 billion a year, of which $10 billion are paid by the developing nations. So the costs of not addressing the issue are incredibly high. Only this week the United Nations estimated that 50 million of the world's refugees would be in that situation as a result of environmental factors. So there is a huge social and economic cost.

The noble Lord, Lord Maginnis mentioned the EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade action plan. I am sure that the Lord President will refer to it when she sums up the debate, to which I am delighted that she has time to reply because of her expertise in this area. I believe that under the UK presidency of the EU the regulations will be published. That is an important step forward, because it suggests a very practical package of measures, and the country-to-country working that it envisages will be a powerful way forward. However, I am worried when it mentions,

"encouraging measures to avoid investment in activities that encourage illegal logging".

It is hard to see how such measures could be brought to bear on, for example, the multinationals involved in growing soya beans. Although we could encourage the measures, I fear that the EU may be over-optimistic in thinking that we could do much about that.

I endorse the point made by previous speakers that much of this is about cultural change and enabling producer nations to match the effort on the EU's part to stop illegal timber coming in with new laws of their own—for example, the efforts at national level by Brazil to monitor what is going on and by Mexico to establish the scale of the problem. Both those countries are making very good efforts at national level but, nevertheless, thousands of hectares of forest are still being destroyed every year, partly as a result of the fact that there is not the capacity to inspect such vast areas. The figure for Mexico, which is three years old but which I do not believe has changed dramatically, is that there are 100 inspectors to 100,000 hectares of forest. So the problem is never going to be solved by inspection but only, as other speakers have pointed out, by empowering the local communities around the forests to do something about it.

That also goes to the heart of good governance, because municipal local government will be at the forefront of handing out permits, licences and so on for what happens in their areas. If they are subject to bribes and corruption, the paper trail that the EU envisages will not be worth much.

I had hoped before the debate to experience an especially good example in Mexico of an economic resource that has been being developed for about 20 years in the cloud forest there. However, due to Hurricane Stan and the torrential rain last week in Chiapas state in Mexico, I was unable to visit the project. I still wish to mention it in passing, and I hope to visit it in the future, because it is an exceptional example of what can happen. The project, called Finca Irlanda, involves hundreds of small-scale landowners who have got together to develop shade-grown coffee in the cloud forest. That has enabled them to preserve the forest and the coffee trade at the same time, in one of the poorest states of Mexico which has not had much economic success. The Government have recognised the good practice developed there over the years, and told me about it as an interesting place to visit. They are interested in building on that sort of activity.

On the domestic front, we have spoken much about what happens in other countries but we must ensure that we are not guilty of using illegal wood. That brings me particularly to the Government's new guidelines for certification of imported timber. Already the UK director of the Forest Stewardship Council is questioning two of the five certification systems backed by the central point of expertise on timber. His opinion is that endorsing them undermines the Government's commitment to sourcing timber from legal and sustainable forestry. I would be grateful for the Minister's comment on that.

The Government are being further undermined by failures in their own procurement practices. Laudably, five years ago, the report on green government required annual procurement reports from government departments to check that they were buying "good wood" and not illegal wood. However, last year, five departments were unable to provide any data on their construction timber spend. That meant that there was no evidence of legal sourcing for 2.5 per cent of the total expenditure on manufactured timber. That may not sound large but it means that £0.5 million was spent on timber that may have been illegally logged, in addition to the 20 per cent spent on sources with uncertified evidence of sustainability. The Government still have some way to go in ensuring that they are not a market for illegally logged wood. Cleaning up our home front is essential so that we can work abroad with credibility. Can the Government assure the House that, by the time the next report is due, all departments will have the necessary apparatus for delivering those data?

I would like to ask the Minister about the Government's imaginative new Global Opportunities Fund, which will enable Defra and embassies in their work abroad to address issues of sustainable development and climate change. No doubt, some of its effort will go into tackling the subject of today's debate. In a region such as Latin American, where we do not have embassies in some affected countries because of the closure programme, will one or two lead embassies be identified to do the work and to spread good practice to other countries? The fund is a very important source of pump-priming money for the sort of governance and capacity-building work about which noble Lords have spoken so eloquently. How will it be divided up in terms of priority? For example, currently, embassies see their work very much as helping companies on the economic front. Presumably, this fund balances that, so that work on social and environmental areas will be an important priority.

Will those areas of the world with particularly severe problems—Latin America has been mentioned many times today—have the opportunity to bid for further funds to help them with that work? The Government have found an imaginative way to enable grassroots, small-scale projects working with local NGOs to be financed. I would really like that to succeed.

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Eden of Winton for introducing this debate. The growing concern globally—because it is global, despite rumours to the contrary—about what is happening as a result of global warming is a measure of the realisation of what we are doing to our own environment. This is not our problem which we can solve. That may be a matter of great regret, but it is a harsh reality which we need to recognise.

The scale of the problems that we are facing on this front is vast. My noble friend Lord Eden gave us some idea of what it is. But, to put it in perspective, when the World Bank requires 60 million hectares of the Congo to be released for timber, that is 240 times the area of this country. That is a vast area, and we need to think of the problem on that scale.

The Amazon basin is 20 per cent felled. We are losing several million hectares more per annum. The Motion refers to the timber trade, but in the Amazon basin, probably at least as big a motive is agricultural development—or should one say, perhaps, agricultural abuse. All too often land is felled or cropped for a few years until fertility runs out. Regrettably, then people move on.

There is no easy answer and we will not find one. But I recall, about 20 years ago, listening to the then director of Kew Gardens who had been to the Amazon basin to see the situation there. He returned with the interesting comment that the medicinal value of a hectare of rainforest in the Amazon was greater than the value of a crop of wheat grown on a hectare of good Essex land. We are destroying that, but I suspect that is partly through lack of knowledge, as well as partly through the lack of ability to develop the techniques that we need to extract that value.

I will not say that it is an insoluble problem. The key to breaking the cycle that we are in is to provide, as so many noble Lords have said, alternative income for local communities. The other brutal reality with which we are dealing is that, currently, deforestation, timber cutting and then some form of basic agriculture provides a simpler, easier, more guaranteed return on investment. These are problems with which I am delighted that the noble Baroness the Lord President rather than me has to wrestle.

We will not find a solution without breaking the economic cycle. I was particularly interested in what my noble friend Lord Peel had to say about the possibilities of carbon trading. Although it is true that in the long term, reforestation is carbon neutral, what is certain is that the felling of forests damages the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb carbon. What is also certain is that if we replace forests, we restore some of that lost capacity. But in the end, it has to be said that tropical rainforests become carbon neutral because they produce as much carbon dioxide as they absorb. However, at the moment we are in the business of destroying them. As long as that goes on, we are doing damage. If we can get the wider world more involved in what is at present a European operation in carbon trading, although another one is now going in the United States, perhaps we can then go some way to creating an alternative revenue source in what are regrettably third world countries. The additional revenue would be extremely useful and we, as developed countries, would be providing something for countries whose effect on global climate can be very great. That revenue stream would at least help in reforestation.

Here we come to another dilemma. Do we put sufficiently strong conditions on the aid we give? Certainly if there were a global carbon trading system in place, we would have to be sure that any funds it generated were used for reforestation. I say that because it is a regrettable possibility in some parts of the world that funds coming in from outside do not always finish up being spent in the way they ought to be spent. Aid in all its forms needs to be tied to the integrity of the system that is receiving it. That applies just as much to the issue of deforestation and all its causes. Aid money has to go back into the land and local communities. That is an essential.

The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, mentioned some of the appalling humanitarian problems that arise as a result of the abuse of land and land ownership, particularly in the Amazon region. Another noble Lord mentioned the Chinese and their huge market for timber. However, we need to recognise in this problem the fact that there are sinners and those who are doing the right thing on both sides of the equation. In this instance, the Chinese are in a dual position because they sit on both sides of the fence. I say that because the Chinese did a great deal to stop deforestation. A result of the floods in the 1990s was that 1 million people were put out of work, so of course today Chinese demand for timber from external sources has increased. If one step is taken for good reasons, it may produce ill effects on others. While we will never get this completely right, we need to recognise that the situation has to improve.

I do not want to pick up on anything else that has been said because the situation has been very well outlined by all noble Lords who have spoken. I sympathise with the noble Baroness the Lord President. She has the executive authority to act for this country and I urge her to act internationally with all her colleagues. Without general agreement—and clearly there is a huge degree of agreement—and general acceptance in those parts of the world where this practice is going on that it needs to stop, there will not be a solution. We cannot go on for many more years without a solution. I wish the noble Baroness success.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Eden of Winton, for giving the House an opportunity to debate this very important issue. The noble Lord has great experience and expertise in these matters and I thank him for the recognition he has given of the work being carried out by the Government in this area—although, of course, I recognise his plea for us to do more. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, summed up the matter when she said that this is an issue that has an environmental, economic and social impact.

In his opening remarks, the noble Lord, Lord Eden of Winton, set out the context very clearly, particularly in regard to the human cost. More than half of the world's rainforests have already been lost. About 40 per cent of all remaining rainforests—about 6 million square kilometres—are ecologically intact and relatively undisturbed by logging or other human activities. Most of these frontier forests are located in the Amazon and the Congo Basin, and more than a third of them are now facing a moderate to high threat of degradation due to logging. So the situation is serious, as every noble Lord has said. Another third of these frontier forests is threatened by agricultural expansion, mining and other human activities, especially in Asia. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, referred to the expansion of agricultural land.

The conversion of rainforest to agricultural land is often attributed to population pressure, the demand for land by small farmers and the growth in markets for cash crops. Resettlements, both planned and unplanned, have been a major force behind large-scale rainforest conversion. Logging has sometimes contributed to this phenomenon by opening up forests. An increasing share of agricultural conversion can be attributed to the production of exportable cash crops, such as oil palm and soya beans, and to cattle farming. So making forest product markets work more efficiently, establishing new markets for ecosystem services and increasing the share of benefits to the people who live in and around forests are the best ways to promote sound management and conservation of the rainforests.

The noble Earl, Lord Peel, urged us to take a broader approach and, in particular, to look at the value of trade in products and services. At a global level, the demand for wood and wood products is increasing, especially in the faster growing Asian economies. Although that is the case, it is important that we look to ensure that this increase is carried out on a sustainable basis.

Logging operations in tropical rainforests fall into three main categories. The first of these involves operations which are sustainable, where forests are well managed and harvested at sustainable levels. This can bring lasting economic benefits for governments through tax revenues, and benefits for communities through jobs and incomes. The second kind are those that are legal but not sustainable; where they operate within the rule of law but yield few direct benefits for local communities, especially for the forest-dependent poor.

Thirdly, there are those logging operations that are both illegal and unsustainable. This kind of logging is all too common in rainforests. It is the most destructive—and poor local communities suffer the consequences most directly. Illegal logging loses governments billions of dollars in lost revenue and distorts markets and trade, undermining both legitimate business and responsible forest management. It promotes corruption, undermines the rule of law, and sometimes funds armed conflict. We have seen the way in which the proceeds of illegal logging have fuelled civil wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Cambodia.

Logging can also have environmental consequences. The destruction and disturbance of habitats remains the biggest cause of biodiversity loss world wide. But it is important to stress that logging is not necessarily bad for people and the environment. There are examples of logging operations where local people have a greater say in what is being done and a fairer share of the benefits.

Programmes which support community-driven approaches to forest management are yielding greater benefits for local people, creating jobs and incomes and generating revenue for governments. I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Lord, Lord Eden, that forests can play a part in poverty prevention.

Conservation is also being driven by communities. It has been estimated that globally local people invest twice as much in conserving their forests as do governments. In fact, there are major shifts in forest ownership and conservation world wide. With increased decentralisation and a greater recognition of the rights of forest-dependent people, community-owned and administered forests in developing countries now total at least 22 per cent.

The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, is quite right. Indigenous people are sometimes denied their human and property rights or are dispossessed of their ancestral lands. The Government work in partnership with a number of countries and a range of organisations to protect the livelihood of forest-dependent poor people, including indigenous people. In Brazil, which the noble Earl mentioned, the Department for International Development has supported the indigenous peoples' demonstration project to enhance the capacity of indigenous peoples' organisations to protect their culture and their land. We have also funded a study on the impacts of improved forest governance and law enforcement on the livelihoods of the poor, including indigenous people.

With respect to the noble Earl's points about the eradication of forced labour and the importance of adhering to labour standards, I will, of course, raise these matters with my colleagues, as requested. But I can assure the noble Earl that our embassy in Brazil is monitoring developments closely and raises these and other human rights issues with the Brazilian Government on a regular basis.

The noble Earl and the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, raised the issue of certification. The Government are working with the Worldwide Fund for Nature to promote responsible forest management, including certification, through their support to the forest producers' group in Brazil. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is helping to develop an independent scheme for forest-friendly soya production. I will be quite happy to write to noble Lords and put a copy of that letter in the Library if that would be helpful.

There is then the question of what we can do to promote legal and sustainable logging operations in the world's rainforests. Making forest product markets work more efficiently, establishing new markets for ecosystem services and increasing the share of benefits to the people who live in and around forests are the best ways to promote sound management and the conservation of rainforests. Improving forest governance and addressing the policy and market failures that drive illegal and unsustainable logging of rainforests is a key part of this. Increased efforts to recognise the rights of local communities, encourage tenure reforms and develop better incentives for sustainable forest management are also needed.

The Government are doing a considerable amount of work in that area; we have helped to put the subject on the international agenda and have also taken action in Europe as well as here in the United Kingdom. G8 environment and development Ministers agreed that action was needed by timber-producing and timber-consuming countries, and discussed what could be done to prevent illegally logged timber entering their markets. They agreed to do more to support developing countries' own efforts to enforce forest law and improve governance. The fact that the United Kingdom Government need the support of other trading nations in combating illegal logging and the reality that we are part of a single market has also underlined the need for action at the European Union level.

The noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, is quite right in saying that we played a very active role in developing the EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade action plan. The plan proposes a range of actions to tackle illegal logging. Perhaps the most significant would be new legislation that would give custom authorities the power to deny entry to illegal timber from countries that have entered into partnership agreements with the European Union. We expect the legislation to go before the EU Agriculture Council for political agreement later this month. Discussions are under way between member states, the European Commission and potential partner countries, including Cameroon, Ghana, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville, Malaysia and Indonesia. The United Kingdom is leading the process with Ghana—a country mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis—which is keen to be one of the first countries to negotiate a partnership agreement. Other states are leading the discussions with other potential partner countries.

I should tell the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, that the Government provide support to forestry in developing countries through the Department for International Development, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. As for our financial support, the main support comes through our country programmes and averages £19 million per year.

The noble Lord is quite right in saying that the amount of money going specifically to forests has fallen, but that must be considered against the fact that the amount of aid that we are giving has gone up. The difference is that we are now supporting the priorities that have been set by the developing countries themselves, so we have to persuade the developing countries to put more of the aid money that they are given into forest management. That links to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, who talked about considering the aid that we are giving and putting some conditions in relation to it. All the evidence shows that you make greater progress if you support developing country priorities—because that, of course, is where those countries put their own resources. So it is a difficult balancing act that we are trying to perform; we are trying to help those countries develop in the areas where they feel that they can develop more quickly, and forestry management may not be at the top of their agenda. That is obviously something that we have to work with them to develop.

I can also tell the House that we contribute substantial funds to international organisations that support forestry, such as the World Bank, the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the UN and the Global Environment Facility. I shall come back to the point about the World Bank that was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Eden of Winton. It is supporting the DRC Government in the adoption of a new forest code, which seeks to establish a framework for the sustainable management of the country's forests. We are concerned that implementation of the code has been slow, and we are in discussion with the bank, the European Commission and others, to identify how donors can work together to support the implementation of the code on the ground. We support adherence to the moratorium on the allocation of new logging contracts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. However, if the noble Lord has further evidence with respect to the work that the World Bank is doing in the DRC, I should be very happy to have it. Our information is that the World Bank is committed to determining whether specific country policies supported by bank lending programmes are likely to have significant poverty and social consequences. It would be helpful to know whether the commitments that the bank has made are not being met.

Much of the Department for International Development's current work is focused on helping to address the governance and market failures that drive illegal and unsustainable logging of forests. The noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, and the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, mentioned the importance of looking at governance. Our programmes aim to tackle weak forest governance and associated trade and corruption and to strengthen the role of civil society in holding their governments to account.

The Department for International Development's work also involves the development of market-based approaches to the provision of ecosystem services such as water, biodiversity and carbon—the values of which are rarely taken into account when decisions are made about logging.

We work across government. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs supports international efforts for the conservation and sustainable use of forest biodiversity, in particular through the Darwin Initiative. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Defra are supporting conservation of the great apes.

The noble Earl, Lord Peel, asked whether we should consider giving credits for reduced emissions from deforestation and extending emissions trading. I can confirm that we shall seek ways to expand the emissions trading scheme to forest projects as the noble Earl advocates.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. Can she give the House an assurance on the timetable to which the Government will be working as regards allowing emissions trading to be extended to wilderness areas and not just to forestry?

My Lords, I am unable to give a time frame. I shall check whether we have published one. This has been the subject of much internal discussion. It is a difficult area in which to make commitments with respect to a timetable. However, if one exists, I shall happily make it available to the noble Earl.

The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, also raised some of these issues, particularly with respect to the restoration of degraded forest. There is a proposal from Papua New Guinea and the Coalition for Rainforest Nations to find a new way to give credit for reduced emissions from deforestation. We shall need fully to understand the technical aspects of the proposal before we support it as a way to give credits for reducing deforestation, but we are looking at it very carefully indeed.

We are also promoting the restoration of degraded forest land through the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration. The Government, industry and NGOs have made common cause to promote better forest governance and trade. The Government have introduced a public procurement policy that requires central government departments to purchase timber from legal and sustainable sources. Here I come to the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller. All contractors to government are required to supply timber from legal sources. Contractors are obliged to produce independent verification of those sources. However, EU procurement law prohibits the specification of criteria related to the rights and customs of forest dependent people.

The noble Baroness mentioned the Global Opportunities Fund. While there has been a change in our network across the world, I assure the noble Baroness that countries are covered from a lead embassy. As regards the priorities for the Global Opportunities Fund, I shall write to the noble Baroness with respect to her question about areas with particularly severe problems and the extent to which they can bid for funds. Even if countries do not have a direct presence, they will be covered from elsewhere.

I shall mention the private sector before I finish. It has adopted a code of conduct and a responsible purchasing policy, and it has also helped to build support across the United Kingdom. Several European countries and Japan—which is important—have since adopted similar codes. Many challenges remain, but the initiatives that I have outlined today suggest that we are making progress. The Government are tackling the governance and market failures that drive illegal and unsustainable logging of forests, and we are promoting the use of markets and incentive-based approaches to pay for and conserve the ecosystem services that forests provide. It is a difficult area, and we have a great deal more to do, but through this work we are making a difference.

My Lords, as every noble Lord who has taken part in the debate will have recognised, this is an enormous subject, which covers a vast range of interests and aspects. It was fascinating to listen to the high quality of the speeches. As the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, made clear, each contributor spoke to a different facet of this enormous subject and yet it all came together. I am grateful to all who have taken part in the debate, and I listened closely to the interesting and informative speech of the Lord President of the Council. I will take up her invitation to come back to her on the subject of the World Bank and the DRC.

At this stage, I simply want to acknowledge the high quality of the speeches and to say that I will study them all with great care and attention. I will certainly use this debate as the first step in what I hope will become a series of similar debates in this House where we can follow up what is possibly the most important subject of all that confront us this day. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 10 October be approved [4th Report from the Joint Committee and 9th Report from the Merits Committee].].

My Lords, the Government have always made clear our commitment to fighting against terrorism in all its forms anywhere in the world. The United Kingdom's counter-terrorism legislation is both comprehensive and tough, and it contains a range of measures that allow us to take effective action against terrorists. The recent tragic events in London, Egypt and Indonesia have emphasised the need to act quickly and effectively to disrupt terrorist activity. Among the most important of the measures that we can use is the power to proscribe organisations that the Secretary of State believes are concerned in terrorism. The then Home Secretary laid an order for the proscription of 21 international terrorist groups under Part II of the Terrorism Act 2000 on 28 February 2001, which was approved by this House on 27 March 2001. My right honourable friend the previous Home Secretary, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, similarly laid an order for the proscription of a further four organisations on 28 October 2002, which was approved by this House on 30 October that year.

The order that is the subject of this debate was laid before Parliament in draft on 10 October. It lists 15 organisations which, in the carefully considered judgment of my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, should now be subject to proscription in the United Kingdom. The draft order was debated in the other place earlier today and approved. Under Part II of the Terrorism Act 2000, the Secretary of State has the power to proscribe any organisation that he believes is concerned in terrorism.

An organisation is "concerned in terrorism" if it commits or participates in acts of terrorism, prepares for terrorism, or promotes, encourages or is otherwise concerned in it. If the Secretary of State is satisfied that a group meets these criteria he has the power to proscribe it. In addition, there are a number of other criteria which can be taken into account. These additional factors include the nature and scale of an organisation's activities, the specific threat posed to the United Kingdom, the threat to British nationals overseas, the extent of the organisation's presence in the United Kingdom, and the need to support other members of the international community in the global fight against terrorism.

Proscription means that an organisation is outlawed in the UK and that it is illegal for it to operate here. The Terrorism Act 2000 makes it a criminal offence to belong to, support, or display support for a proscribed organisation. The Terrorism Act also allows the police to seize all property of a proscribed organisation. We accept that this is a tough power which has the effect of outlawing previously lawful activity; therefore it has to be given effect by affirmative resolution in both Houses of Parliament. The Home Secretary has made it clear that he takes such decisions only after the most thorough scrutiny of all the intelligence put forward by the security and intelligence agencies.

We believe that this power plays a key role in creating a hostile environment for terrorists and their supporters. It also deters international terrorist organisations from coming here in the first place. Equally importantly it sends out a strong signal across the world that the UK rejects them and their claims to legitimacy.

To assist their consideration of the draft order my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has sent all noble Lords and honourable Members a brief summary on each of the groups named in the draft order. In reaching his decision the Home Secretary has had access to intelligence material on all the organisations in addition to material in the public domain, and took into account police, security and legal advice. He is entirely satisfied that the organizations which are being recommended to Parliament are "concerned in terrorism" and therefore fully meet the criteria set out in the Terrorism Act.

We have sought a shortened timetable to ensure that the power is as effective as possible, by not allowing the proposed groups time to move resources out of the country or to change their names in order to evade the powers in the Terrorism Act. The House will have noted that most of these groups are active in south Asia, specifically Pakistan. But Ansar Al Sunna and Ansar Al-Islam are active in Iraq. The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and the Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain's activities are in the main aimed at their respective countries, and Al Ittihad Al Islamia is based in east Africa.

The evidence case that has been put before the Home Secretary is clear all these groups are active in terrorism and have links to the network of organisations associated to Al'Qaeda. These groups have been chosen because the security and intelligence agencies have advised us that they are the highest priority at the present time. The Government have every confidence that the work of the agencies is first-rate. We acknowledge and pay tribute to the fantastic job they undertake in extraordinarily difficult circumstances.

The agencies' intelligence picture is constantly evolving. As a consequence the list of proscribed organisations is kept under constant review, and we will wish to add to it and of course remove groups that can prove that they have renounced terrorism as necessary. Noble Lords will be aware that an organisation that has been proscribed, or any individual who believes that he has been affected by the decision to proscribe, has the right of appeal. In the first instance an appeal can be made to the Home Secretary. If he confirms the decision to proscribe, a further appeal can be made to the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission. The commission can then review whether the legal criteria apply and whether the Government and the Home Secretary have properly exercised their powers. POAC is a tribunal consisting of three senior judges cleared to see the most sensitive material, and can see the intelligence material that the Home Secretary has viewed.

The Government's prime task is the protection of the public. We will take whatever action is necessary to ensure the safety of our whole community, regardless of background. These powers will be used proportionately and effectively. The groups in question are involved in terrorism and seek to promote the poisonous ideologies spread by Al'Qaeda and its acolytes. I hope that the House can support us in the action we propose to take against them. I beg to move.

Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 10 October be approved [4th Report from the Joint Committee and 9th Report from the Merits Committee].—(].—(Lord Bassam of Brighton.))

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the information he has supplied. One of our difficulties is that we have no detailed information other than that supplied by the Home Office. The Government have, and will continue to receive, our support in proscribing organisations involved in national or international terrorism. As the Minister rightly described, the Government have their own methods of collecting information, through intelligence or other means.

We have a problem here. We have complained before, during discussion on the previous order in which organisations were proscribed, that it is always difficult to deal with organisations bunched together. In this case, we see that there are 15 international organisations, and it is difficult to give detailed consideration to each. We seem to have followed the procedure which was there before, and I hope the Minister will seriously consider the suggestion that we should be able to look at each group individually, so that we can make reasonable comments about them.

In this particular case, we have considerable difficulties. I have been in touch with Amnesty International today, and no one there has any knowledge or expertise about these organisations. Do the organisations to be proscribed know that they are going to be proscribed? If not, how can they appeal? If they want to appeal, do they have the right to come to this country and make representation to judges here? It would be helpful to have that information.

Our own limited research does not allow us to doubt what the Government have said. I do not want to go into detail, because we could be looking at the individual cases for which the Home Secretary has provided the details for noble Lords for a very long time. Let me stress again, however, that we hope to deal with matters individually in future. We are unhappy for the Government to rush terrorism-related legislation in the manner in which we seem to be dealing with it at present.

In future, it would be helpful to know what criteria are used for proscribing international terrorist organisations, and whether they are different from those for national organisations. Could the Minister spell out the criteria by which we judge their particular threats? As I say, do these organisations know they are being proscribed? What sort of assets do they hold in this country? Do they have contacts with organisations in the United Kingdom? Why has no nationally based organisation been proscribed, when some of them have already been identified in speeches made by the Home Secretary and Prime Minister? What provision is being made in the Terrorism Bill—soon to reach this House—for the future proscription of organisations?

My Lords, Part II of the Terrorism Act 2000 lays down a procedure for proscribing organisations involved in certain forms of terrorism. That list, as the Minister has explained, is contained in Schedule 2 to the Act. So far, I believe that there are 39 organisations inscribed in the schedule. The Government are now proposing to add 15 groups to that number.

When the Act was passed in 2000, the Opposition accepted the principle of having a list, so we are certainly not questioning the principle on which the Bill is based, nor the procedure that it sets down for proscription. In so far as I have been able to garner information about these organisations—and I share the noble Lord's concern about the amount of detail that is available—it seems there are grounds for proscribing all 15 groups that the Government have brought to your Lordships' attention.

After five years of the Act, however, certain questions come to mind. The Government have already proscribed 39 organisations. Have they engaged in an assessment of the effectiveness of proscription as a means of protecting the citizens of this country against the terrorist threat? In other words, how successful has been the effect of putting organisations on the proscribed list? Have any of the proscribed organisations put on the list been closed down as a result? Is there any evidence to demonstrate that listing leads to increased terrorist arrests, or assists in seizing terrorist assets—or that listing simply drives these organisations underground and makes them harder to monitor? I use these questions as illustrative of a general request to understand exactly how the Government are assessing the effect of the policy they set out under the Act.

My Lords, I ought to start by paying tribute to both noble Lords who have spoken in this short discussion for their support, in general terms, for the measures the Government have been taking and continue to take with regard to our anti-terrorist activities. I acknowledge that for some this is a difficult process, and that, as the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, was saying, it is important that we are vigilant about the effectiveness of measures we adopt, such as proscription.

Before I answer some of the more specific points, it is worth reminding ourselves where we are on proscription. There is not much doubt that it has great value in disrupting the activities of terrorist organisations. There are some examples of assets being seized as part of the proscription process. It sends an important message, not just in this country but to terrorist organisations internationally, about the fact that we take a serious view of their activities and find them abhorrent.

We have put a great deal of information into the public domain and shared this with parliamentarians, so that they can take a view with the Government and be more informed in their deliberations. There has to be some restraint on the information that can be placed in the public domain for obvious operational and security reasons, but we have taken a bold and open view in our overall approach.

The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, asked about the value of proscription. Ultimately it is not easy to make a complete judgment on that, but we have no doubt that it is effective. Noble Lords do not have to take my word for that. Yesterday we published the report by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, who is much respected in your Lordships' House. I take his words very seriously because he has a great deal of experience in these matters. He has been an intelligent, critical supporter of the legislation that we have brought forward to Parliament over a number of years. He says:

"Proscription is regarded by some as something of a toothless tiger. However, after careful inquiry, including discussions about the merits or otherwise of proscriptions during the worst of the troubles in Northern Ireland, I share the opposing view that it can play a role in reducing the opportunity for disaffected young people to become radicalised towards terrorism".

That can be found at paragraph 52 of the noble Lord's report. It is a useful summation and is certainly a view that the Government, and I, share.

The noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, asked a number of questions. One was whether the criteria are the same for domestic and international terrorist groups. They are. Already 14 Irish groups are proscribed. These 15 new groups are the ones that security and intelligence agencies regard as the highest priority. The noble Lord also asked whether organisations know that they are to be proscribed. The order was published on Monday but we did not want to give any more notice than that. It must be understood that, by their nature, these organisations cannot be given formal notice. Many of them operate in an underground fashion and obviously want to hide their activities because of the nature of the evil in which they are involved. So it is not exactly something that one can post a letter to them about, thereby putting them on notice. But we are clear about why we are proscribing them.

As I said, we keep the list of proscribed organisations under review, and action will be taken against groups where we believe it to be appropriate. It is important that we try to act in a concerted way in our approach to the proscribed organisations. As I said earlier, we have tried to publish as much information as we can on the individual groups.

Both the noble Lords, Lord Dholakia and Lord Kingsland, raised the difficulty of the combined single order list. I can understand that but it is important to think of it in the following terms. We do not believe that there will be much appetite for 15 different and separate orders and potentially 15 different and separate Divisions in another place. We took the view that none of the names in the current order were sufficiently controversial to be likely to be opposed, and I think that our judgment has been fairly reasonably borne out. However, I assure your Lordships that if in future we were minded to proscribe a group where we judged that such proscription would be highly controversial, we would consider whether it would be possible to place it in a self-contained order so that there could be a focused debate on that particular organisation. But we would want to discuss that approach through the usual channels because clearly there would need to be a broad understanding of why we were thinking of dealing with the group in that way.

I think that the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia—or perhaps it was the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland—asked one further question concerning the lists corresponding with UN, American and EU lists. No list is identical. We, as a United Kingdom Government, have to decide which organisations we want to proscribe according to our criteria and our priorities. Obviously we work with our partners internationally to secure agreements and understandings and to gather information so that we can have as common an approach as possible. That is the sensible way to proceed in what we all agree is a difficult field.

I hope that I have responded to the questions I have been asked by noble Lords. I am grateful to them for their support of the order and I hope that it will find agreement.

My Lords, I was making a simple point. I accept that one does not give prior notice to some of these international organisations. However, the Minister has described the appeal machinery which can be used when there is disagreement. None of these organisations are likely to know that they are being proscribed. They cannot get up next morning and say, "Let's look at Hansard and see what Lord Bassam has said". and see what Lord Bassam has said".

I am therefore asking whether there is appeal machinery appropriate for international organisations or is it nonsense to have that. I agree it is right that if an international organisation believes that there has been an injustice, it should have the right to use that machinery.

My Lords, if any of these organisations were so affronted by being placed on a proscribed list because they felt that they could conform to the law and operate as political, social or cultural organisations entirely legitimately, they would probably actively seek to discover what they could do about their proscription. As I described in introducing the order, there is a tried and tested route for those organisations to become legitimate in terms of the law.

I can say no more than that and I commend the order.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

House adjourned at thirteen minutes before five o'clock.