May I begin, on behalf of the Foreign Secretary, by extending his apologies to the House for his absence today? My right hon. Friend is in Washington for talks with senior members of the Administration and Congress.

May I also take this opportunity to extend a warm welcome to Dr. Fox to his new role as shadow Foreign Secretary, although I understand he may already have an application in for a more senior position in his party?

I want to speak today on the three priorities of the Government's foreign policy: first, maintaining and strengthening the United Kingdom's role as a leading European power, shaping the future of a reforming European Union; secondly, working to make the UK more secure by tackling threats such as terrorism and proliferation and acting to resolve conflict; and thirdly, our commitment to the long-term engagement required to build the conditions for a safer and fairer world.

Let me take those in turn, beginning with Europe. This Government came to power in 1997 determined to restore Britain to our rightful place as a leading power in a reforming European Union. Since then, the UK has led the push for early and wide enlargement of the European Union, which culminated in the historic accession of 10 new members last May. Two more, Romania and Bulgaria, are set to join in 2007. Under our presidency this October, the EU will launch accession negotiations with Turkey. That will be the fulfilment of a major and long-standing goal of the UK's foreign policy, and I know that it will be welcomed by all parties. We will continue to lead support for EU enlargement—a process that works greatly in the UK's interests by expanding the community of democratic and prosperous nations, opening up new opportunities for British business, and spreading reform across the whole European continent.

Moreover, under the new Commission of President Barroso, the EU has affirmed its commitment to making its economies more dynamic and flexible. Although there is still much more to do, the task of reforming the common agricultural policy has begun. The Government's firm conviction is that Britain's interest overwhelmingly lies as a strong, engaged member of the European Union. The British people have shown again at the recent election their endorsement for parties that favour such an approach and their rejection of those that want to take us out of the European Union, whether openly or by stealth, and so put the prosperity and security that we have won at risk.

The Government's approach to the negotiations on a new constitutional treaty for the European Union was consistent with our overall approach: we sought to negotiate a framework for a Europe in which the nations are strong, which works more effectively and efficiently and which can better deliver growth and reform.

In contrast, the Opposition stated on page 26 of their manifesto that they want not only a rejection of this treaty, but a renegotiation of the texts of the existing treaties. That renegotiation would require the agreement of every other of the EU's 25 member states, so I invite the shadow Foreign Secretary in his remarks today to point to one other member state that supports the Conservative party's position on renegotiation of the treaties. Even John Major, the former Prime Minister, whom the shadow Foreign Secretary served as a Foreign Office Minister, describes the policy of renegotiation as "crazy".

In truth, the Conservatives' kind of Europe is what Lord Willoughby de Broke, a former Conservative peer, described thus in a speech last June:

"like going to McDonalds and ordering a lobster thermidor."

That is, it is very nice to have but it is simply "not on the menu".

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his appointment as Minister for Europe and welcome the fact that he will attend Cabinet meetings to report on the activities of this important year.

My right hon. Friend mentioned the reform agenda. Will he assure us that he will continue to pursue the Lisbon agenda, which has not been pursued in the past as vigorously as the Government would have liked?

I am grateful for my hon. Friend's remarks. Progress on the Lisbon agenda has not been as fast as we would want. Indeed, that was reflected in the Kok report, which was published last year. Not only are the British Government determined to ensure that the pace of economic reform in Europe accelerates, but I am delighted that the new President of the European Commission shares our ambition. I am optimistic that he will continue to drive that agenda effectively in the months ahead in the European Commission.

In contrast to the Conservative party's position on Europe, the Government have delivered an effective and important agenda on the European Union constitution, which is reflected in some of the commentary that is currently available about the constitutional treaty on the other side of the channel.

Will the Minister confirm that the referendum on the European constitution will go ahead in any event? Before he answers, I remind him that I asked the Prime Minister that question last year and raised the possibility that the Government might cancel the referendum here if another member state turned down the constitution. The Prime Minister said from the Dispatch Box:

"No, of course not. The referendum should go ahead in any event."—[Hansard, 20 April 2004; Vol. 420, c. 164.]

Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that unambiguous assurance that the referendum will go ahead in this country regardless of what happens in any other country?

I am conscious that the right hon. Gentleman was a member of the Convention and has some expertise in these matters. Let me quote the Prime Minister, who said on 18 April 2005:

"I've always said we'll have a vote on the constitution. It doesn't matter what other countries do; we'll have a vote on the constitution."

The confidence with which we advanced the case for the constitutional treaty has been reflected in some of the commentary from the other side of the channel. The French newspaper Le Monde called the treaty "a British victory". The Corriere della Sera in Italy declared that

"the British won the day", and Laurent Fabius, leader of the French no campaign, says that

"the British concept has won".

Indeed, those in this country who peddle the idea that the treaty is the end of Britain as we know it would do well to look across the channel where, at the moment, its opponents are arguing that the treaty is too British and too liberal—in short, too much a model of an Anglo-Saxon European Union. As the House is aware, the Government will be introducing legislation, as a matter of priority, to provide for a referendum on the treaty, and I welcome the discussions we shall have.

Surely it will be the people of this country who will decide whether the treaty is British or not, not some French politician who has an axe to grind in another place.

I can certainly confirm that it is the Government's policy to ratify the treaty that was signed by the Prime Minister in Rome, and that as part of that process of ratification there will be a vote by the people of Britain. On that, at least, the hon. Gentleman and I have common ground.

Will the Minister give way?

I have been generous to the House, but I will give way again.

The Minister is indeed very generous. Will he confirm that the people of Gibraltar will be able to vote in that referendum?

Yes, the people of Gibraltar will have the opportunity to participate, which reflects the situation relating to European elections that has existed for some time now.

I welcome the discussions on the treaty that we have begun to have, in nascent form, this morning. Members will have the opportunity during these debates and discussions to expose the myths and distortions of the anti-Europeans for what they are. The case for the new treaty—based on fact, rather than myth—is the case for a modern, reforming Europe that is delivering greater prosperity and security to its members, and whose members are in the driving seat.

The treaty will give more powers to the member states, through the European Council, in which national Governments set the European Union's priorities and ensure that they are carried through. By replacing the current system of six-monthly rotating presidencies of the European Council—the body in which the European Union's member countries set the organisation's priorities—with a full-time Chair, we shall ensure that we, the nations, set the European Union's agenda and get it implemented. That is a widely supported reform, and I am pleased to say that its supporters include the leader of the Conservative party in the European Parliament.

Decision-making will be simpler, where that makes sense, but we shall retain the national veto on areas of vital national interest such as tax, social security, foreign policy, defence and key areas of criminal law, along with the European Union's budget and, of course, future changes to the treaty. For the first time, national Parliaments will have the power to send European Union legislative proposals back for review, if one third of national Parliaments believe that a draft law infringes the principle that the EU should act only where it adds value—the so-called subsidiarity principle.

Have the Government had second thoughts? Will they enable this national Parliament to express its view separately on the question of the ratification of the constitution and on the question of a referendum? Many of us would like to vote no to one and yes to the other.

The House will be aware that during the previous Parliament we introduced a Bill that dealt with both the ratification of the treaty and the referendum. That would be our intention in terms of the Bill that we will introduce in due course. This is a treaty that sets out our kind of Europe: one of strong nations able to work effectively together to enhance their prosperity and security and add to their influence in the world. As the House is also aware, the United Kingdom will take over the presidency of the European Union for six months from 1 July. We will focus, first and foremost, on taking forward the agenda agreed with our European Union partners to ensure that the EU is equipped to deliver on the issues that matter most to the people of Britain: jobs, security and promoting peace and prosperity globally as well as at home.

We will work to enhance the security of the European Union's borders and to improve the security of EU travel documents, as part of the fight against illegal immigration and organised crime. We will also lead the EU's efforts to help to end conflict and tackle poverty in Africa, to engage countries such as China and India on climate change, to promote reform in Europe's immediate neighbourhood and to support democracy and human rights around the world.

I come now to my second theme: our work to make the United Kingdom more secure by working with our allies to tackle threats to international peace and security. The United Kingdom will continue to play a leading role in the global fight against terrorism and its networks of support. The recent detention of a leading member of al-Qaeda in Pakistan is another blow to that organisation and its aims. We will work to strengthen further the United Nations' response to terrorism, and that will include an agreed definition of such terror. I am pleased to say that last month the United Nations General Assembly reached agreement on the nuclear terrorism convention on which negotiations had been stalled for some time. In the G8, we continue to look to deliver improvements in, for instance, transport and security.

In respect of terrorism, what exactly is the position of the United Kingdom Government on what is happening in Uzbekistan? Terrorism is undoubtedly being committed by the Government of the day. This is an example of tyranny if there ever was one, with so many people being massacred. One would hope that not just the British but, in particular, the United States Government will be consistent and do whatever can be done to ensure that the Uzbekistan Government are finished and the people there can enjoy some form of democratic rule.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that important, grave and serious matter. I hoped to come to it later, but I shall respond to my hon. Friend directly.

This morning, the British ambassador in Tashkent travelled to the eastern part of Uzbekistan. I have not yet received a full response from him, but he travelled there with other ambassadors. We want first to be able to establish categorically what has happened. News reports that are already emerging are extremely serious. The situation has been discussed by the United States Secretary of State and the Foreign Secretary during discussions in Washington overnight, and I expect there to be further discussions with our European partners at the General Affairs and External Relations Council on Monday. Obviously, we cannot prejudge the international community's response to the facts once they are established.

My right hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way. Does he accept that there is a feeling that the United States has not acted on the issue because the Government of that country are such a close ally? There is an inconsistency. Cannot a comparison be made with Kosovo, where fortunately the allies acted to stop what was happening—ethnic cleansing? Surely, more or less the same is happening in the country that I have mentioned.

I understand my hon. Friend's point. I will simply say, having had an opportunity to see the transcript of Condoleezza Rice's comments last night, that she was clear in her condemnation of previous human rights abuses in Uzbekistan, but my responsibility and my brief are to speak on behalf of the British Government.

The British Government's position was set out in the human rights report published in 2004, in which we made categorically clear our objection to some of the human rights abuses that were taking place in Uzbekistan at that stage. We now wish to discuss with our other international partners what further action is necessary in relation to what appears to be unfolding in respect of circumstances in Uzbekistan. I can assure my hon. Friend, however, that the British Foreign Office has been absolutely consistent in ensuring that we bring to the Uzbeks' attention our concern about abuse of human rights.

Will the Minister give way?

I will give way one last time.

The Minister will have been briefed about my mention of the region in yesterday's debate. I pointed out that we have no embassy in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, where refugees are flooding in. Who, on behalf of the United Kingdom Government, is in Kyrgyzstan today? Are we going to open an embassy there, or are this Government and Sir Michael Jay, the head of the Foreign Office, going to persist in the absurdity of not having an embassy in that most critical part of the world, which is affected by events in Uzbekistan? When there was a velvet revolution six weeks ago, we had no British presence there.

My hon. Friend has raised an important point. As I said, the British ambassador, David Moran, travelled to eastern Uzbekistan this morning. I understand that earlier our defence attaché had travelled to the affected areas. The first requirement—

What about Kyrgyzstan?

I will come to the point that my hon. Friend raised, if he will allow me to answer. The first requirement was to establish the facts in Uzbekistan relating to what may be an emerging problem over what may be an humanitarian crisis affecting Kyrgyzstan. As we have argued in recent days, that makes the case for ensuring that not just the British ambassador but the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees gains immediate access, so that whatever support is needed on the border with Kyrgyzstan can be provided. If it would help, I will certainly take up the matter with the Foreign Secretary and write to my hon. Friend after the debate.

I turn to a more general subject: conflicts outside the area of Uzbekistan. Conflicts are a source of major human suffering and a breeding ground for terrorism, organised crime and illegal immigration. They have a direct impact on all our security.

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians continues to generate quite appalling human suffering on both sides—

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

May I make a little progress? I will then give way to my right hon. Friend.

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians remains a major obstacle to the stability and prosperity of the whole middle east. For Israelis, the conflict prevents a democratic nation from enjoying the benefits of peace. For Palestinians, it is a block on their aspirations for a viable, contiguous, democratic state, which is their right.

Today, the peace process is at a moment of opportunity, perhaps the best in a generation, with Israel's courageous plan for withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the northern west bank; a Palestinian President with a new, democratic mandate for peace; and strong, unanimous international support for a solution based on two secure, viable states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side. The Government are determined to do all we can to support the two sides' search for peace. We will continue to work closely with the United States and all those committed to making disengagement by Israel a success, and ensure that it is a first step towards implementation of the road map.

I think that we all agree that a just settlement on Israel-Palestine would transform the situation in the middle east and make much easier the securing of international co-operation against terrorism, but it seems that the Sharon plan to withdraw from Gaza but not open up its borders, to have a massive new settlement around east Jerusalem, and for the incorporation of Jerusalem, means that the possibility of two states on the 67 boundaries is evaporating in front of our eyes. Will the Minister give an absolute assurance that whatever the United States does, the British Government will not agree to a breach of international law and are determined that the Palestinian state should be on the 67 boundaries, including east Jerusalem?

The Government have been forthright in their condemnation of the illegal building of settlements by the Israeli Government in recent years and we continue to regard the withdrawal plan from Gaza as a necessary step to get the road map process back on track. We continue to believe that the road map offers the best future for securing the kind of solution that I have just set out, whereby there could be a contiguous, viable, democratic Palestinian state adjacent to the Israeli state. As I say, the Government are determined to do all we can to support the two sides' search for peace. We will continue to work closely with the United States and all those committed to making that disengagement a success, and ensure that it is a step towards implementation of the road map.

Therefore, we will support the Palestinian legislative elections due to be held this summer. Meanwhile, Israel must stop the illegal expansion of settlements, as I have just made clear, which in some places could threaten the viability—as my right hon. Friend made clear—of a future Palestinian state. The Palestinians, however, also need to follow through on the commitments to reform that they made at the London meeting on 1 March, and to deliver especially on security, which is Israel's right. I can also inform the House today that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will visit Israel and the Palestinian territories soon to discuss the situation and to see how we can provide further help.

The Government will continue our strong support to the African Union peace support mission in Darfur. We have provided £14 million to the mission, largely in logistical support, and stand ready to provide further assistance as the African Union expands its force from 3,300 to about 7,700 troops. We have allocated £75 million for humanitarian assistance for Sudan this financial year, including in Darfur. The United Kingdom fully supports the talks mediated by the African Union in Abuja aimed at finding a political solution to the crisis. We are pressing all sides to work with the International Criminal Court to bring those responsible for committing atrocities to justice.

The Government will also continue to maintain pressure on the Government of Zimbabwe, working with international partners until there are positive and substantive commitments to pursuing a restoration of democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

We welcome the ongoing progress on détente between India and Pakistan and will continue to support that dialogue as they seek to make progress on the issue of Kashmir.

Given that rape as a weapon of war, compulsory relocation, forced labour, the use of child soldiers, the use of human mine sweepers, and the bestial destruction of villages all testify daily to the vicious character of the military dictatorship in Burma, and that simultaneously Total oil is propping up that vicious regime with a $400 million investment in the country, what does the right hon. Gentleman, on behalf of the British Government, intend to do in concert with others in the EU and the UN to bring about a culture in which it is recognised that sanctions are required to bring that regime to book and to give the people of Burma the opportunity to enjoy the peace, freedom and justice that we have long enjoyed and they have too long been denied?

I pay tribute to the long-standing commitment that the hon. Gentleman has shown to bringing an end to the suffering of the people of Burma. I noticed with some regret that the word "Burma" never appeared in the foreign policy section of the Conservative manifesto, so clearly his concern is not as widely shared on the Opposition Benches as I believe it is on the Labour Benches.

On the substantive point that the hon. Gentleman raised, first I would like to point out that I have met Association of South East Asian Nations ambassadors in recent months and urged them to take further action in relation to the difficulties being encountered in Burma. It is with some regret, however, that I must tell the House that the fact that we have been unable to make further progress is not the result of a lack of will on the part of the United Kingdom but, I fear, a reticence on the part of many Asian neighbours of Burma. In the European Union, Britain has undoubtedly been at the forefront of efforts to bring pressure to bear on the Burmese regime, and I hope and believe that that will continue to be our policy as we review ways of taking forward our steps against the Burma regime in the months ahead.

The Minister will be aware that he took this country to war against a dictatorship that turned out not to have weapons of mass destruction. The definition of weapons of mass destruction includes chemical weapons. He will also be aware that in February of this year, Burma, on the Burmese-Thai border, used chemical weapons against Karen rebels. So we have a situation where the Government took the country to war against a country that did not have weapons of mass destruction, but choose to ignore a country that has weapons of mass destruction and has used them. Will he share his thinking and his logic on that?

It is simply wrong to suggest that this Government are ignoring the challenge of Burma. This Government have led the international effort in the European Union to ensure that tougher and more rigorous sanctions are brought forward. However, we do need to work with European Union partners, not least given the relative balance of investment between EU partners in Burma and that within the United Kingdom. However, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we will continue to make every effort to continue the pressure on the Burmese regime—certainly, on this side of the House, that has been a long-standing commitment.

Since 1997 this Government have done more than any other to make the United Kingdom's rules on arms exports among the very best in the world, yet much more needs to be done to regulate the trade in conventional arms worldwide and to tackle the easy availability of conventional weapons, especially small arms, in countries vulnerable to conflict and instability. The Government will therefore lead international work to agree a global arms trade treaty. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will take forward this work at a meeting of G8 Foreign Ministers that he will be chairing this coming month.

The United Kingdom's commitment to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq remains strong as they work to defeat the men of violence and to build their democratic future.

I welcome the Minister's suggestion of a worldwide convention on the arms trade and arms dealing. Will he turn his attention to the non-proliferation treaty talks that are going on in New York at present? Can he give the House an assurance that the British Government will adhere to the original terms of the treaty, which is for global nuclear disarmament, and that this will be included in a British proposal for the conclusion of this year's conference?

We have met all our obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and we are engaged in important discussions at the moment. I can assure my hon. Friend that we will continue to take forward our initiatives to secure wider disarmament in relation to the treaty of which he speaks, and which is under discussion in New York.

The United Kingdom's commitment to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq remains strong as they work to defeat those who would put in jeopardy the progress that has been made. As the House is aware, UK forces serving in Iraq are a part of the multinational force and I am sure that Members on both sides of the House would join me today in paying tribute to their courage, professionalism and commitment. The United Kingdom's forces are mandated under United Nations resolution 1546. That mandate will be reviewed by the United Nations Security Council next month and will expire on completion of the political process—that is, when Iraqis have agreed the constitution by referendum and held elections due by December 2005.

However, the multinational force is in Iraq with the agreement of the Iraqi Government, who may terminate their presence at any time or request their continued presence. The UK therefore will continue to provide troops for as long as the Iraqi Government want us to remain. We have no desire to stay a moment longer than necessary, but we will not leave the job before it is done. We will continue to help Iraq to develop more capable security forces—

Will the Minister give way?

Not this time; I have been generous in giving way.

We shall continue to help Iraq to develop more capable security forces of its own, working with our partners in the multinational force, NATO and the European Union to train and equip the Iraqi army and the Iraqi police service, and we shall continue to support Iraq's reconstruction, to which we have already committed £544 million. However, to build the conditions for wider global security and prosperity we cannot just focus on the middle east. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has said, we must in particular make this a year of opportunity for Africa. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will chair the G8 summit in Gleneagles in July, from which we hope to achieve significant results in delivering the recommendations of the Commission for Africa, as well as building consensus for action on climate change.

The Minister has been generous to the House in giving way. While he is talking about the wider impact of the British Government's relations and representations, will he bear in mind the fact that the longest-serving prisoners of war in the world today are soldiers of the Moroccan army held by the Algerians? That is also an aspect of interest to British-Arab policy. Will he consider whether representations could be made to the Algerian Government to release those long-standing prisoners?

I will certainly be happy to write to the hon. Gentleman in relation to the point that he raises.

As G8 and EU President, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will also attend the UN millennium review summit in New York this September. As well as being a forum for stronger action on development and especially on Africa, the summit provides an excellent opportunity to strengthen the UN and make it more effective. We strongly welcome UN Secretary-General Annan's "In Larger Freedom" report, which sets out innovative ideas for reform within a framework, rightly linking the challenges of development, security and human rights. We will work with other Governments, the Secretary-General and the President of the General Assembly to encourage member states to sign up to as full a package of reforms as possible at the summit in September.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the end of the second world war—perhaps the proudest moment in our national history—yet for some time the year 1945 also symbolised the end of an era for the United Kingdom's power and influence in the world. Now, 60 years on, the United Kingdom is Europe's strongest large economy, and Britain is strong today not just because of our economy or our alliances: we are strong, too, because we are confident of the role that we can play in the world. We are proud of our strong values and our network of global friendships and influence. When we tackle poverty and hunger, act to resolve conflicts or work for the spread of peaceful, democratic institutions, we are promoting both our values and our own security and well-being, along with those of the world as a whole. Today, with this Government, Britain is a nation determined to be at the heart of international efforts to build a safer, fairer and more prosperous world.

I begin by saying how delighted I am to be back at the Dispatch Box again after my 18 months exile with those at central office—although probably not as delighted as they are. I am disappointed that the Foreign Secretary is not here for this debate. He had the courtesy to call me personally to explain why, for which I am grateful. Notwithstanding that, the date of the Queen's Speech has been known for some time, and I hope that the Government will ensure that their business is better organised and more coherent in future.

This is indeed a good time for us to review our foreign policy in general. Ours is the world's fourth largest economy, with a unique trading pattern and long and varied historical contacts. Yet, despite what the Minister has just said, the ambitions set for our country have been far too modest, the focus of policy has been too narrow, and there has been too much tactical thinking and not enough strategic vision. We need to look for new opportunities and challenges. Our long-term prosperity depends on finding new markets and new trading partners.

We need to ditch the hang-ups of those who seem obsessed with apologising for our history, and turn the good will and respect for this country, which stills exists extensively around the world, into new economic opportunities. We need to look ever more outwards and remember that the world does not end at the southern border of Greece, the western border of Portugal or the eastern border of Poland and the Baltic states.

The charge that we lay against the Government is that they are insufficiently ambitious for the United Kingdom. Too much foreign policy is about grandstanding, rather than the national interest. There is far too much short-term tactical consideration, and they have failed to exploit the many opportunities that they have been given. They have failed to understand that British foreign policy is about doing what is in Britain's national interest. They seem to confuse policy and diplomacy. It is for Ministers to set out policy in the national interest and for the diplomatic service to carry out that policy diplomatically.

Let me give the House just one example that indicates the problem. The European Union has been very keen to lift the arms embargo on China, largely to accommodate the wishes of the French and German defence industries. That policy has been strongly opposed by the United States, which has indicated its unwillingness to see new defence technology shared with the United Kingdom if it will subsequently be simply exported to China. There is no strategic interest for the United Kingdom in arming Chinese defence forces, but there is clearly a downside in terms of defence co-operation with the United States. Yet the policy has been decided not on the basis of our national interest, but on the short-term tactical interest of the Prime Minister at the beginning of the EU presidency. The obsession with regaining popularity among European leaders seems to take precedence over any other considerations. As long as it is good for him, it does not matter if it is bad for British industry and British jobs.

The hon. Gentleman is talking absolute nonsense. Is it not a fact that even before the European Union's decision to lift the ban on exports to China was agreed or came into being, the United States had dragged its heels for the past three years over the international traffic in arms regulations waiver on the transfer of technology? To link the two is absolute nonsense.

But the ban has not been lifted. The Government have changed their position on more than one occasion. They were initially against the lifting of the ban, but they then suddenly became in favour of its lifting. It is the lack of consistency that we complain about, and that lack of consistency is based on short-term expediency, not the long-term national interest.

In the coming months, the relationship with Europe will be centre stage. We need to have a realistic and balanced assessment of our relationship with the European Union and of the relationship between the EU and the rest of the world. Much good has come initially from the creation of the European Community, then the EU. We have moved from a century when much of the world's conflict originated on the European continent to a new century in which a stable family of democracies has been able to welcome those from the oppressed states of the former eastern Europe. The EU has helped with the seamless transition to democracy of Spain, Greece and Portugal and the reunification of Germany. The progress of the single market, albeit at much too slow a pace, has been a step in the right direction.

The biggest problem with the EU, however, is that it has a Eurocentric view of the world that is a generation out of date. While the EU gazes at its navel and slowly ossifies, China, south Asia and the Americas continue to take an increased share of the world's market, eroding what would have been European wealth and power. The citizens of Europe have been betrayed by those who have failed or refused to see what is happening beyond the borders of Europe itself. It is a failure compounded by the overtaxing, over-regulating and uncompetitive nature of the social democratic policies followed by too many European Governments. It is not a coincidence that many more jobs have been created in the United States than in the EU, or that the United States has actually been increasing its share of world trade. Social democratic policies are making Europe less competitive in an ever-more competitive global economic environment. There is no Marshall plan now, no post-war growth spurt to hide the uncompetitive nature of the interventionist doctrine. In a world of ever-more fiercely competitive markets, it is sink or swim—and the waters are rising around Europe.

I guess we get the hon. Gentleman's drift that he is not very much in favour of the European Union. A few years ago, he was, as I understand it, vice-president of the campaign against a federal Europe, which declared quite openly that it was in favour of a separate relationship for Britain with the EU and, if that was not possible, withdrawal from the EU. Does he still hold the views that he held then?

We are all allowed to have some progress in our views. For example:

"The EEC has pushed up prices especially for food . . . Above all, the EEC takes away Britain's freedom to follow the sort of economic policies we need. These are just two of the reasons for coming out."

That was the Prime Minister during the Beaconsfield by-election in 1982.

We made it very clear at this election that we want to have a different relationship with the EU—a more flexible relationship—but to remain within the EU. That was extremely clear during the general election. We have to have a different relationship with a different EU because, over-burdened by parasitic bureaucracy, hard-working people across the EU are overtaxed, businesses struggle to compete and the cost of failure is paid for by the young unemployed of France and Germany and by the diminished potential of the next generation. The real problem of the EU is not that described by the little Englanders—that Europe is too foreign—but that it is not foreign enough. The EU needs to be more outward looking and flexible, and should end its absurd obsession with uniformity, which causes unnecessary friction and time wasting.

Does the hon. Gentleman believe that the United Kingdom should have an associate membership status with the European Union?

No, we should play our full role in developing a more flexible European Union that would be in Britain's best interests.

All this is important because in the coming months, no doubt in great detail, we will have to decide whether we want to sign up to the next chapter of European integration. We will debate the issues in the Bill that the Government bring forward—I am sorry that there will not be two Bills, rather than one. The German Minister for Europe, Hans Martin Bury, has said:

"the EU constitution is the birth certificate of the United States of Europe . . . the constitution is not the endpoint of integration, but the framework for as it says in the preamble, 'an ever closer union'."

That is far from the tidying-up exercise described by the Government.

The new constitution would undermine individual member states' ability to determine their own policies in key areas such as the economy, law and order, and asylum and immigration. The European Union would gain most of the trappings of statehood, with its own president, Foreign Minister and legal system. As my right hon. and learned Friend Mr. Ancram has said:

"countries have constitutions: nation states make treaties with one another."

The Government's whole handling of the European constitution is typical of how they do business in Europe. First, they say that nothing damaging to Britain is being proposed. When that is proposed, they say that they will block it. Then when they give in, they say that it is a good thing for Britain after all.

A former Minister for Europe, Keith Vaz, is in the Chamber. He claimed that the charter of fundamental rights would be as legally binding as the Beano. However, in the constitution the charter will have full legal status and will be enforced through the European Court of Justice.

Another former Minister for Europe, Peter Hain, claimed that the negotiations on the constitution were a "triumph for Britain". The truth is that the Government simply abandoned many of their objections and accepted proposals that they had previously condemned. During negotiations, the right hon. Gentleman tabled 275 different amendments. Only 27 were included in the final draft, yet the objections covered many important areas.

The Government called for the new EU power to

"ensure coordination of the employment policies of member states" to be deleted, but they were ignored. They said that they did not want an EU Foreign Minister. The right hon. Member for Neath said that that was "unacceptable", but the Government were ignored. They opposed making the charter of fundamental rights legally binding, but in the end, as ever, they gave way. Originally, the Government were against the very idea of a constitution. In 2000, the Prime Minister said that there should not be

"a single legally binding document called a constitution".

However, in the end he gave way to those other member states that wanted one—how typical.

On 12 May 1997, the new Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, launched his mission statement. He said:

"the Labour government does not accept that political values can be left behind when we check in our passports to travel on diplomatic business . . . our foreign policy must have an ethical dimension and must support the demands of other peoples for the democratic rights on which we insist for ourselves. The Labour government will put human rights at the heart of our foreign policy".

To that I say just one word: Zimbabwe.

On Africa, the many speeches and endless photo opportunities of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have generated far more heat than light. In his speech to launch the report of the Commission for Africa on 11 March, the Prime Minister managed not to mention Zimbabwe at all, yet it is surely the greatest stain on all of Africa's fragile democratic record.

For all his talk, the Prime Minister has achieved little. When robust action was required, he looked the other way. Robert Mugabe has destroyed the rule of law, contravened human rights in the most appalling way and destroyed his country's prosperity with casual indifference, yet this British Government have stood idly by. They have bottled out of confronting President Mbeki on his tacit support for Robert Mugabe. Zimbabwe depends on South African energy supplies, yet the Government seem afraid to demand action from President Mbeki.

The hon. Gentleman is talking nonsense. Britain led the way in getting European sanctions against Zimbabwe and in raising the problem in the United Nations, as his Front-Bench colleagues asked us to do. Can he tell us why, during the Conservatives' term of office, the Government gave Robert Mugabe a knighthood?

An absolutely devastating point. It is typical of the Government that they take no responsibility for what has happened in the past eight years. While they have been in charge of British foreign policy, we have seen the destruction of Zimbabwe's economy and the abuse of human rights. Far from instituting sanctions that matter, they have, instead, been utterly worthless. Nothing effective at all has been done against the regime in Zimbabwe because this Government have not had the nerve to do it.

The New Partnership for Africa's Development requires the President of South Africa to promote democracy in southern Africa, and he should have been reminded of that. The consequences of inactivity have been not only continued suffering in Zimbabwe, but tacit encouragement to other southern African countries to consider land occupations similar to those that had such damaging consequences in Zimbabwe.

I agree that the situation in Zimbabwe is devastating, with a lack of free elections, the suppression of human rights—torture and starvation—and the destruction of the economy. The question is: what can we do about it? It is right to be angry, but the Government have done what they can, which is not much. What more could be done to put right a dreadful situation?

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for making a sensible point, but the Government have not put the pressure on South Africa that they could have exerted, which would have been important in improving the situation in Zimbabwe. For some reason, they bottle out of any confrontation with the South African Government, who largely hold the key to the situation in Zimbabwe. I urge the Government, even at this late stage, to make a far greater attempt to persuade the South African Government of the important role they have to play. The new high commissioner will soon go to South Africa. Surely that is an opportunity for the Government to exercise influence on the South African Government to improve the situation.

That problem and others in Africa have not been helped by consigning the Commonwealth to the periphery of British foreign policy.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government need to look carefully at arms sales to some African countries? Is he comfortable with the appointment of the noble Lord Drayson as Minister with responsibility for defence procurement? He gave large amounts of money to the Labour party, got plum contracts for his company, got a peerage and has now bought a job in government. What signal does that send?

I share my hon. Friend's reservations. That appointment was typical of the Prime Minister, who, in a spirit of contrition, stood at the steps of Downing street and told us how much he had learned, and then immediately started reappointing cronies to top Government posts. That was the extent of the humility that we will see in the Government's third term.

It is a great shame that the Commonwealth has been consigned to the periphery of our foreign policy. It is one of the most valuable resources for exerting our influence, yet the Government regard it with disdain. I sometimes think that Britain does not deserve the Commonwealth. The French or the Germans would give their right hands to be at the centre of an organisation with such political and economic potential. So much could be done, but so little is attempted by the Government. Whether it is limited vision, lack of ambition or some sort of post-colonial guilt syndrome, it is impossible to say, but it is certainly a wasted opportunity. From India, with its massive potential for growth, or Sri Lanka, where I had the honour to play a small part in the peace process, to the powerhouse that is Australia, so much could be achieved, yet so little is attempted.

The one area in which the Government have been only too ready to become engaged is Iraq. I do not intend to go over whether or not the Attorney-General gave inconsistent advice on the legality of the war. Nor do I intend to rehearse the familiar arguments about whether the country was misled about Iraq's ultimately non-existent weapons of mass destruction. But what is clear is this: if Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein's regime was certainly intent on getting them. Iraq was in clear breach of its international obligations. The security of neighbouring nations and the stability of the region as a whole was put at risk by those developments.

I make those points not because of their relevance to Iraq, but because of their relevance to Iran. Just what are the parallels between Iraq and Iran? There is widespread public anxiety that the decision to undertake military action in Iraq was taken long before we in the House of Commons voted for it. So what is the Government's plan of action for Iran? The approach of the three European Governments, however well meant, does not seem to be reaping rewards. If the Security Council comes next, what sanctions do we envisage and in what time scale? Transparency on the issue from the outset is vital if we are to maintain public confidence. Trust will be harder to come by second time around.

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that it would be helpful in persuading Iran not to develop nuclear weapons if the non-proliferation treaty conference re-adhered to the 2000 declaration and Britain and the United States in particular said that they would not develop a new generation of nuclear weapons?

I think that members of all parties in the House would agree that it would be beneficial—full stop—if Iran did not develop the potential for nuclear weapons. We would certainly support any Government efforts to that end. We want a transparent course of action that is set out well in advance by the Government.

Much is talked today about globalisation. One of the benevolent consequences of globalisation is that it is more difficult for Governments to misrule their peoples and mismanage their resources without quickly running into problems. Globalisation may not make bad government more difficult, but it certainly makes it more apparent. International interdependence brings opportunities as well as challenges. Interdependence based on free trade increases political stability and makes military conflict less likely. Governments require stability to ensure that their economic interests are not interrupted, and having vested interests in other countries reinforces the likelihood of effective international defence co-operation.

Free trade offers opportunities for exporters to take advantage of new markets as they emerge. Michigan university estimates that if only a third of all tariffs on agriculture, manufacturing and services were cut, world trade would rise by more than $600 billion—equivalent to an economy the size of Canada's. Free trade offers the best opportunity for third-world countries to provide themselves with a sustainable income, and it is infinitely preferable to long-term dependence on aid.

Although no one can deny the vital role that aid plays in the short term, it is too often little more than "conscience money" paid out by developed economies that are preventing less developed countries from gaining access to their markets. We have all seen examples of that over recent years. Clare Short made much of that in her time in office. Aid has become synonymous with caring about poverty, but on the ground it is all too often a process of taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries.

We in this country have one of the best—if not the best—programmes of bilateral aid in the world. We need greater control over the aid budget. The work of the British Council and non-governmental organisations shows just how effective our programmes can be when they are managed on the ground by those who understand local conditions. Those of us who have seen their work at first hand have marvelled at their skill and efficiency. What a contrast that is to the expensive and bureaucratic operations run by so many multilateral organisations.

This country has much to offer in Europe and beyond. We will support the Government where they do the right things. We will particularly support their efforts to deal with global warming and the effects of climate change; that affects all the world and its future generations. In the United Kingdom, the compassion of our citizens, the expertise of many of our organisations, our economic and political standing, and our historical perspective and diplomatic experience give us natural advantages in pursuing a positive, outward-looking and optimistic foreign policy. All that holds us back is our Government's lack of ambition. We need a foreign policy that is run for the long-term interests of the United Kingdom, not for the short-term tactical interests of this Labour Government. It is a sad state of affairs, but it will not always be so.

I assume that it was you, Mr. Speaker, who arranged for international affairs to be the first subject for discussion under the Queen's Speech. I thank you for doing that, because it is important that the subject be given the priority it deserves. The general election campaign from which we have just emerged is the first I can remember in which international affairs have played a significant part throughout. Every day dozens of people in my constituency raised the subject of Iraq with me, as well as global poverty and all that goes with it. Such a degree of understanding is most welcome.

To some extent, the Government's approach to international affairs has been contradictory. On the one hand, we have seen almost slavish support for George Bush and his neo-con foreign policy, which led us into the disastrous war in Iraq; on the other hand, we have seen the highly effective work of the Department for International Development to increase our aid budget and promote sustainable development and economies, the Government's support for the Kyoto treaty process, and the historic debt write-off proposals made by the Chancellor in various forums during the past few years. I hope that in this Parliament the Government will spend much more time, energy and effort on the latter aspects of foreign policy, rather than continue to be seen around the world as stooges for George Bush and his policies.

What is now happening in Iraq is a consequence of the invasion and occupation. I hope that the Government recognise that the longer we stay in Iraq with no endgame, no date for withdrawal and no proposal for withdrawal by the United States, the more the presence of United States and British forces will become, not the solution, but a greater part of the problems that that country faces. We need transparency. We need to know how many Iraqi people have died as a result of the invasion, what the effects have been of the use of cluster bombs and depleted uranium, and what proposals there are for withdrawal from Iraq. I do not support or condone in any way the murderous attacks against civilians, but we have to recognise that, beyond that, there is a large popular civil movement throughout Iraq that is also calling for the withdrawal of British and American forces. We must acknowledge the fact that there is substantial unity across the piece in Iraq on the need for the withdrawal of those forces.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the legitimacy of the present Government of Iraq is undermined by the lack of Sunni representation? The Association of Muslim Scholars has said that it would encourage Sunnis to join the Government in the event of an agreement by the occupying powers to withdraw. Changing our policy in that way could lead to a much more stable Iraq.

That is a fair point. The Government of Iraq are not seen to be representative of the entire population. They exist within the green zone in its strongest form; in the rest of the country, their writ is patchy. Perhaps the most effective forms of government in Iraq are to be found in the Kurdish regions in the north of the country, and I suspect that, in the foreseeable future, there will be serious and legitimate demands for total autonomy, if not outright independence, for those regions.

Iraq dominated the last Parliament and it will dominate the present one and international affairs until such time as we recognise the necessity of setting a date for withdrawal by British and United States forces.

Although my hon. Friend and I differed sharply over the war, I too do not want British troops—or American troops—to remain in Iraq indefinitely. I acknowledge his comment a few moments ago, but does he agree that there must be the strongest possible condemnation of the way in which hundreds of Iraqis are murdered every week, not by the coalition forces, but by suicide bombers and terrorists? The victims are, first and foremost, women and children, but many active trade unionists have also been killed.

Obviously, we all condemn the attacks that are going on and the terrible tragedy of the loss of life of entirely innocent civilians who are merely trying to make a living and survive in a difficult set of circumstances.

We must consider the effects of the invasion and also the forces that have been unleashed by that invasion that are causing the problem within Iraq. If we go into illegal wars—I believe that this was an illegal war—occupy indefinitely and support a Government who are in part privatising and exporting the country's wealth, an opposition is created that is uncontrollable and the mayhem that we have seen is the result. There are some hard and serious lessons to be learned. It is an issue that dominated the minds of many people during the general election campaign, who only voted for the Labour party reluctantly. They were strongly opposed to the policies that the Government pursued on Iraq. It is a lesson that must be understood, learned and acted upon by the Government during this Parliament.

Does my hon. Friend agree that Iraq was the foreign policy issue that was most frequently raised with Labour candidates on the doorstep? Does he also agree that the danger of an indefinite deployment of our troops in Iraq is that they will move from being seen as an army of liberation to being seen as an army of occupation? There is nothing in the history of the 20th century that suggests that the indefinite occupation by western troops of a third world country is politically sustainable.

My hon. Friend makes a valuable and correct point. The longer the troops stay when they are unwelcome, the harder it is for them to go, the more brutal is the departure and the more humiliating is the endgame. When the United States finally had to leave Vietnam in 1976, we all have memories of US helicopters evacuating people from the roof of the US embassy in Saigon. I plead with the Government to think carefully about the situation in Iraq and to give us some proposals and plans for the withdrawal of British and US forces from that country. They should think also of the longer term consequences within the region of the illegal nature of the war.

Will the hon. Gentleman ask the Government also to commit themselves to establishing exactly how many civilian deaths there have been in Iraq? Once that figure is established and accepted by the Government, the argument will be moved on.

I made that point earlier. I accept what the hon. Gentleman says. There must be some independent verification of the number of civilians who have died during the invasion, since the invasion and as a result of the current unrest in Iraq. We need to know the full scale of horror.

My hon. Friend Ms Abbott called Iraq a third world country. Yes, it is now, but it was not always thus. There was a period when Iraq had one of the highest standards of living within the region, with the best standards of health care and education. Those standards were certainly far better than anything in any neighbouring country. Sadly, that has all been destroyed.

The neo-con proposals appear to be to continue with heavy threats against Iran and possibly to move against Syria in future. I hope that there is no such plan to engage in further military adventures in the region. Instead, apart from withdrawal from Iraq, we should turn our attention to a solution to the problem in Palestine. When talking to anyone anywhere in the middle east, it is clear that the running sore throughout the political class is the issue of Palestine.

In January I had the good fortune to be in Palestine. I was in Gaza, as an observer during the presidential elections. There was relative calm on polling day by Gaza standards. There was some shooting by occupying forces in Rafiah and other places. Ordinary, decent people, wanting to survive, to live and to get their kids in school—all that sort of thing—said that living in Gaza is living in an open prison. Having spoken to people from the mental health foundation in Gaza, they legitimately told me that they thought that almost two thirds of the population had some degree of mental health problems because of the occupation and the stress that goes with it. The stress of occupation and poverty—unemployment runs at 70 to 80 per cent.—leads people to do crazy and extreme things. I condemn suicide bombing in any form, as it is ludicrous, wrong and abhorrent in every way, but we must consider the circumstances that breed such anger and outrage. We should listen to the voices of the peace movement in Israel and Palestine, and say firmly and bluntly to the Israeli Government that withdrawal from Gaza is not enough. There must also be withdrawal from the west bank, an end to the settlement policy and recognition of the role of east Jerusalem in a future Palestinian state. If we move in that direction, many other things become possible in both the region and the wider world. We must take that step and be prepared to put tough pressure on Israel to achieve withdrawal.

I could speak about many other issues, but I am conscious that many other Members wish to speak, so I shall refer briefly to only two other broad areas. During the election, the "Make Poverty History" day became a welcome feature of campaigning. The issue is crucial—we cannot continue to live in a world where a quarter of the population lives on the brink of starvation and call it a world of peace and justice. Interestingly, there was consensus among most of the political parties about the need to eliminate poverty globally. That is a credit to my right hon. Friend Clare Short, the former Secretary of State for International Development, and others who have done much to educate people about the realities of world poverty and what needs to be done to tackle it.

It is not enough to say that we will wear wrist bands or go to Trafalgar square to support the "Make Poverty History" programme unless we are prepared to do something about the issue. I welcome the document produced by the Commission for Africa, as it includes a welcome section on the colonial history of Africa, its impoverishment and the deskilling effects on the continent. Anyone who has visited the poorest African countries will accept that none of the millennium targets will be met, given the current rate of progress. In Angola, the majority of children barely receive any education at all. Those who do receive education are taught in classes of 70 or 80 in ramshackle buildings with no facilities whatsoever. The notion that we will conquer illiteracy within the time frame of the millennium goals is simply unrealistic. Many other problems including health care and associated areas must be addressed. AIDS is a huge issue, but it is not the only one affecting people's health throughout Africa.

The debt write-off proposals are very welcome, but we must also consider the issue of African trade and development. If the Government are serious about adhering to the commission's proposals, they must adopt a tough attitude towards the United States and the European Union at the next round of World Trade Organisation talks; otherwise we will continue with a policy that protects the richest farmers in the richest countries, impoverishes the poorest people in the poorest countries and prevents Africa as a producer continent from processing its own products.

Does my hon. Friend agree that while we welcome and support the personal commitment by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to fighting poverty in Africa and the poorest countries, that campaign should not be conducted at the expense of middle income countries that are our traditional allies and friends? In particular, unless the push towards free markets and liberalisation and the removal of protection from traditional Caribbean agricultural products such as sugar and bananas are carefully managed, countries such as Jamaica and the Leeward and Windward islands will be plunged into poverty. If agricultural labourers are displaced from the traditional crops of sugar and bananas, they will diversify not into computer programming, but into the drugs trade and criminality. We must give careful thought to the process of liberalisation so that we do not make poor people poorer.

As my hon. Friend knows, I too am a member of the all-party Caribbean group, and the best years of my life were spent in Jamaica, so I hope that I have some understanding of the problems that are faced by economies that developed around sugar and bananas and other fruit for export to Europe through the colonial system. If we remove that avenue for sale, as we are doing at present, impoverishment will follow, followed by the drugs trade and criminal elements. Tourism cannot solve all problems within the Caribbean; there has to be an indigenous agricultural system there, and we should be supportive of that.

I agree very much with what the hon. Gentleman said about the emerging consensus on trade policy; I focused extensively on it in my election literature. As trade distorting subsidies to western agricultural production are the knowing, deliberate and calculated policies of the richest Governments on earth to make the richest people on earth richer and to exacerbate the plight of the poor, how does the hon. Gentleman think, in practical terms in a multilateral context, it will be possible to get agreement in the EU and with the United States at the World Trade Organisation to get rid of those subsidies, given that we will have to take on powerful political lobbies who want to do nothing of the kind?

I am astonished and welcome the hon. Gentleman's intervention. I agree that we will have to take on very powerful lobbies, and in the United States the federal Government's heavy subsidising of powerful interests to dump food on Africa and other parts of the world, but particularly on Africa, amounts to an investment by the US in the wealthiest to impoverish the very poorest in Africa. That is the effect of it, and likewise the dumping of genetically modified crops.

The last WTO round collapsed, essentially because of a degree of unity that developed between Brazil, India and China, which led the poorest countries in the world, and that was a good thing, because had a deal been reached on the agenda that had been put down, it would have been very damaging to the poorest people around the globe. If we want to conquer poverty, we must make changes, and that means ending this subsidy of food dumping by Europe and the United States, supporting and promoting industrial development and job creation in the poorest countries in the world, and allowing a degree of protection of agricultural industries to continue in Africa, the Caribbean and other places so that they can develop themselves and eliminate their own poverty. It is not a simple process, but it requires a clear commitment by us. Therefore, if we go to the WTO linking arms with the worst elements of the EU and the United States, we will only set our faces against the poorest in the poorest countries of the world. If we are serious about conquering poverty, we must be prepared to pay the price for it as well. I hope that the Government are prepared to do that.

I am conscious that I have gone on rather a long time, but I have taken a lot of interventions, and I have one final area to mention.

More.

My parliamentary neighbour is very kind, but I will have to deny her the pleasure of listening to me for very much longer.

I want to conclude with a point that I made during an intervention on the Minister, and that is the issue of the non-proliferation treaty review conference that is going on in New York at present. That was a landmark treaty achieved during the cold war in which we talked clearly about the long-term proposal for the five declared nuclear weapon states to disarm. It has to be welcome; it has to be a good thing. That was its long-term objective. Because of the existence of that treaty, it has been possible to say firmly to other countries that were thinking of developing nuclear weapons that they should not do so. It has had considerable effect. There are some estimates that as many as 25 countries would have developed nuclear weapons by now had it not been for that treaty. But to achieve success requires a clear statement by the Government. I welcome the fact that the Queen's Speech said nothing about developing a new generation of nuclear weapons. I wish that it had said that there would be no new generation of nuclear weapons, but at least by not saying the opposite it gives that possibility.

I have received reports about the NPT conference—I must declare that I am a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and that I have been a member of CND for as long as I have been a member of the Labour party, which is since the age of 16—and I shall quote from the comprehensive overview of the situation released by the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed el-Baradei:

"as long as some countries place strategic reliance on nuclear weapons as a deterrent, other countries will emulate them", and

"we cannot delude ourselves into thinking otherwise".

We would do well to recognise Mohamed el-Baradei's wise words.

I have received a report about the unfortunate news from New York:

"The US has refused to accept the inclusion of any reference to both the 1995 and 2000 NPT Review Conference. This means reneging on a significant step made at the 2000 Conference when the UK and the four other declared nuclear weapons states gave an 'unequivocal undertaking to work toward the total elimination of their nuclear weapons' and the 13-point practical step agreement to achieve that goal".

When the BBC's "Newsnight" programme interviewed the Prime Minister, I was disturbed to hear him say that we must retain our nuclear deterrent and that we have had an independent nuclear deterrent for a long time. I question the use of the word, "independent", in respect of the British nuclear deterrent, but we clearly possess nuclear weapons. We should strongly support the NPT process and recognise that Trident must not be replaced by a new generation of nuclear weapons. As Trident ceases to be operational, we should stop living with nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons have not brought peace to the world, because they take up a lot of resources and present the danger of proliferation.

The Government's approach to Iran, which involves a troika talking to the Iranian regime, is welcome and helpful, and I hope that it continues. If we transmit positive signals through our participation in the NPT review conference, it will help to bring about the possibility of wider nuclear disarmament, which we all want to achieve. Many tens of thousands died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the only use of nuclear weapons in wartime. Surely we can take a step forward on the 60th anniversary of those events by saying that we will get rid of nuclear weapons world wide and by setting the example of getting rid of ours.

This debate comes at a very important time. We live in a world in which serious wars, which are currently occurring in Iraq, Colombia and the Congo, are a danger. Wars occur because of competition for resources, poverty, nationalism and other reasons. We cannot say that we live in a world of peace, when, as I have said, so many people live in desperate poverty. We live in one of the richest countries in the world, and surely it is up to us to do all that we can to eliminate poverty around the world, to promote peace through disarmament and to recognise the need for justice. We should bequeath those changes to future generations, rather than bringing up a new generation on a diet of weapons of mass destruction, war and conflict.

These occasions inevitably assume some of the characteristics of a tour d'horizon, but since we all have our own pairs of binoculars, we sometimes see the horizon in different ways. That is why I apologise to Jeremy Corbyn for not following him in focusing on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and on international development, which he discussed with telling force and commitment. I have no doubt that we shall have opportunities to return to those topics on other occasions.

The hon. Member for Islington, North struck a chord when he said that our foreign policy would play out against the backdrop of Iraq, which is inevitable so long as 8,000 British forces are still deployed there. In the course of the general election, at least one tragic event showed that those 8,000 forces are at daily risk of their lives, and, although we have deep divisions of principle and of view about Iraq itself and how Iraq should be managed, all hon. Members unstintingly admire their professionalism and commitment.

Events during the general election campaign made it clear beyond any question that the objective from the start was to support the United States in achieving regime change in Iraq. The alleged threat of weapons of mass destruction, about which little or no evidence existed, and the existence of which has now been disproved, and the breach of United Nations resolutions, which was determined solely by the allies—the Attorney-General himself made it clear in his published opinion that he did not support that approach—provided a cloak of legality for an act that was plainly in violation of international law.

I do not shrink from saying that in supporting regime change, the Government adopted an approach to foreign policy in which the ends sought were used to justify the means. Indeed, that is the justification to which the Prime Minister immediately resorts when he is asked about those matters. The doctrine—if it can be described as such—that the end justifies the means is very dangerous in international affairs, and it has been used throughout history to justify oppressive practices that have later been the subject of outright condemnation.

In his comprehensive introduction to those issues, the Minister for Europe implied that human rights, peace, security and the control of weapons proliferation rest on an adherence to international rules and standards, which is a point that the hon. Member for Islington, North underlined. How can the United Kingdom insist on respect for the nuclear non-proliferation treaty by Iran, or respect for human rights in China, if we appear to have abandoned the very rule of law on which those calls are based?

On the lifting of the European Union arms embargo against China, I will not rehearse all the arguments, but I will say this: it is wrong on human rights grounds, political grounds, strategic grounds and industrial grounds. I hope that Her Majesty's Government will not support it.

I shall turn to the current situation in Iraq, because we are constantly enjoined to consider not how we got there, but what happens now. The situation is clearly far from what was predicted. The UN development programme has carried out the most detailed survey of living conditions in Iraq since the invasion, and its report, which was published last week, refers to major social and economic problems such as 18 per cent. unemployment. Among the thousands who were surveyed, more than eight out of 10 households suffer power shortages, only half have clean water and only one third are connected to a sewage network.

The report identifies a significant deterioration in standards of health care and education. Doctors, nurses, medical equipment and medicines are in short supply, and a staggering 23 per cent. of children suffer from chronic malnutrition. Schools lack adequate resources and levels of youth illiteracy are high. Household incomes have plummeted, and it has been estimated that as many as six in 10 people in Iraq now live on food handouts. That is a long way short of the promised brave new world.

Tragically, the security situation has deteriorated to the point at which the ordinary tasks of life are both difficult and dangerous for many Iraqis. The head of the American forces in Iraq reports that coalition and Iraqi forces are subject to more than 50 attacks a day. Since the formation of the new Government, more than 500 killings have occurred. It is a measure of how commonplace such killings have become that even in the broadsheet newspapers that opposed military action, one must read pages five, six or seven to find the details of what has occurred. The fear instilled under Saddam Hussein's systematic repression has been replaced by the fear of indiscriminate attacks.

This is all because—here I recognise the point that Mr. Ancram, whom I welcome to his new responsibilities, made in advance of the war and has made since—there was a wholly inexcusable failure to plan for the stabilisation and reconstruction of post-war Iraq. The complete abandonment of Iraqi security forces and the determined de-Ba'athification of Iraqi institutions was of itself profoundly destabilising. That situation has not been helped by heavy-handed military operations on the part of the United States, particularly in Sunni areas. Abu Ghraib, which is once again in the news today, is a constant reminder of unacceptable behaviour with deeply damaging consequences not only in Iraq but throughout the whole middle east region.

It is necessary to recognise that the open-ended presence of 150,000 foreign troops in Iraq fuels the insurgency. The common enemy of the insurgents, who are composed of Islamist jihadists and nationalist extremists, has become the coalition and the Iraqi security forces with whom they work. The solution has indeed become part of the problem. That is why it should be the policy of Her Majesty's Government to state as their objective a phased withdrawal by the end of December 2005, at the date of the expiry of the United Nations mandate. I believe that the withdrawal of British forces in such circumstances is entirely justified, subject to three areas in which more effort is required: the Government in Iraq should be seen to be a sovereign Government and less of a creature of the coalition; the services to which I referred should be restored in order to give the people of Iraq some semblance of normal standards of living; and security should be improved through a far higher degree of training and equipment for Iraqi forces.

I am listening to the right hon. and learned Gentleman with great interest. Like every other analyst of this situation, he will appreciate that if it is to improve, there must be greater security. If the Iraqi forces are to be trained to take up that role, it is necessary for coalition troops and police to be there in the medium if not the long term. How can we withdraw when those tasks still need to be completed?

The hon. Gentleman, who has some knowledge of military strategy, knows that an exit strategy is defined as being either the moment at which one knows that one has done one's task, or the moment at which one knows that one cannot complete it. My anxiety is that we have an open-ended commitment whereby we will stay for as long as we are required. Just how long will that be? What consequences does it have for overstretch in our armed forces and for our political influence in an area in which that influence has been deeply damaged?

There will be a point at which we have to leave Iraq, but there will never be a good time to do so. The right approach is to have an objective. At the moment, the Government do not have an objective. I imagine that somewhere in the depths of the Ministry of Defence, with which Patrick Mercer is no doubt familiar, people are planning for how long British forces will be there—for two, three, or four years. That is not a commitment that we have any obligation to maintain. We had a moral obligation created for us by the Government in taking military action—a moral obligation that none of us could shrink from—but we have fulfilled that, and we have a moral obligation to our own forces and to the interests of the people of the United Kingdom.

There was an option for securing the future of Iraq after the conflict—an international leadership under an international mandate that would have brought in lots of different forces seeing themselves as serving the people of Iraq rather than the coalition. Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that that option is still available, because the new UN resolution after December could internationalise the leadership and the reconstruction, and then the occupying powers could leave and the people of Iraq could have the chance of a better future?

I wish that the right hon. Lady were right about that. Her intention is perfectly correct. However, we fared very poorly in the efforts that were made to persuade Muslim countries to provide supporting forces in Iraq, even after UN Security Council resolution 1546, which gives warrant and authority for the continuing presence of the coalition, and expires at the end of this year. I wish that it were possible to created a multinational force of the kind that the right hon. Lady describes, but I have very great doubts about that.

A number of the Muslim countries that were approached made it clear that they would be willing to serve as part of a UN-mandated force, but not in support of the coalition. That was the position of Pakistan and of other countries.

I ask the right hon. Lady to consider this from her intimate knowledge of government and of our relationship with the United States: are there circumstances in which we could have envisaged the United States ceding authority to a force of the kind that she describes? I doubt that very much. Her intention is right, but the chances of achieving it are not as great as she or I would prefer.

That takes me on to Iran. The European Union and the United States have legitimate anxieties about Iran's use of its civil nuclear programme to conceal a nuclear weapons programme. At the heart of that is Iran's entitlement under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to enrich uranium for civilian purposes. However, as everyone knows, once technologies have been mastered for that purpose it is a short step to achieving the technical capability for the production of a nuclear weapon. In truth, given Iran's record of concealment and lack of co-operation with Dr. el-Baradei's organisation, the E3, as it has been described in shorthand, is certainly right to seek the permanent cessation of enrichment and reprocessing activities. We must now embrace concerted efforts to persuade Iran to uphold its suspension commitments under last year's Paris agreement, with the ultimate object of persuading it to agree to end all enrichment activities and to accept full International Atomic Energy Agency inspections. It is necessary to consider other methods, and the credible prospect of economic sanctions combined with incentives on trade and technical matters, together with the offer of security assurances, could be helpful in enabling us to reach such an agreement.

A source of profound concern, however, is the active consideration by some in Washington of a military alternative—and, indeed, the possibility that Israel might act as some kind of surrogate of the United States. The Foreign Secretary has been unequivocal. He said in December that military action against Iran was "inconceivable". The Prime Minister, when asked to comment, said, rather more delphically, that "there are no plans". I believe that the House would want the Government to state again, unequivocally, their position on the use of force against Iran, because the risks of military action are enormous. A military strike could provoke retaliation throughout the whole of the middle east, with Israel being a direct target. Circumstances in Iraq could deteriorate if Iran thought that it was in its interests to try to stir up trouble for the coalition in order to divert attention from itself. It would most certainly strengthen the position of hard-line conservative factions in Iran at the expense of the reformists and undermine the prospect of change.

Furthermore, an attack is far from certain to achieve its military objectives, given that Iran's nuclear facilities are well hidden and well dispersed. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that any attack could prove counter-productive, leading to Iranian withdrawal from the NPT and strengthening domestic support, born out of a sense of national identity, for the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

In that context, the issue of Israel and the Palestinians was mentioned in a trenchant intervention by Clare Short.On many occasions in recent years we have heard from the Dispatch Box condemnations of the expansion of settlements on the west bank and of steps taken that would make it impossible for Jerusalem to be available as a capital for both communities. But what is ever done in support of those condemnations? What steps does anyone ever take? If one suggests, as I did 18 months or two years ago, that we might review the European Union's preferential arrangements for Israel, one brings a forest of condemnation and criticism down on one's head. Can we envisage any circumstances in which we would be so condemnatory of breaches of international law by any other democracy, but then stand back as the breaches continue and find ourselves incapable of taking action in support of our condemnation? On that analysis, Israel enjoys a privileged position indeed.

In 1948, as a young person, I, like many others, took the view that the creation of Israel was justified. I have not changed my view. However, is it not clear that the Sharon Government and those to the right of Sharon have not the slightest intention of bringing about a Palestinian state? As my hon. Friend Jeremy Corbyn pointed out, the continued post-1967 occupation means misery and humiliation for the Palestinian people. It is the responsibility of the United States, far more than that of Britain, to do what it can to force Israel to recognise that it is breaking international law and inflicting such harm on the Palestinian people.

The hon. Gentleman and I took different positions on Iraq, but I am happy to say that on this topic we are of one mind.

The United Nations has been mentioned. The Minister for Europe referred to a 60th anniversary in his opening speech. Of course, this year marks the 60th anniversary of the United Nations. Recent events have brought that institution's authority under threat but also provided an opportunity, with the publication of the report of the high-level panel.

It is worth reminding ourselves that the Atlantic charter was the blueprint for the United Nations. Three things formed the basis of that charter: the dignity of the human individual, the banishment of war as an instrument of foreign policy, and a new programme of economic liberalisation to promote development and alleviate poverty. The principles remain the same today, but it is perhaps a pity that we have not been better at implementing them. The principles are the same as those that we are discussing here.

No state acting on its own can address the challenges of poverty, disease, conflict and terrorism. That is echoed in the authoritative report of the high-level panel. Its common thread is respect for international law and the necessity for multinational action. Against the background of Iraq, the panel sends out a clear and strong signal that the existing rules governing the use of force are adequate and need to be respected.

The Secretary-General has responded by putting forward his proposals, which echo to some extent those of the panel, and emphasise that the goals of security, development and human rights are interdependent and can be fulfilled only by sustained co-operation. I hope that the British Government will make that cause fundamental in their approach to foreign affairs in this Parliament.

The Security Council should reflect today's world, not the balance of power in the aftermath of the second world war. The principle that should be embraced at all stages is that the world needs co-operation, which means collective action, rules and respect for those rules.

We agree that the United Nations should be an instrument of necessary change and not a symbol of passive acceptance of a frankly unsatisfactory status quo. In that context, does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that, for all the good work of the high-level panel, its position on the UN Commission on Human Rights was not impressive, given that it argued for automatic membership of the commission? Does he agree that the Secretary-General's position is better? Membership should be determined not by geography or automaticity but by behaviour.

The hon. Gentleman is right. The Secretary-General, provoked or stimulated by the panel, produced what seems to me a much more elegant solution than that originally envisaged by the panel.

Darfur has implications for the United Nations. The Minister for Europe made a strong case for what has happened, but he did not persuade me and I doubt whether he persuaded himself. The international community's response to the crisis in Darfur has been slow and inadequate. None of us can be other than shamed by what we have done or not done about Darfur. According to the United Nations, 2 million people have fled their homes and at least 180,000 are thought to have died. People in Darfur are still unsafe and suffering shortages of food, water and medicine. That will be remedied only by strong and concerted peace enforcement action—I use those words advisedly—in Darfur, with full United Nations backing.

The world has watched as Governments have prevaricated and the killing has continued. The Security Council should secure the presence of an African Union-led force of at least 10,000 troops and police as the UN's humanitarian chief has requested, with full logistical and financial backing and air support. The force should have a clearer and stronger mandate to protect civilians, not just themselves. There should be targeted sanctions against the Sudanese Government, including a comprehensive arms embargo. A strict no-fly zone should be imposed over Darfur. United Nations monitors should be deployed, including human rights observers, and all the atrocities should be referred to the International Criminal Court. Effective action is imperative, to protect not only the civilians in Darfur but the fragile north-south peace process.

The violence in Uzbekistan is a matter of grave concern. However, it is hardly surprising, given its Government's long-standing record of systematic human rights abuses. For the moment at least, the former ambassador, Mr. Murray, must feel vindicated.

The United States has a military base in Uzbekistan. It signed a strategic partnership agreement in 2002 and has provided more than $200 million in aid. There are reports that the United States and the United Kingdom receive information from the Uzbekistan Government that may have been obtained by torture. What do our Government say to those allegations?

Why, in the past five years, have our Government approved arms export licences to Uzbekistan for categories including

"military, security and paramilitary goods and arms"?

Exactly what sort of equipment has been exported? If we are serious about arms exports, we should also be serious about their transparency.

Did those exports conform to criterion 2 of the "Consolidated EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria", which the Foreign Office publishes? It provides that licences should not be issued when there is a

"clear risk that the proposed export might be used for internal repression".

What the devil is taking place in Uzbekistan now if it is not internal repression?

Concerted pressure must be placed on the Uzbekistan Government to respect the universal right of peaceful protest and freedom of expression. Western states, including Britain, must defend and promote human rights and democracy everywhere in the world. There should be no selectivity. Oppressive regimes should not be exempt from censure simply because of political expediency. The campaign to spread freedom and human rights can never succeed unless the same rules apply equally to all.

I was interested to hear the comments of Dr. Fox on Europe. He expressed his view a little more noisily than his predecessor but it is not much different. I thought that I detected a stirring in Rushcliffe; I thought that there might be a moment when Rushcliffe would be unable to resist the bait to put the sensible case on Europe, which used to be a characteristic of the Conservative party but has long since disappeared—

He is not rising to it now.

No, the right hon. and learned Gentleman is not rising now. [Hon. Members: "He will be."] I shall make a special effort to be present throughout his speech.

With referendums taking place in Holland and France, our Government can no longer procrastinate on the issue of Europe. The no campaign was launched today; it is time that the yes campaign was launched, and only the Government can do that. If we are serious about the European Union, we must make the case for the peace, prosperity, stability and democracy that it has brought to Europe. Everyone knows that economic prosperity in Britain is underpinned by our membership of the world's largest internal market—a market that constitutes one fifth of global gross domestic product. I have no hesitation in saying that the treaty for a European constitution is essential to facilitate the operation of a much enlarged European Union, and that the spread of freedom, human rights, economic liberalism and good governance to the countries of the former Soviet Union is an historic achievement of which we should be proud, and which we should never stop highlighting.

We shall return to the issue of Europe when the Government introduce the Bill to ratify the treaty, and a lot of the old arguments will be rehearsed. I hope that the Bill will pass quickly through the House of Commons and that we will have a referendum as soon as is practical, to allow Britain to be at the heart of Europe and of the reform of Europe. However, the Government should be in no doubt that the referendum will be a test of commitment and nerve.

The United Kingdom can achieve a better foreign policy. We can commit ourselves unreservedly to the rule of law in international affairs. We can use our influence in Europe and in other places with which we have historic ties, including the Commonwealth, to promote democracy and respect for human rights. We can commit ourselves to support in word and deed the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. We can forge a new relationship with the United States that would be a partnership of influence, without our being so subordinate as to make us appear subservient. The Government have all to play for, and the House is entitled to expect them to take every opportunity to advance those principles, and the interests of the people of the United Kingdom.

I should like to begin my first speech in the House with an apology to my hon. Friends. As the new Member for Leicester, South, I can claim credit for being the Labour gain on 5 May. I was also, however, the candidate who did not win the by-election last July. My thanks are therefore due to my many hon. Friends who campaigned for me last year, and my apology goes to them for being 10 months late in getting here.

My constituency has many strengths. It contains most of Leicester's city centre, which has a lively, thriving shopping centre and a unique covered market. Leicester has an unbroken history from Roman times: it was a major Roman centre, its Norman castle hall is still partly standing, and it has a beautiful mediaeval guildhall. It is a fine city that experienced dramatic growth during the 19th century, and we still benefit from that legacy today. The city contains two excellent universities—Leicester university and De Montfort university—which contribute enormously to its well-being, its cultural life and, particularly, its economic life.

The constituency of Leicester, South is possibly unique in having four first-class professional sports teams: Leicestershire cricket club; Leicester City football club; the Leicester Riders basketball club; and the Leicester Tigers rugby club. While Leicester City football club might not currently be in its proper place in the premiership, we can console ourselves with the triumphs, or indeed the near-triumphs, of the Tigers. We can also look forward to a good summer for the county cricket club.

I firmly believe, however, that the outstanding strength of my constituency is the diversity of its communities. Every aspect of Leicester's life has benefited from the families who have made their home there over recent decades. Its social life, its cultural life, its religious diversity, its political life, its business and its economy have all been enriched and transformed by those who have made it their home over those decades. We can never be complacent, but Leicester provides a model of a community strengthened by and proud of its diversity.

I am privileged to have led the city council in Leicester for more than 17 years, and I am now privileged to have been entrusted by the electors of Leicester, South to represent them in this House. It is appropriate, in this debate on foreign affairs and defence, to refer back to the by-election last July. Other parties focused at the time on the single issue of Iraq, and were quite successful in converting anger over that issue into votes. At the general election it was different. That is not to say, however, that the many members of the electorate who believed Iraq to be a mistake—indeed, who were appalled at the blunder that it represented—have changed their view. They have not, and neither have I.

However, in Leicester, South and elsewhere, the election was about the Government's achievements and manifesto, and the alternatives to those achievements and that manifesto. The electors in Leicester, South are aware that the constituency has benefited enormously from three highly successful Sure Start schemes, which have transformed the life chances of many children. They are also aware of the extra police and community support officers who contribute so much to community safety in the city. They are also aware that antisocial behaviour legislation has enabled communities to begin to reclaim their neighbourhoods for the ordinary, decent people who live in them.

The electors of Leicester, South are also aware of the transformation of the city's public services that is taking place under Labour. They are aware of the £700 million commitment to transform Leicester's hospitals, particularly the Leicester royal infirmary, which is in my constituency. The new children's accident and emergency unit there has already been built and opened, and it is paving the way for the major transformation of that and the other city hospitals.

I must, however, mention two issues of concern that were brought to my attention during the election campaign. The first was a specific concern expressed by the parents of children in one part of the constituency about the potential effect of the proposed city academy on the other schools in the neighbourhood. Although most people did not express opposition to the academy, they frequently expressed concern about the perceived lack of genuine consultation and dialogue about the proposals, and about the potential impact of the academy on the other schools currently attended by their children.

The other, more general, concern that I must mention came from Muslim constituents. They are respectable, reasonable, sensible people who, in recent times, have felt that their religion has been grossly misrepresented and that their communities have been demonised. Although they warmly welcome the proposals to outlaw religious discrimination, they none the less increasingly resent the way in which they, their families and their friends have been stopped, questioned and subjected to official attention for no apparent reason other than the way in which they were dressed or the fact that the men had beards. They share the concern of many other constituents in Leicester, South that the introduction of further anti-terrorist legislation and the proposed introduction of identity cards should take place only in ways that will protect their civil liberties and their dignity.

I want to use this opportunity to commit myself to playing a full part in the regeneration of Leicester. I particularly want to ensure that the very welcome moves, following the Lyons report, to relocate Government Departments and agencies do not miss the excellent advantages that Leicester provides in terms of location and communications. For too long, unaccountably, Leicester has lost out to the smaller city of Nottingham somewhere to the north—a city which I understand is somewhere near Rushcliffe. I hope, along with my good right hon. and hon. Friends the Members for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) and for Leicester, West (Patricia Hewitt), to help to ensure that the balance is redressed for Leicester and that we too have our share of Departments.

I want to pay my respects to Parmjit Singh Gill, my immediate predecessor, who was here for a brief 10 months. Although we taunted him about it, it is indeed fortunate that Mr. Gill remained a member of Leicester city council. He will, at least until the next city council elections, have an opportunity to use in that forum the experience that he undoubtedly gained in the House, and I wish him well.

I began with an apology, and I shall end with an aspiration. I was proud to be, for more than 30 years, a friend and sometime agent of Jim Marshall. Jim, of course, represented Leicester, South until his sudden death almost exactly 12 months ago. With a break in the mid-1980s, he had served the constituency since 1974. He was a man of principle, much loved, much admired and now sadly missed by his constituents in Leicester, South and, I know, by many Members here. My aspiration is to be as effective a representative of Leicester, South in the future as was my friend Jim Marshall in the past.

I begin by welcoming Sir Peter Soulsby, and congratulating him on his excellent maiden speech. He has taken a rather tortuous path to get here and his arrival has been a little delayed, but I am sure that we welcome him to our midst. I certainly look forward to his joining in the politics of the east midlands, a region of which I too am one of the representatives.

The hon. Gentleman made a passing reference to my home city of Nottingham. There is a little rivalry between the two cities. Three Nottinghamshire Members were listening to the hon. Gentleman—Mr. Hoon, Mr. Coaker and me. It would be quite easy to reply to him, because the inhabitants of Nottingham sometimes regard Leicester as a slightly duller city than ours, and personally I thought it was smaller. In a serious forum of this kind, however, it should be said that it is a very fine city.

The hon. Gentleman has played a prominent part in the politics of his city for many years. We welcome his transition to the national stage and the effective way in which he made his maiden speech, and look forward to his taking part in our deliberations from now on.

I expect I will not be the only Back-Bench speaker who, like the hon. Gentleman, does not confine himself to the subject of foreign affairs and defence, because the debate gives us an opportunity to consider the Queen's Speech as a whole—although I can reassure Sir Menzies Campbell that I shall not resist the temptation to touch on one or two aspects of foreign affairs that will concern us over the next 18 months. I shall begin by reflecting on the rather curious background to this particular Queen's Speech, the first of the new Parliament after the recent election. I think that it was presented by a significantly weakened Government and a much weakened Prime Minister. It was really the valedictory address to the nation's politics of a Prime Minister who we all know will depart from his great office some time in the not too distant future.

It is odd that that should be so, because in fighting the election the Prime Minister won a third successive victory, which is historic for his party, and he has returned here with a political majority that many earlier Prime Ministers would have envied. I think, however, that he has done so against a background and in circumstances that have diminished his authority, and should bring home to him that the time will soon come for him to end a very long period of premiership of which, in my opinion, he has so far not made very effective or valuable use.

I agree with the hon. Member for Leicester, South that Iraq did not dominate the recent election as it dominated his by-election, but I believe that the strange result that we saw was due more to Iraq than to anything else. Iraq itself did not feature greatly in my conversations with my constituents and others, and I do not think that the public became too immersed in the minutiae of the legal opinions given by the Attorney-General. I think they reinforced the impression that the public already had of the way in which the war had been embarked on. I also think, however, that the repercussions of the Iraq war for the reputation of the Prime Minister and the reputation of the Government's handling of events had a marked effect on the way in which people voted.

It seemed to me that the apparent national campaign did not interest the public greatly, and no strong theme emerged from it. The public are always bored and occasionally repelled by national campaigns, and I think that this campaign matched up to any I can recall on both fronts. Most of those among whom I campaigned would agree. However, the unpopularity of the Prime Minister, and the loss of any reputation he had had for trustworthiness and inspiring leadership, were very marked. The effect, in a very complicated scene across the country, was a significant shift of votes from the Labour party to the Liberal Democrats; and the electoral system ensured that my party obtained more seats than the Liberal Democrats as a result of that shift, giving us the majority that we now have.

I believe that the Prime Minister's reputation has been irretrievably damaged. As we saw yesterday, he is still a charismatic campaigner, but he is a campaigner who no longer comes across as a young Lochinvar leading his country to some distant destination. The techniques are there, but the trust is gone. It is not a question of whether he will hand over to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but a question of when he will do so, and that may well coincide with the end of this first parliamentary Session.

The Prime Minister's reaction in the presentation of the Queen's Speech is rather curious. Like all Prime Ministers approaching the end, he is plainly anxious to make his peace with destiny and try to ensure that history marks down whatever achievements he can accrue to his name in the 10 years or so for which he will have held office. He has therefore presented us with 45 Bills. He is clearly trying to resume the campaign of radical reform of public services on which he wanted to fight the election but was dissuaded by his Chancellor. He sent back to Darlington the person who was meant to be the messenger for the campaign. Now he has returned to the issue on which he wanted to fight the election, with a radical and crowded manifesto.

It is rather ironic that the Prime Minister should do that. It is ironic that he should wish to bow out with reforms that seem to me to have been taken largely from the third term of the Thatcher Government. Those are the ideas to which he has returned, and which he now wishes to pursue. It is ironic because of the contrast with the situation when he arrived here in 1997. It seems to me, when I look at the Labour Government's history, that in 1997 they had all the power that any democratically elected Government of this country could ever have had if they wanted to change the country. This really was an elected dictatorship, with a huge majority, a very troubled Opposition and the world at their feet—with a public whose expectations of them had been raised to amazing levels.

It seems to me, looking back, that the Prime Minister and his Government did practically nothing with that, certainly in the first four years. They were elected against the background of a lot of waffle about the third way, but very few practical proposals for doing anything. They mainly dedicated themselves to gaining a second election victory while they thought of something to do on the domestic front. Here we are, eight years later, and the power is gone, or diminished. The Prime Minister is experiencing his last days, and is trying to set about a whirlwind process of reform which I doubt he will achieve without considerable difficulty.

The leader of my party has said that where that reform coincides with the social reform started by the third term of the Thatcher Government we will quite properly support the Prime Minister, and I welcome that. I do not think this is a time when we should be too opportunistic, in the first 18 months of a Government. I shall not discuss the health reforms at length because this is a foreign affairs debate, but I admire the Government's efforts to develop the internal market, and their involvement of the private sector to give patients more diversity of provision and wider choice—on a scale that we could not have dared to attempt ourselves when we were being denounced for thinking such thoughts and embarking on health reform 10 years ago.

I see that the hon. Member for Leicester, South has doubts about the city academies. The city academies are merely the city technology colleges under another name. They are based, I think, on the same legislation. I remember—he is consistent—how fantastically hostile the Labour Government were. The very successful Djanogly college in Nottingham was faced with such hostility that they would not provide lolly-pop ladies for the school crossings, let alone allow the pupils to play football against any of the other schools in the city. It is now one of the most successful schools in Nottingham. I hope that the city academies achieve great success as the campaign is brought forward, and my party should support that.

Great things have to be done on pensions. It is astonishing that the Government fought the election on a platform where they had no policy whatever on pensions. They were waiting for Mr. Adair Turner to inform them of what it might be. In 2002, they were going to adjust public sector pensions, but they backed down immediately when faced with the threat of industrial action from the trade unions. The then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said that we should look forward to no great reform in this Parliament. I hope that we will have great reform in the first Session of the Parliament, and I hope that my party will be constructive and help us to take some of the difficult decisions that have to be taken. However, where we support the Government, I hope that we will also—this will be the main point of my speech at the end—insist that reform be done properly and scrutinized. The problem, as the Labour party has piled into some of the things that we would always support ourselves, is that reform under this Government so far has constantly been undertaken in a breathless, ill thought out way, dominated by one initiative after another, led usually by press releases, sometimes by statements to the House, which then get forgotten and overtaken six months later.

Reform has been over-centralised, over-directed and based on too many targets, some of them with perverse effects. There has been too much statistic chasing to try to persuade a doubtful public that results have been achieved. If the Prime Minister is a man in a hurry, realising he is reaching the end of his term of office, it becomes all the more important that, although we should support him when he does valuable things for the long-term good of our public services, we insist that they be properly scrutinized and done in a honest and transparent way. We should give some more constructive thought to the practicalities of many of these things, particularly for those who work in the public services, who are getting shell shocked by the constant change and adjustment and the confused accountability.

Again, it may be a worry that the Prime Minister, if he is in a hurry and has an 18-month or two-year agenda, has big foreign policy issues that he has to bring to an end. He should feel an obligation to his successor to do something to get near to resolving the questions of Iraq and Europe before the Chancellor takes over and gets out from the mess that he has left behind for someone else in economic policy.

As the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife said in a speech with which I almost entirely agreed, the problem with Iraq is that we still do not have a clear policy to bring to an end our tragic involvement with the problems of that country. The question of withdrawal and the policy between now and withdrawal remains something that worries me considerably. We get too much optimistic briefing. Too many false dawns are offered as stages go on. It looks as though the history of that tragic country will be very difficult over the next few years.

I do not agree with those who say that we should withdraw our troops when the present UN mandate expires. I was totally opposed to our taking part in the invasion, but it would be absolutely irresponsible to pull out at the termination of the mandate, leaving behind possibly anarchy, civil war and chaos, for which we will bear a share of the responsibility. However, I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman that we seem to be on a slightly timeless course where we are not quite sure when we are going to get out. The idea that we will stay there for as long as the Iraqi Government ask us to stay, and until such time as Iraqi forces are completely able to guarantee security themselves for a legitimate and stable Iraqi Government, puts us on a timetable, which I can only guess could be three, four, five or six years. We already face a serious problem. There is a very narrow dividing line where the foreign troops are absolutely essential for the maintenance of security but are in constant danger of providing, as a foreign occupying power, a focus for insurgency, recruitment to insurgency and the fomenting of dissent by those who want to foment dissent inside the country.

The next few months will be very difficult. If the new Government can achieve a life of any length, they will have immense difficulty in producing a constitution that is acceptable to the bulk of people who want to live in a law-abiding Iraq. We have to concentrate on the stage at which—it will not be a perfect stage—we will withdraw, either at the end of that process or shortly after they get there.

The Government's reactions remain opaque. There has been no clear guidance from them on where they think they are going. My fear is that, as too often throughout the whole experience, it will be the American Government who determine when we withdraw. It will be an American political decision as to when their public have grown exhausted with the effort. Meanwhile, far too much time will be spent trying to influence the nature of political evolution in Iraq without concentrating on putting security in place and letting people solve their own problems.

I do not intend to dilate on Europe at length. although I will not disappoint the right hon. and learned Gentleman entirely. I spoke on Second Reading of the European Union Bill. I agree with my hon. Friends who say that there should have been two Bills, because the votes that hon. Members cast on that Bill in the previous Parliament were totally ambiguous. I am in favour of the treaty but I am against the idea of having a referendum. Most of my party were against the treaty but in favour of having a referendum. We all at least agreed that we would vote on the treaty, so I voted for the Bill and they voted against it, but it would have been much more sensible to have two separate Bills. We will no doubt argue that at length if the issue takes off in this Parliament, but I merely refer to my view that the constitutional treaty is an essential way of making the newly enlarged Union work. It does not involve any significant new transfers of powers. It puts in place a more workable arrangement for making a Union of nation states work in co-operation with each other, and it seems that no clear alternatives have been presented.

I make one point relevant to today's debate—my usual note of dissent. The whole European debate in this country is in limbo. At the election, no one wanted to talk about it, including me. All three political parties were divided on the issue. All three were embarrassed by it. That is why the Front Benchers decided that it should be nothing to do with Parliament but should be referred to a referendum at some time in the future.

Now we are all waiting for the referendum in France, which will determine what on earth we will talk about from the end of this month onwards. It is a great pity that the French are to hold a referendum. It reinforces my view that all referendums are a complete lottery. I suspect that President Chirac would never have held a referendum if our Prime Minister had not put him on the spot by making a sudden, weak decision over the weekend to hold a referendum here. We wait to see what the French views are on the admission of Turkey, the popularity of President Chirac, the popularity of Prime Minister Raffarin and whether they feel uncomfortable about the impact of globalised competition on the French social system. They will vote yes or no according to their views on those various subjects. If the French vote no, I think that by general agreement all bets are off and the European leaders had better get down to deciding which bits of the procedural parts of the treaty should be rescued in order to make at least the functioning of the Councils and the voting system work better thereafter. I cannot for the life of me see the point of holding a British referendum on an extinct treaty if the French have rejected it. I do not like referendums anyway, but I do think that the British public will regard with amazement their political class insisting on having a referendum asking a question about whether they approved of a treaty that the French left had killed off 10 months before.

It would be a triumph if we could persuade 10 per cent. of the population to vote in such a referendum. What on earth in the end they would vote about I cannot possibly imagine. But we keep regarding it as desperately important to get the Minister to continue to commit himself to the foolish remarks of the Prime Minister that he was going to hold this referendum anyway. Sooner or later someone has to have the sense, almost in a "the emperor has no clothes" way, of saying that this is a complete waste of time, and if the French reject the treaty, perhaps both sides, with great respect, should start rethinking exactly what their European policy is now, and bring some more of it back to Parliament.

One other possible outcome is that the French say yes but the Dutch say no. Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman think that in those circumstances we should none the less proceed with a referendum—notwithstanding his hatred of referendums?

I think in that case we should have a referendum, although it would be a very serious problem and we would have to address whatever European points the Dutch were raising, to try to get the Dutch on side in due course. But I would prefer instead to see the Dutch put on the spot, saying, "Twenty-four other countries have ratified, so what exactly do you want to do now in order to keep inside the Union?", as the Dutch would.

The other important piece of European business that we have to transact concerns the whole question of European economic reform and the discussion we have about the working time directive. There, I have to say—I think that most British politicians agree—I am firmly on the side of the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he makes speeches about the need for economic reform inside the European Union. Indeed, he makes speeches of the kind that I was making when I was Chancellor of the Exchequer before him.

I am firmly opposed to the working time directive; indeed, I used to have these arguments with Jacques Delors 10 or 20 years ago—no, 10 years ago, at the birth of the social chapter. It is extremely important that we get it across to the French and the Germans, and the social democrat element of the European Parliament, that protectionism of the kind they are proposing—trying to protect their own very restrictive national labour legislation against competition from the eastern Europeans and ourselves—is doing great harm to the European economy and is actually making us all extremely vulnerable to competition from the Chinese and the Indians if we do not succeed in overcoming this.

rose—

I wish the Government well in finding allies from central and eastern Europe and Scandinavia to block this attempt to get foolish legislation in this country. We can only do that because we are in the European Union and our force is greater there if we are an influential member of the European Union. If we were in the position of Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein, we would have to comply with the working time directive—they do, in their trade in Europe. We would have to accept whatever decision came out of the European Union but we would have no voice in that decision, let alone the opportunity to play a leading and influential role in introducing economic common sense.

I conclude, as it is the Queen's Speech debate and the beginning of this Parliament, by touching on the other thing that I hope will emerge from the Government's weakened position. I hope that all these issues will be better handled, in a strengthened Parliament that has started to take a move back to make a weakened Government more accountable. A little humility is called for from the Government, this Prime Minister and his successor, in the way they handle these extremely important political affairs.

One of the most important things that we have to discuss in this first Session is the prevention of terrorism Bill that should be presented, because, as we all recall, in an all-night sitting at the end of the last Parliament we were promised new legislation on that subject which could be properly considered. I regard it as an acid test that we get that done properly. The discussion of that Prevention of Terrorism Bill was the lowest point in our parliamentary history for a very long time. An attempt was made to rush through a Bill that took away the civil liberties of the constituents of the hon. Member for Leicester, South and many others, with no debate in the House at all, except about a letter that described the changes that were going to be made, before the Bill went to the House of Lords and ping-pong took place between us. Fortunately, parliamentary sovereignty was reasserted because we wrung from the Government changes and promises of proper legislation. But what proper legislation are we going to have?

All the Bills we are talking about should come to this House for a proper Second Reading and be subjected to proper scrutiny. The timetabling of Bills, which has increasingly ensured that nothing is properly scrutinised, that the Government select the parts of Bills that are debated, and that the whole thing is trundled through to the House of Lords, is bad enough. But the Queen's Speech contains no proposal for reform of the House of Lords, when the vast majority of Members of this House wish to see a largely elected House of Lords. We do not want to hear again the House of Lords being referred to as the unelected second Chamber which we should override. The members of the unreformed House of Lords were actually the heroes of the Prevention of Terrorism Bill, but I wish to see a more legitimate House of Lords, which can do that more often to a Government who are misusing their majority.

It is proposed that there should be a Committee. I have served on one of these Joint Committees, which went nowhere. And what is the Committee to consider? If I may briefly describe its agenda, it is to consider ways in which the powers of the House of Lords might be emasculated, before this House is given the opportunity to debate what its composition and future existence should be. I hope that no one sensible will serve on such a Committee, and I do trust that we will reject this whole approach to reform. We need two Houses of Parliament—

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way on this, because I sat on the same Committee with him in the last Parliament.

It did not achieve very much.

And it did not achieve very much. But I remember the right hon. and learned Gentleman arguing for precisely this process throughout those Committee meetings.

Well, I remember that the Committee was agreed that the powers of the House of Lords were largely satisfactory and should be left as they were, and that we came round to the view that those powers could more effectively and properly be exercised by a House with greater legitimacy and one that was elected, but on a quite different basis and for a different term from the House of Commons. I believe that that could quite easily be agreed upon by the majority of Members of all parties now, if we had a proper Bill before us. That is where we had got to. I do not think that the powers of the House of Lords should be reduced.

All 45 Bills should be put through a better parliamentary process. The European constitution Bill is regarded as very important—certainly by the shadow Foreign Secretary, who gives a description of it which I do not altogether agree with on the facts—but we used to give these important Bills two days in Second Reading debate. They were taken on the Floor of the House; they were not timetabled as soon as we started. The prevention of terrorism Bill, when it comes back, will deprive us of our civil liberties. I was one of those who said that we cannot have jury trial in all these cases; there must be some confidentiality for the protection of the security services. These are very dangerous matters, where we will deprive someone of their liberties under circumstances falling far short of the normal criminal process in this country. That should have two days on Second Reading; it should have protracted consideration in this Chamber. Because on all these things, big and small—but particularly the big ones—this House should not act lightly, with most Members of Parliament deprived of the opportunity of taking part in discussion, and with the Whips mainly concentrating on trundling the thing along.

Outside comment on the state of this Parliament and the Prime Minister's valedictory term has tended to concentrate on whether the Labour Whips are going to have great difficulty with the 25 or 30 usual suspects in getting their Bills through. Well, rather embarrassingly I found myself agreeing with the usual suspects on quite a lot of issues in the last Parliament and it could be possible that I will do so again on foreign affairs, if not on domestic matters—but that is not the whole point.

Parliament as a whole should function. Members as a whole, not just the left wing of the Labour party, do have views on these matters. We are turning ourselves into a sausage machine, producing vast quantities of ill-thought-out legislation in order to show signs of activity on subject after subject. The Prime Minister may be impatient to set about his last phase of government in that way; it is time that this Parliament asserted itself and said he should not be allowed to do so.

Let us go back to better government and better parliamentary government; let us address the terrible lack of trust in politics, in the political process and in Parliament that is afflicting the public at the moment, and which we all felt at the last election. So let us handle this Queen's Speech in a way that the last quite dreadful and enfeebled Parliament really did not handle—was not allowed to handle—its business before it left and was replaced by all of us here.

Kenneth Clarke entertained the House with a characteristically fluent and amusing speech and made some very cogent points as well. I must disagree with his suggestion that the Government wasted their first term of office—or did he say their first two terms? I can only tell him that most of my constituents—I suspect that this may also be true of many of his constituents—are considerably better off now than they have been within recent living memory. I shall not follow him down the many paths that he wanted to lead us.

As hon. Members can see, I am back again in my natural habitat, having made two visits to government. The first was not a wholly happy experience, but the second was: I greatly enjoyed the two years that I spent at the Foreign Office as Africa Minister. It was a great pleasure to work with the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my right hon. Friend Mr. Straw, and the Secretary of State for International Development, my right hon. Friend Hilary Benn, who are two of the most effective and competent members of the Government. During my time there, I felt that we were achieving something: Africa is a continent about which we can hold our heads high these days, given what we are doing there and the role that we play in the world in relation to it. Not that there are no problems—there are, and Sir Menzies Campbell mentioned Darfur, which I will touch briefly on in a moment.

As hon. Members know, we count the votes very fast in Sunderland, and there has come a moment on each of the past four election nights when, for 40 or 50 minutes, I am the only Member of Parliament in the country. It is very tempting to form one's own Government during that time. On all those occasions, I have resisted that temptation, but in the light of what happened to me a few days after this election, I rather wish that I had not.

I cannot disguise my disappointment at leaving a job that I loved in a Department where I greatly enjoyed working, but that is all that I wish to say about my personal position, although there is a general point: I was the fifth Africa Minister in eight years and my noble Friend Lord Triesman will be the sixth. I wish him well, but I wonder, if we take Africa as seriously as we say we do, whether we could not just leave a Minister in place for long enough to establish the personal relations—indeed, I did establish them, as did some of my predecessors—and maintain them with the African leaders with whom we have dealings. A distinguished African who passed through my office told me that he had never met the same Minister twice. That is a rather unsatisfactory situation.

There is a wider point, too. We have had six Asylum and Immigration Ministers so far, seven Europe Ministers, nine Ministers with responsibility for entry clearance, of whom I was also one, and the Department of Health has been more or less cleaned out twice in the past 18 months or so. I know that decisions on such matters are for people far above my pay grade, but I gently wonder whether that is the most efficient use of resources and officials' time and whether we get the best out of people by reshuffling the pack with such terrifying rapidity.

I was glad to see in the Gracious Speech the references to the forthcoming G8 summit over which we will preside and where I expect us to play an important part. I am glad that the Prime Minister has decided that Africa and global climate change are the two main issues that we shall seek to push up the agenda. Getting Africa into the councils of the G8 and, indeed, those of the European Union has been significantly helped by our Commission for Africa report. Although I was sceptical about that report at first, it has been rather a success and, unusually for documents of that kind, it is fluent, easy to read and the arguments are set out with beautiful clarity.

There is a reference, too, in the Gracious Speech to Darfur, and the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife was right to draw our attention to that. The problems there have not gone away; there are no easy solutions. I am not convinced that the one that he suggested would necessarily work. The path down which we have gone is to give support to the African Union force, which we hope will increase to 7,000 or 8,000 troops, as my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe said. We have played a leading part in providing support to the African Union. Sooner or later, there must come a point where we invest in African solutions to African problems, and this is one of the first big tests. Given Darfur's geographic isolation and the horrendously complicated politics, tribalism and factionalism that exist there, it will be a very difficult task for any outside force, under whatever banner it travels, but we must not take our eye off the ball, because there has been a huge humanitarian catastrophe and there is the potential for a far greater one.

I shall turn briefly to the number of Bills. Many Bills in the Queen's Speech will be welcomed by my constituents, especially those that address aspects of the yob culture that blights the lives of so many of them. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe made the point, first, that there are rather a lot of Bills and, secondly, that we have had a tendency to rush them through and that they sometimes come here ill-drafted. That has been the case for a long time. It happened under his Government as much as under ours. [Hon. Members: "No."] Oh yes it did. Oh Lord it did.

Under the previous Government, I served on Standing Committees where Bills were rewritten from end to end and then went to the Lords where they were completely rewritten again, so let us not pretend that that phenomenon began after 1997. The big step forward in the last Parliament was that we were beginning to take a systematic approach to pre-legislative scrutiny and, to some extent, were using Select Committees for that purpose, too. That is what must happen. That is the future if we are to start to produce more satisfactory legislation, and I hope that the Government will make a big effort to draft as many Bills as possible sufficiently in advance so that pre- legislative scrutiny can be undertaken. It is in the interests of the Government, Parliament and everyone to get those things right.

I wish to address a couple of issues that were omitted from the Gracious Speech. First, I saw no reference to our commitment to sign the United Nations convention on corruption. I know that some legislative changes are required before we can do that, but I should like the Minister to say when he replies what plans we have to get on with that. It is becoming a bit of an embarrassment, and one increasingly hears distinguished foreigners asking why the UK has not signed the convention. Indeed, I was asked that very question last night at a conference at Wilton Park.

I also wish to raise, as did my hon. Friend Jeremy Corbyn, the question of the next generation of nuclear weapons, because a decision on that issue falls due during this Parliament. Indeed, I am aware that some sort of preliminary decision was taken in January 2004. Those of us who have been around for a while recall what happened under the Callaghan Government with Chevaline, when a decision was taken to go ahead with the new generation of nuclear weapons without reference to the whole Cabinet, let alone to Parliament. Most members of the Cabinet and Members of Parliament found out about the decision only when a Tory Government Front-Bench spokesman revealed it some years later. I hope that we will not go down that road again. It is a very serious decision and I hope that it will be brought to Parliament for discussion before any irrevocable decisions are taken.

The world has changed a great deal since 1977, and we should perhaps ask ourselves—people such as my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North have been asking this question for many years, but it is even more relevant now—whether we need a new generation of nuclear weapons, whether the large sums that we might invest in them could not be better spent in another way and whether we would not gain ourselves some credit in the international community by voluntarily giving up what, frankly, is not a lot of use to us anyway.

The hon. Gentleman made an intriguing reference to a preliminary decision having already been taken in 2004. I do not follow defence matters as closely as many Members, but could he remind me of what preliminary decision has been taken? Has any decision been taken other than to carry out a study of the implications and problems involved in renewing our capability?

I think that the Government's position is that all options are still open, but there was some discussion at a high level 18 months ago. I do not think that any firm decision has been taken and my point to the House—I repeat it now—is that I hope that the issue will come before Parliament while there is time to influence it in one way or another.

Does the hon. Gentleman perhaps have in mind the reports that preliminary work had started at both Aldermaston and Burghfield? If my recollection is correct, those reports surfaced about 18 months ago.

I do, indeed, have in mind those reports, which have been in the public domain for some time.

I also wish to say a word about our relationship with the United States. The Gracious Speech talks of strengthening and deepening relations between the US and the European Union, and I am all for that. However, we should not appease the US when it does things of which we do not approve. Occasionally, we have to stand up to the US and, I am glad to say, we do from time to time. I remember not long ago that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary stood very firm when the US tried to kibosh the International Criminal Court. It backed down; that is the point. The other members of the international community stood up to the US and my right hon. Friend played a leading part in that. The US backed down when confronted. We should do that a bit more.

Also, we should not turn a blind eye to the indiscriminate killing of civilians that, in my experience, has been a feature of all American military activity, and is a feature of such action in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I noticed the other day that even President Karzai of Afghanistan—there is no more loyal ally of the US—spoke out about the indiscriminate nature of American military activity.

I am glad that we worked hard to rescue the half-dozen or so British citizens who were interned at Guantanamo Bay. However, some people who have been resident in Britain for a very long time—not citizens—are also there. We have no legal obligation to help retrieve them, but we have a moral obligation to do what we can, not least because I think that our security services may have had something to do with getting them into Guantanamo Bay in the first place. I hope that we will continue to pursue those cases.

I am also concerned at increasing reports of a secret gulag into which terrorist suspects disappear. They are being ghosted round the world and, in some cases, torture is contracted out to third countries. Egypt and Syria have been mentioned. Some of these people are completely innocent and appear again looking dazed and confused nine months later without any question of due process having taken place. We should not turn a blind eye to that, and I believe that the Americans have a word for it.

Rendition.

Yes, "extraordinary rendition". We ought to know a little more about extraordinary rendition and should not close our eyes to it. We are supposed to be fighting for democracy and the United States says that it is signed up to the same values as we are. Let us make sure that we are all singing from the same hymn sheet. I repeat my question on the contracting out of torture, because I have even seen it suggested that one of the assertions made by Colin Powell in his famous—perhaps one should say notorious—United Nations speech was based on information extracted under torture. That is the other point about torture: one does not always get the correct information and it does not do anyone any good in the long term. It diminishes us all. I hope that we shall pay some attention to what is going on. We are all against terrorism and have all signed up to fighting the war against it. However, we are not obliged to close our eyes to the excesses of our allies in that cause. If it becomes necessary for us to sup with a slightly longer spoon with the United States, so be it.

In conclusion, I return to my point about the next generation of nuclear weapons. I seek from the Minister an assurance that some discussion of that issue will be brought here to Parliament while there is still time to influence it. I would be grateful if someone could report back in the closing speeches.

It is a great pleasure to follow Mr. Mullin. He obviously has a huge knowledge of African affairs and I hope that it is put to good use by the Government. However, I would not be so bold, as a new Member, to suggest what that should be.

It is a great honour to rise to speak as the newly elected Member of Parliament for Monmouth. I do so knowing that Monmouth has always enjoyed representatives of the highest calibre. Huw Edwards, my immediate predecessor, was very well known for his pleasant disposition and for his very hard work as a constituency Member of Parliament. Over the years on many occasions, we shared platforms—he as the Labour Member of Parliament, I as the Conservative Member of the Welsh Assembly—but both representing the same constituency and, more often than not, both on the same side. I commend the way in which he was always willing to put aside any personal political differences to work for the good of the local community.

Both Huw Edwards and the other main candidate, Phil Hobson, the Liberal Democrat mayor of Chepstow, fought the campaign with dignity and courtesy. It is my belief that both are clearly motivated by a love of the area in which we all live and a desire to better the lives of those who live there.

Previous MPs for Monmouth also distinguished themselves: Roger Evans, as a Social Security Minister; Sir John Stradling Thomas, as deputy Chief Whip; the right hon. Donald Anderson, who chaired the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs; and Lord Thorneycroft, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer. I cannot possibly hope to match that array of achievements but, if in four years or so I am thought of as a good constituency Member, I shall feel that I have achieved a great deal. One thing that all of us have had in common is a desire and a commitment to better the lives of all those who live in the constituency.

Although it is called the Monmouth constituency, it is much more than the market town from which it takes its name. Years ago, it was a sizeable part of south-east Wales. These days, the constituency is still large and includes of the towns of Abergavenny, Usk, Croesyceiliog, Raglan and Tintern as well as countless other small villages and great swathes of countryside.

As a border county, it is rich in both history and historians. Geoffrey of Monmouth chronicled the Arthurian legends in the 12th century and Adam of Usk gave us graphic accounts of the battles of Owain Glyndwr. Glyndwr was a Welsh landowner who fell out with King Richard II in about 1400, and much of the county was laid to waste by the battles that subsequently raged throughout as he tried to set up an independent republic of Wales. That early brush with devolution seems to have had a lasting impact on the population, as they voted overwhelmingly against a Welsh Assembly.

Some 130 years after Glyndwr's disappearance, Henry VIII caused further problems when he decided to embark on an early form of local government reorganisation. Deciding that Monmouthshire was more prosperous than the rest of Wales—a mistake that, unhappily, continues to be made today—he decided to make it part of the Oxford court assizes while the rest of Wales remained a separate area for judicial purposes. Official documents, including some that emanated from the House over the years, then began to refer to "Wales and Monmouthshire", which gave rise to the belief that the county was actually a part of England and that its supposed annexation into Wales after the 1974 boundary changes clarified the situation was nothing more than a conspiracy to drag the inhabitants back into the Principality of Wales from England. By the way, some of those people have already been in contact with me looking for surgery dates, which should be interesting.

The belief in Monmouth's prosperity continues to be widely yet incorrectly held. Like many other rural areas, Monmouth has suffered significant problems over the years, some of which were local, with others more national. I certainly want to use my role to fight on many local issues. I will fight for a new livestock market, which will be needed when the old one in Abergavenny closes down, a new river bank defence scheme to protect us from another outbreak of the disastrous flooding that occurred in Monmouth a few years ago, and to improve the regeneration of Chepstow by sorting out its traffic management problems. Of course, I am also upset about recent legislation that has undermined the fallen livestock collection service and threatened the viability of many farms. I might return to that subject when we are allowed to be more controversial.

There are many small schools throughout my constituency, such as Ponthir, Llanover and Llanelly Hill, that face closure irrespective of their academic results. Last year, Ponthir school had the best standard assessment test results of any school in the borough of Torfaen, yet the local education authority still wants to slam shut the school gates for ever.

Although the agriculture and tourism industries on which we depend so much have suffered, especially as a result of foot and mouth, great strides have been made in developing the specialist food industry. Abergavenny Fine Foods exports cheese all over the world, while Brooks Dairies makes what I think is the best ice cream I have ever tasted—by the way, it did not sponsor my campaign in any way.

Many people are employed in manufacturing industry if not actually in my constituency, just on the outskirts. Such companies include what I remember as Lucas Girlings, for which I worked, although it is now called Verity. The success or failure of those industries depends greatly on developing a foreign policy that allows Britain to trade freely with the rest of the world and, dare I say it, does not necessarily depend on us tying ourselves into an economic straitjacket with other countries in the EU.

As we are debating defence, may I take this opportunity to commend the R Mon Royal Engineers, who have been active over the past year or so rebuilding Iraq? What is remarkable about the work of the Royal Engineers—many of its members live in the town of Monmouth—is that the people are all volunteers and members of the Territorial Army. However, when the call came, they were happy to give up their jobs and go out to risk their lives rebuilding Iraq. I know that there are differences of opinion about the war, but whatever we might think about it, surely we can commend the people who give up nine-to-five jobs to go to Iraq and try to help the people who live there.

Back home, of course, those people and other constituents have been exercised by the recent council tax rises, which have added to the problems of people in rural areas who buy their own homes. Council tax in Monmouthshire has risen by about 130 per cent. over the past five years, which has happened because we use a formula that does not properly take account of the cost of delivering services in rural areas and because all too often the Welsh Assembly imposes extra burdens on local authorities, such as the teachers' work load agreement, without properly funding them.

The recent rebanding exercise that has taken place in Wales—it will soon follow in England—has added to our woes. Some 40 per cent. of properties in Monmouthshire have gone up by at least one band, but many have gone up by two or even three. A one-band increase means a 25 per cent. rise overnight. However, a sum equal to the extra money collected by local authorities is being withheld by the Welsh Assembly from the local government settlement, which means, in simple terms, that people are paying more, but will not see an extra penny spent on local services. I hope that the House will learn from the mistakes of the Welsh Assembly, especially before it gives any consideration to giving the Assembly extra powers.

I hope that we will learn from what has happened with council tax and the effect that that has had on the affordability of homes. By reducing the burden of council tax, we could increase the opportunity of home ownership—nothing could be more important to any of us than that. A nation in which home ownership is limited to only the wealthy is a nation divided.

I became involved in politics because I believed passionately that we must try to end divisions in society and help to build a cohesive society. We should have a society in which all of us have an equal chance to get on, with an equal chance to get into the best schools and universities, to hold a rewarding job and to own our own homes. Regardless of the differences that I am sure that I will have with Labour Members over the years, I believe that we should all be working for that vision. That belief is certainly as strong on this side of the House today as it was in the days of Disraeli. It is as relevant in the back streets of my home town of Newport as it is in the bistros of Notting Hill. For as long as I continue to serve as the Member of Parliament for Monmouth, I shall fight locally for my constituents and nationally to create the cohesive, one-nation society in which all have the chance to succeed.

I rise with both surprise and humility: surprise that there is not more competition from Labour Members to laud the Government's achievements on international affairs and defence; and humility following the two excellent maiden speeches to which the House has been treated. I am from the Marches myself—Monmouth does not seem so very far away from Worcestershire—but I have learned things today that I did not know. That just goes to show that sometimes one can learn things from speeches made in the House of Commons.

I salute the passion of the speech that we have just heard and also its messages, which are widely shared among Conservative Members. I congratulate my hon. Friend David T.C. Davies on a speech at which he will look back with pride in years to come. The same is true of Sir Peter Soulsby, although I think that I know which of those two characters will be more trouble to his Whips Office—I speak as someone recently released from the burdens of that office. However, I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on a fine speech.

It is customary to say that we have had a good debate at this stage of our proceedings on the Queen's Speech, but it is true. The debate has been characterised by many fine speeches. I was interested to sit next to my right hon. and learned Friend Kenneth Clarke during his contribution. He was harsh on the Prime Minister and I certainly share his harsh analysis of the Prime Minister's record. However, he perhaps missed one thing that I rather wish that he had done as Chancellor of the Exchequer: independence of the Bank of England. The Government might just be remembered for that; it is perhaps their sole claim for a place in the history books of the United Kingdom.

It was a pleasure to hear the speech made by Mr. Mullin. He told us that he was the first MP elected at the general election and for a period the only MP of the new Parliament. That reminds us of the person who I hope will be our last MP elected in a few weeks time and who is sadly missing from our proceedings today. I think that I should refer to him by name because he is not currently a Member—you will correct me if I am wrong, Mr. Deputy Speaker—but it would be nice to have Patrick Cormack back.

Sir Patrick.

It would be nice to have Sir Patrick Cormack back with us in a few weeks.

The tests that we apply to a Queen's Speech are all different and personal, and I have four: does it enhance the freedom, security and prosperity of the subject; does it enhance our democracy; does it bring benefit to individual constituents, in this case those in Worcestershire; and does it contribute to a fairer and safer world, which is especially pertinent to today's debate? Let us first consider freedom, security and prosperity. I sometimes think that the only freedom in which the Government and Prime Minister believe is their freedom to be the Government and Prime Minister and that they believe that all other freedoms should bow down in abasement to that. That is sad because after the election that we have had, some humility is called for from all three major parties. Labour actually lost the popular vote in England, and only one in five voters supported it throughout the whole of the United Kingdom. Labour received the smallest vote share of a winning party. It is true that it has a majority in this place, but in my view it has no mandate.

Similarly, after a carefully targeted campaign, my party delivered a welcome increase in seats and, as we heard from those maiden speeches, we have some excellent new Members of Parliament. We have to be honest, however. Our vote share hardly increased at all, but had we managed an extra 1 per cent. or so on top of that smaller share, think how much smaller Labour's majority would have been.

The Liberal Democrats enjoyed moderate success, with a few new seats, but in the face of a spectacularly unpopular Prime Minister—those of us who were on the doorsteps know just how unpopular this Prime Minister has become—and despite being the only party to oppose the Iraq war, which is now also unpopular, although it was not at the time, they still could not get close to the vote share the equivalent party enjoyed at the height of the powers of Baroness Thatcher.

All three parties have lessons to learn. I was disappointed not to see more humility from the Prime Minister yesterday. He said:

"Let me gently remind" my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition,

"however, which party won and which lost the election. He has 197 MPs. We have 256, and I stand here and he sits there."

That is rather like the football manager—I speak as a supporter of Chelsea football club, so this is a poignant comment—who celebrates a massive victory as a result of a goal that has been disallowed.

The Prime Minister went on to say:

"the Conservative party did not just lose the election—they lost the argument in the course of the election."

Of course, our real tragedy is that we won the argument many years ago, but that is not entirely apparent to many Labour Members, as I think the Prime Minister will discover during the course of this Parliament. He also said:

"The oddest thing about the election was that we were more interested in discussing Tory policy than the Tories were."—[Hansard, 17 May 2005; Vol. 434, c. 44.]

We wanted to discuss the policies that we actually had rather than the policies of the Prime Minister's febrile imagination.

What does the Queen's Speech say about freedom? My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe talked about some of the dangers inherent in the forthcoming prevention of terrorism Act. There are dangers, too, in the identity cards Bill, as we know. The Government talk about taking measures to address the pensions crisis—a crisis of their own creation. Perhaps if the Bank of England's independence is this Government's greatest achievement, its worst legacy is the crisis in pensions. What about prosperity? There was no mention in the Queen's Speech of the Government's fiscal plans—their plans for taxation—but I think that we can guess exactly what third-term Labour tax increases we are likely to see.

The second test is that of democracy. Many Members on both sides of the House have said this and have nodded in agreement when others have said it, and it is worth saying again: there are too many Bills in the Queen's Speech to enable proper scrutiny. That is of great concern. The hon. Member for Sunderland, South was right to say that previous Governments have needed to rewrite Bills in Committee, but at least the timetabling—or the lack of it—of those Committees enabled that process to take place. Sadly, Bills are now rushed through this place in a scandalous hurry and it is left to the other place to put right the massive deficiencies in legislation. I view with concern the Government's tentative proposals to reform the House of Lords. I do not think that they understand what an important job it does in serving British democracy.

For someone who says that there are too many Bills, it is perhaps a bit odd to say that I want an extra one, but as I said in my intervention on the Minister for Europe, we should have two Bills on the European constitution and the referendum, not one. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe might cast his vote in a slightly different way from how I cast mine, but we should have the right to express our views differently on the ratification of the treaty and the merits of a referendum. It is utterly unacceptable for the Government to muddle those two issues in the way that they intend.

Of course, the other important Bill is the one that belatedly, and, sadly, probably inadequately, seeks to restore some dignity and integrity to the voting system of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Government's refusal to embrace individual voter registration is bewildering. Their reason is that when it was applied in Northern Ireland, it led to a reduction in electoral rolls. Well, we probably needed to reduce the electoral rolls in Northern Ireland because that was part of the problem. It is crucial that votes cast at elections are cast with complete integrity and certainty. The Government's proposals, although welcome, fall well short of what is needed to re-establish faith in our democratic system.

Let us consider our constituencies, such as Worcestershire. There is a passing reference in the Queen's Speech to

"sustainable development and supporting rural services", although I think that that boils down to a new quango that muddies the roles of existing quangos. There is nothing significant on the problems of agriculture and horticulture; nothing on fairer funding for shire counties such as Worcestershire, which has been left badly behind in terms of schools and other public services; nothing on the impact of the Licensing Act 2003 on village halls and shops, a problem that I shall return to during this Parliament; nothing on planning law and travellers, who in my constituency make a mockery of the planning system, something on which the Government's response is inadequate; and nothing to reverse the draconian and illiberal ban on hunting or to address animal welfare rather than class prejudice. In short, there is nothing much for rural shires at all. It is a very thin Queen's Speech, indeed, when viewed from a constituency perspective.

Today's debate, however, is about international affairs and defence. Again, I am genuinely surprised—this relates to the fourth test of whether the measures will build a fairer and safer world—by the apparent lack of detail and vision on those subjects. I got no sense that the Government deeply and genuinely understand the huge challenges and opportunities that face us in a globalised and fast-changing world. Although there are many aspects to that, I want to deal with just two of them: our relationship to India and our policies in relation to overseas development.

I choose India because it offers a huge opportunity for Britain, but we are not being ambitious enough and not talking about it enough. British business is not taking it sufficiently seriously. I also choose international development because it is, ultimately, the great moral challenge that we face as a nation. Of course, poverty lies at the heart of so much international instability. It has also dominated the debate so far.

On India, I have declared my interests in the register and have been a frequent visitor to the country in recent years. I endorse what Sir Menzies Campbell said about the structure of the Security Council. It reflects the environment of many years ago and not the realities of a post-cold war 21st century, so we should not have much faith in it. I look forward to India's early membership of the Security Council.

To be fair, I know that the Government launched a comprehensive strategic partnership with India in September last year. That charts a genuinely ambitious course for the relationship between our two democracies—the oldest and the largest in the world. I hope that the Government are putting their money where their mouth was last September and are giving serious thought to implementation of the partnership's key provisions. I am not clear that they are because the strategic partnership, of which the two Prime Ministers rightly spoke, needs to be built.

Let us consider some specific things on which progress is not being made in the way that it should be. The joint declaration pledged to energise collaboration in science and technology. Other countries are already doing that and moving much faster to establish contacts with India to take advantage of its knowledge economy. For example, United States companies have set up Indian research and development centres, and research there often outclasses work in the parent country. What is the British Government doing to encourage innovative methods for collaboration in science and technology, and to ensure that we as a nation benefit from that emerging resource?

On education, there has been a 400 per cent. increase in the number of Indian students in UK universities over the past four years. We derive huge benefits from their presence. In recognition of the value that students bring to economies, other countries have responded more generously than us. The United States has eased visa formalities and provides financial support to encourage the trend, because it recognises that both countries benefit from it.

What are we doing? We are making it more expensive for students even to have their visas renewed. Perhaps more worryingly, under the voluntary vetting scheme, Indian students are potentially barred from courses in science and technology, subjects on which they have, perhaps, the highest aptitudes. Do the Government have plans to encourage foreign students from India to come to Britain for higher education?

On medicine, India has world-class medical facilities—I know because I have seen them—and biotechnology and pharmaceutical strengths that would surprise many in this country. Given our strength in those sectors, we should be an ideal partner. That was a major feature of the New Delhi declaration during the Prime Minister's visit to India back in January 2002, and it was reiterated last September. The Governments agreed that they would focus together on key sectors in which we share such world-class expertise. That also relates to information technology. So what are we doing to build on this statement of intent? We have seen the words, but we have not seen the action—a familiar phrase from somewhere in recent weeks.

The outsourcing of medical facilities, pathological testing and cost-effective drugs could make a huge contribution to the British national health service. We could have joint research in medicine and collaborative ventures between medical institutions, all on a long-term basis, but it does not seem to be happening like it ought to.

Indian companies, meanwhile, are being harassed when they try to bring in short-term workers to work in many Indian enterprises now active in the UK. As far as I understand it—the Minister may correct me—India has co-operated wholeheartedly with the British authorities on immigration. A memorandum of understanding has been signed on speedy repatriation of immigration offenders and, I believe, India is on the white list of countries for asylum applications. So, it is a little strange that more is not being done to ease the transfer of professional staff between our countries.

The Government are devising a new points-based system for immigration and work permits, which, as we know, is common ground across the House. However, it seems that several categories of skills needed in the UK, particularly in the IT sector, cannot be included in the system. What are the Government doing to ensure that personnel with such skills, who need to be brought in quickly, are treated as a distinct category so that they and the companies that need them do not suffer from lengthy procedures, long delays and quota limits that a large immigration process necessarily involves? If the economic relationship between our two countries is to develop, it is very important that we have a fluent and smooth exchange of professionals.

Before I move on, I have a word to say on Kashmir. The way in which Pakistan and India are talking about the future of that troubled part of south Asia is hugely encouraging. It is wonderful to watch the establishment of a bus link, for example. I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend would agree that it is wonderful that cricket has played such a part in building relationships between India and Pakistan on the matter. However, it is a matter of some concern to me that the travel advisory is unnecessarily cautious. That is true of many travel advisories issued by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Within India, tourism to Kashmir is booming, and it would be nice if British tourists were encouraged to make the journey there too. It is a truly fantastic part of the world, as I know from my visit to Srinagar.

Time is moving on, so I shall be brief and make my final comments on the subject of the developing world. I worry about the debate on the developing world because so much of it is characterised by learned, difficult and arcane debate among experts, who use acronyms, names, functions and conferences which are not easily comprehended by others who take an interest in the issues. In addition, so much of the debate among the campaigners is characterised by excessively simplistic solutions. So perhaps there is room for a third way—a middle way. It is crucial that the debate is engaged in widely.

There have been many false dawns. I had the privilege of working for Sir Edward Heath in 1980 at the time of the publication of the Brandt report. I remember the huge optimism that swept around the country at that time. It was probably one of the defining moments in the developing understanding among the British people of the need to do more to tackle poverty in the developing world. Only three years later, however, the follow-up report, which was also published by the Brandt commission, struck a much more depressing note.

So often over the past quarter of a century the story of development issues has been one of two steps forward, one step back—to be optimistic about things. I disagree with Jeremy Corbyn, who said that international issues had dominated the election and had been prevalent in his campaign. Apart from Iraq, I heard very little about development issues. That is probably because there is a healthy consensus across the House on the main issues of aid, trade and debt. That is not new. The issue is less politically charged than it used to be, but with that there is a danger that it will drop from the public consciousness. That must not be allowed to happen.

My party has made a welcome conversion and made a strong, clear and credible commitment to meeting a target of 0.7 per cent. of gross domestic product in aid. That is a genuine commitment and I pay tribute to those on the Front Bench who have achieved it. The Government have also taken huge strides in understanding the importance of free and fair trade. I pay tribute to both International Development Secretaries for the way in which they have fought that corner.

Debt relief is of course also a matter of consensus. I am delighted at the way in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer—although, it has to be said, not always the Prime Minister—pays tribute to people such as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe and Sir John Major for their work on debt relief. I pay tribute to the way in which the Chancellor has bravely driven forward the issue in international negotiations. That is not always easy, as Britain is often more enlightened on these issues than some of our fellow members of the G8.

The consensus has largely been driven forward by the campaigners, particularly the Churches, which have done so much to keep the matter up the agenda, and I pay tribute to them. However, it has also been driven occasionally by great international crises. The general response of the British to the tsunami was heartwarming and encouraging, but sadly, dealing with such issues can sometimes lead people to believe that the problems are not so deep-seated and that a one-off contribution at the time of a great crisis will address the fundamentals. That simply is not true.

The tsunami shocked the world and has had devastating long-term consequences for the people in the countries affected, but invisible tsunamis are sweeping Africa, in particular, every day. Although there is talk about the issue in places, the world does not seem to notice. The matter is not just about AIDS, which is sometimes talked about and which claims six lives a minute on the continent, but about malaria and tuberculosis, as well as malnutrition. A child in Africa dies every three seconds as a result of hunger or preventable disease. What a scandal that is. The annual death toll from poverty-related diseases is estimated to be about 18 million—a third of all human deaths. That means that, since the end of the cold war, some 270 million people have died unnecessarily.

I recently read a fascinating article by Thomas Pogg in a journal on ethics. He talked of our need to accept our own part in the continuing scandal of world poverty. He said:

"It is unthinkable to us that we are actively responsible for this catastrophe. If we were, then we, civilised and sophisticated denizens of the developed countries, would be guilty of the largest crime humanity ever committed, the death toll of which exceeds, every week, that of the recent Tsunami and, every three years, that of World War II, the concentration camps and gulags included."

He suggested that there are things that we could be doing to address global poverty that we are not doing. Perhaps that unthinkable truth is true after all. We all bear a share of the blame for this disaster.

Surely at least part of the problem is that, whereas the public are generous, public policy is not. Given that, as he and I agree—and there is widespread consensus across the House—current western agricultural dumping policies are both morally wrong and economically devastating to the developing countries, but have very strong, wealthy and articulate supporters in the international community, how in practical terms does my hon. Friend think that it will be possible to get the agreement that we need to scrap those subsidies to facilitate market access for poor countries and thereby to give them the chance that they need to compete and grow?

I entirely agree with the importance of the issue cited by my hon. Friend. India, for example, has a potentially very successful dairy sector and could export large quantities of skimmed milk to the Gulf particularly, but is unable to do so because of the subsidised milk that is dumped there by the European Union. The United States of America, which so often lectures us about free trade, has scandalously subsidised agricultural production that is carefully concealed behind various different schemes. Digging down and discovering the true extent of American subsidy of agriculture is very difficult. My hon. Friend is right that there are deeply entrenched interests that will take a lot of challenging. If there is one thing that we could do to improve the lot of the developing world, it is to get the EU and the United States of America to stop subsidising exports. That would transform the life chances of millions of people around the world. How would we do it? We must carry on battling; I am not aware of any short-term solution. I hope that the World Trade Organisation will be robust and will not accept bullying from the United States of America and the EU.

I particularly welcome our commitment as a party to an advocacy fund, because one problem is that countries in the developing world are often unable to make the case with sufficient power in international forums and institutions. They do not have the expertise to do so. An advocacy fund is one practical way of helping them to make that case in the WTO. Addressing that problem is possibly the single most important thing.

I am delighted that my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition has tabled early-day motion 14—the first in his name on the Order Paper—which addresses this matter in such detail. I am a little sorry that the Prime Minister did not make more of the matter in yesterday's debate in the Queen's Speech, because he has every reason to be proud of the report of the Commission for Africa. It is a truly remarkable document. The International Development Secretary and the Chancellor also have their names on that report. The report shows the detailed work that needs to be done in many areas of policy. It is a weighty document by any standards, but an important one, which I hope that the Government will drive forward in this Session.

Ministers on the Treasury Bench have a unique opportunity this year. There is the G8 summit in Scotland in July, the EU presidency in the second half of the year and the UN General Assembly special summit on millennium development goals in September. Those goals are slipping hopelessly out of sight; there is no prospect of that target being met by 2015. They have the Commission for Africa, which they must pursue relentlessly. They have in the public mind the 25th anniversary of Live Aid, as well as the powerful Make Poverty History campaign.

I do not associate myself with all of the remedies proposed by the Make Poverty History campaign. Sometimes there is too much hostility toward the private sector, globalisation and free trade, and a lack of understanding of the complex way in which organisations such as the World Bank have to operate. The debate on reform of the sugar regime, in which my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe and I have been privately engaged during this debate, is a classic example of the difficulties. We heard earlier about the likely impact on Caribbean countries, but there is a hard judgment to be made. Opening up the trade in sugar might lead to massive deforestation in Brazil without corresponding benefits to that country's population. That could be the consequence of inappropriate reform. It is not always easy to get it right. None the less, the anger of the Make Poverty History campaign is an unmitigated, unqualified force for good. If the campaign can keep the Government committed to implementation of the excellent work that they have done on the Commission for Africa, and if it can drive our determination to tackle the greatest scar on humanity at the beginning of the 21st century, it will have done a good job indeed.

Peter Luff has made a wide-ranging speech and I am tempted to follow suit. I agree with him about the campaign to end poverty and pay tribute to the Ministers responsible for the production of the Commission for Africa report. However, I came to the debate intending to concentrate on one country in particular. I make no apology for that, because I think that the country in question requires the continuing attention of the whole international community, and, not least, of this House. That country is Afghanistan, and I am delighted to see the new Minister with responsibility for Afghanistan, my hon. Friend Dr. Howells, in his place on the Treasury Bench.

Both the Queen's Speech and the speech made by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe opening today's debate set out the UK Government's continuing commitment to the Government of Afghanistan. Since the Bonn agreements of December 2001, we have been working with the Afghan people to secure their freedom, stability, human rights and democratic government. That has been a herculean task, not least because theirs is a country in which 1 million people died and almost as many were permanently disabled in a series of civil and in some cases internationally backed wars over more than two decades. Almost every major city has been destroyed. Fields were burned, ending all legitimate agriculture. Seven million people were forced to leave their homes and seek refuge elsewhere. State institutions collapsed and justice ceased to exist.

I commend to the House "A call for justice", a recent report by Afghanistan's independent human rights commission. It describes a national consultation on the lack of justice and the need for transitional justice arrangements in that country. The commission is led by a remarkable woman, Dr. Sima Samar. She and her team have shown enormous courage in travelling throughout the country, facing constant death threats, but engaging with ordinary people to seek their views on how they live now, as victims of all the atrocities that have occurred in their country.

The past three and a half years have brought some remarkable achievements that demonstrate the courage of the people of Afghanistan, such as those who formed the interim Government, and the commitment of the international community. They have achieved most of the major goals set out in the Bonn agreement, beginning with the emergency Loya Jirga and continuing with the constitutional Loya Jirga and the presidential elections. Reconstruction is under way—millions of children are back in school and millions of refugees are returning from Pakistan and Iran—but I would say that the challenges today outweigh the successes. There is progress in central Government in terms of both organisation and reach throughout the country, but there has been a signal lack of success in local government. There is no powerful mechanism to drive out corruption. Afghans have no trust in their police—with good reason. There is still no effective judicial system and violence is endemic, as can be seen in the outrages that have occurred in many cities in recent weeks and in the targeted attacks on international non-governmental organisations and on women.

I pay tribute to the work of the NGOs. Although they are usually headed by people from other countries, such as our own, they are almost always staffed by ordinary Afghans, who run constant risks in their daily lives delivering aid and services to the people of Afghanistan. Twenty-four NGO workers were killed last year, and already five have lost their lives this year. I also pay tribute to those who are standing up for organisation and transparency. Through various commissions on the civil service and the judicial system and in the police and army academies, many people are working to introduce the rule of law to Afghanistan.

There has been considerable success in the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of the huge number of men who carried arms during the decades of war. The UK has been particularly active in this field. No fewer than 50,000 people have successfully gone through the DDR process, but even that enormous achievement is outweighed by the fact that in Afghanistan today, an estimated 150,000 men continue to carry illegal arms and to operate illegally.

In saying these things, my intention is not to diminish the remarkable achievements since Bonn or to underestimate our Government's considerable commitment and their successes in working with Afghans in various aspects of the redevelopment of their country. I say these things because I believe that Afghanistan is now in a particularly dangerous phase. The country is in the run-up to the parliamentary elections, which, having been twice postponed, are now scheduled to take place on 18 September.

In addition there are constant calls, especially in the United States, to reduce the scale of the international forces and the American military commitment to Afghanistan. The Afghan people need all the security that they can get. President Karzai has frequently sought an increase both in the numbers of forces and in the international community's commitment. An even greater danger is the possibility that, having succeeded in holding elections, as I hope and believe will happen, the international community will decide that that is a good time to reduce its presence in the country. That will be entirely justified if it is what the Afghan Government want, but I suspect that they will not want that; I suspect that both the Afghan Parliament and the Afghan Government will continue to demand international support. I urge our Government to do all they can to ensure that there is no security vacuum, either before the elections or immediately afterwards.

Let me now talk about the status of women. After 11 September, we all became familiar with figures in blue burqas flitting across our television screens. The whole world's sympathy went out to Afghan women, who were the most oppressed under the pernicious Taliban regime, and the international community said that women's rights must be restored in Afghanistan. People like me who stood up to support Afghan women were criticised; it was suggested that we were western feminists who were trying to impose our views on others. I have not met every Afghan woman; I have not even met those who live in the villages of Afghanistan. My contact has been limited to meetings with women from various parts of the country held during two visits to Kabul and here in London. But all the women to whom I have spoken want the same most fundamental and basic human rights for themselves as we women in the west want for ourselves.

Afghan women want rights. In their case they have, and accept perfectly well, arranged marriages, but they want the right not to be forced into a marriage. They want the right not to be sold by a man to settle a dispute with another man. They want the right for their girl children to go to school. The international community has enabled them to achieve that, for already a third of the children now in school are girls. They also want the right to vote, which they have exercised in the presidential elections. Further, they want the right to be able to work.

In every way, we need to be mindful of what Afghan women are saying and demanding. We must understand that we in the international community have a duty to support what they want. As recently as last year, in the Berlin declaration—a declaration that was made with international participation, including, obviously, the Afghan Government—this was said:

"The Government"— meaning the Afghan Government—

"is committed to ensure that its policies and programs promote the participation of women in all sectors of the economy and society and in accordance with their rights in the Constitution. Concrete steps to be taken are to promote increased recruitment and guarantee equal opportunities to women in the Civil Service and to ensure that gender is mainstreamed within all sectors, programs and policies."

That would be a remarkable achievement for any Government, let alone a Government trying to form a democracy in the difficult circumstances that they face.

We need to contrast that commitment with the actual state of Afghan women today. To give hon. Members a snapshot, when the population statistics were being assembled in Afghanistan in recent times, we believed that we would find that as a result of the huge loss of men during the war, women would undoubtedly be more than 50 per cent. of the population; they are, of course, more than 50 per cent. of the populations of most developed countries. Yet what we now know is that of 22.2 million Afghans, the proportion of women is only 48.2 per cent. So the incredible haemorrhage of men due to war has been outmatched, or outpaced, by the haemorrhage of women. The life expectancy of men in Afghanistan is only 46; the life expectancy of women is 45. The causes of the deaths of these women—avoidable deaths and premature deaths—are poverty and pregnancy. Afghan women are among the very poorest in the whole world, and Afghanistan has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality. Seventy mothers and 700 children die every day in Afghanistan.

Peter Luff spoke of tsunamis in Africa. For Afghanistan, a country with a population of little more than a third of that of this country, that death rate is the equivalent of a tsunami every year. Few Governments in the world prioritise the needs of women unless women themselves demand their human rights, and that is what Afghan women have been doing since 11 September, and what they are continuing to do today. That has been under the leadership first, of Dr. Sima Samar, then Habiba Sorabi and now Massouda Jalal.

Massouda Jalal took it into her head—I do not know how, although I have had many conversations with her, because I have not asked, "How did you think of doing this because it is so utterly extraordinary?"—that she would stand up for Afghan women by contesting the presidential elections, and she was a candidate in those elections. She did better than some of the men. Obviously President Karzai was elected, and he had the generosity to make her his Minister of Women's Affairs.

Women participated in that election to the extent of 40 per cent. That was a remarkable achievement, and one that we all hope will continue into the parliamentary elections. Sixty-eight of the 249 seats that will comprise the lower house of the national assembly are reserved for women. How are those women going to get into those 68 seats? There will be few women in this place who will not appreciate that it is more difficult for women to achieve parliamentary office than it is for men. Often the task is more difficult in practical terms because women have family responsibilities and often do not have the same incomes or spending money as men to pursue a political career. How much more will that be true in Afghanistan.

I am glad to say that the international community is already addressing that issue. I pay tribute again to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, which is making great efforts, not only by taking overall responsibility for the elections in Afghanistan but by addressing the particular concerns and needs of women voters and raising voter involvement while stressing, importantly, the secrecy of the ballot box. It is also making great efforts to provide support for women, especially the security that they require if they are to be campaigners. The EU and the UK Government are participating in such programmes.

When I was last in Kabul in March, I was delighted to be involved, as I had been earlier, in the British Council programme, which is encouraging women, particularly in the most recent workshops that it organised in Kabul and the video conference that was held between Washington, London and Kabul. It engaged with about 12 or 15 women, who had decided already that they would put themselves forward as candidates for the election. I was delighted to engage with them too, and to hear something that I think is well worth quoting from Massouda Jalal. During the video conference, she said:

"Values that underpin democracy—such as equality—are deeply rooted in Islam. Islam has much to tell us about social justice—and it teaches about the rights and duties of women as well as of men."

There can be no doubt that Afghan women wish to participate in the elections. They want to get elected. They need all the help that we can give them. There are already more women registered than the 68 needed for the reserved seats. The Minister with responsibility for women has made clear the extent to which they will need support, not only in being able to campaign effectively and get elected, but after the election.

For those who are not aware of what has happened, I should say something about the election system. A single non-transferable vote system has been adopted—a system used in very few countries in the world. It is supposed to favour individuals but may in effect favour organised groupings dependent on warlords and the drugs trade. None the less, that is the system that has been adopted, and the one in which candidates will have to compete. The system is particularly disadvantageous to women. Without a party organisation to support them, and standing as individuals, they will be especially disadvantaged, not least in terms of finance, organisation and the ability to travel. If women are to be elected to the Parliament, they will need further help which men might be able to do without.

We all come to this place with the means of running offices. We can provide ourselves with accommodation. We can travel back to our constituencies. All that will be essential for Afghan parliamentarians if the Afghan Parliament is to work at all. It will be extremely difficult to make it work anyway. For women who do not have a rich husband, there will be no means of providing themselves with all those facilities and being able to be a proper representative of their people, unless the international community engages with this topic. The Afghan Government do not have the means to provide that support. Many of the women who are standing are widows, and these women face an even greater disadvantage.

In conclusion, there is a need for security during and after the election, and for support packages for Afghan Members of Parliament. We must try to ensure that they have the opportunity to make their democracy work. On 21 June there will be a donor conference in London. Again, I congratulate the Government on the commitment that they have demonstrated by organising that conference. I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will ensure that it is not gender-blind. It is extremely important that the donations, programmes and policies that receive support take account of women's needs. Election funding is critical. UNAMA says that the budget to run the elections is $50 million short, and one third of the money that is needed has not yet been raised.

There is therefore much to do before we can proceed further with reconstruction and the development of a fully fledged and legal economy. While I look forward to economic development, I hope that regard will be paid to the worth of women. Very often, the work that Afghan women do at home in the production of handicrafts and carpets, or as farmers in the fields, is not counted when policies are devised with the support of western advisers. I hope that our Ministers will deal with that—and we have just been joined by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for International Development, who is very much concerned with support for Afghanistan in general and women in particular.

Without justice for women there is no rule of law. Without the education and empowerment of women, families will always remain in poverty. Without the political participation of women there will be no real democracy in Afghanistan, and if it should fail again, that will be a failure of the whole international community.

I am grateful for the opportunity to make my maiden speech early in this Parliament, particularly in a debate where there have been many valuable contributions. I should like to single out the maiden speech by Sir Peter Soulsby, who mentioned De Montfort university. I worked for that university for four years and I was happy to have spent time in his constituency. It is a vibrant and interesting place to live in, and I am sure that he will enjoy representing it. In his maiden speech, David T.C. Davies spoke in no uncertain terms about the problems facing rural areas. As someone who represents a rural constituency, I look forward to many debates on those issues and hopefully the chance to address some of the problems.

My constituency of North Cornwall is the largest in Cornwall, and stretches from the border with England along the spectacular Atlantic coast to mid-Cornwall. Inland, it covers a varied landscape, from the china clay-mining belt across the wilderness of Bodmin moor to the Tamar. It includes the popular coastal resorts of Newquay, Padstow and Bude, the historic towns of Bodmin, Wadebridge, Camelford, Launceston, Stratton and St. Columb, and a vibrant network of village communities. Its people are independent-minded, with a strong sense of identity. Its economy is based primarily on smaller businesses and enterprise. Much employment in my constituency is concerned either directly or indirectly with the tourism industry, and Cornwall is rightly renowned as a wonderful place to visit and explore. It is also a wonderful place to live, and I had the privilege of growing up in my constituency. Agriculture and fishing remain important. Farmers are struggling against low prices for their produce, which are pushing many families out of farming. People involved in fishing face the difficulty of earning a living while fish stocks are protected.

I am pleased that there has been a growth in businesses that process food locally and manufacture high-quality goods that are sold across the country and abroad. Given my less than svelte figure, Members will not be surprised to learn that I am a devotee of that local delicacy, the Cornish pasty, and thus a supporter of the bid for protected geographical indication—PGI—status for the Cornish pasty, to ensure that only pasties produced in Cornwall to an authentic recipe can be called Cornish pasties. That would guarantee quality and secure many pasty-making jobs in my constituency.

As the new Member for North Cornwall, I am honoured to have taken over from such a respected parliamentarian as Paul Tyler. He is soon to be ennobled in another place, and I cannot think of anyone more deserving of such an honour. My first involvement in politics was at the age of 16, as a foot solider in Paul's campaign to win the North Cornwall seat in 1992. It is therefore particularly rewarding to become his successor. He was a fine constituency Member of Parliament, a tireless campaigner on many issues and, hon. Members have assured me, a popular Member in the House. I was delighted recently to make the acquaintance of Mr. John Pardoe, my predecessor in the constituency from 1966 to 1979. He, too, was a well loved representative of North Cornwall, and he still has many friends in the constituency who speak warmly of his dedication to duty.

As in all parts of Cornwall, many of my constituents, whether or not they were born locally, support the preservation of Cornish identity and culture. I was delighted to be able to take the Oath in Cornish. I have been denied the chance to be the first Member in modern times to use the language in the House, as that distinction is held by my hon. Friend Andrew George. In preparation for this speech, I read his maiden speech, in which he referred to Michael Joseph An Gof, the leader of the 1497 Cornish rebellion who was born in his constituency. The other leader of that march on London was Mr. Flamank, a prominent figure from my home town of Bodmin. The desire for recognition of the Cornish identity is as strong now as it ever has been, and I look forward to working with my hon. Friend and other hon. Friends to promote that cause. I listened with interest when the hon. Member for Monmouth spoke about his experience in the Welsh Assembly. I hope that, after the Queen's Speech, Parliament will have the opportunity to review the successes of the Welsh Assembly, and I look forward to a time when Cornwall has an assembly of its own.

In 2005, North Cornwall faces many challenges—some of them are perennial while others have come to the fore more recently—which I hope the Government will tackle soon. North Cornwall has more second homes than council houses, which distorts the housing market and devastates local communities, as shops, schools and other important amenities cannot survive in areas that are ghost villages for the greater part of the year. That exacerbates the effects of inward migration. Last year, the south-west had the biggest net inward migration into rural districts in the country. I note that the Government intend to reform support for housing costs, and I await their proposals with interest. Water charges are a huge burden on people in my constituency and, indeed, in the wider south-west. I hope to work with Members on both sides of the House to address that issue.

I am also concerned about the hard-won progress of the Cornish economy. The fact that new enterprises have been established and existing businesses have grown is due in no small part to the objective 1 programme. I hope that future opportunities to extend such investment will not be lost. We have heard contributions about the future of our relationship with the European Union, and I believe that the objective 1 programme has been a great success, particularly in Cornwall.

As we are discussing foreign affairs and defence, I should like to raise the future of the St. Mawgan airbase in my constituency. It is a major employer in the Newquay area. It is faced with an uncertain future and is to be—I believe the term is—mothballed, which unfortunately means that those employed at the base are concerned about its future, but it also means that we are not yet able to talk about what other uses there may be for the facility if it were to close at some point in the future. The base's future is also closely tied to the future of civilian Newquay airport. I hope to see greater security for both St. Mawgan and Newquay airport, and I have written to the Minister of State, Ministry of Defence and hope to have an early meeting with him on that subject.

Those then are the issues of great concern to my constituents and I look forward to seeing the detail of the Government Bills in this Parliament, in the hope that they may provide the opportunity to address at least some of them.

We have heard so far today three extremely capable and erudite maiden speeches. I can only look back to four years ago when I made mine and wish that I had had the same confidence, ability and general articulacy as Mr. Rogerson has. I am extremely impressed by his maiden speech and I have absolutely no doubt that he will bring to the House exactly the same capabilities and erudition as the man whom he has replaced. I would like to say welcome to him. His part of the country is absolutely beautiful. It is a long way from Newark, where I come from, but none the less we are extremely pleased to have this gentleman in the House.

I come now to the subject of the debate today, which is foreign affairs and defence. We have heard a couple of extremely trenchant views, particularly on affairs in Iraq, and I want to take issue with some of the points made by Sir Menzies Campbell. My right hon. and learned Friend Kenneth Clarke, another Nottinghamshire Member of Parliament, referred to there having been a number of false dawns in Iraq, a phrase he used extremely well.

It is worth remembering that after the successful completion of the election there, the level of violence fell quite considerably. It is also worth remembering that as soon as the new Government were appointed, the level of violence rose most horribly. Despite the fact that Iraq now no longer dominates the front pages of our newspapers, or is the subject of the leading items of our evening television news programmes, the fact remains that literally hundreds of people a week are dying inside Iraq, and that the insurgency has a new urgency, a new violence and a new direction. It is much more focused. Instead of United States soldiers dying in their dozens and United Kingdom soldiers dying in ones and twos, we are now seeing particular elements of both Sunni and Shi'a populations dying in swathes. For instance, in Tikrit over the past month, 30 barbers have been targeted and killed. They have committed the primary sin of shaving the beards of those who no longer wish to be fundamentalists, and they have paid the price.

I could go on, but there is little doubt that Iraq continues to be a running sore. Because our boys are not coming home in body bags in any large numbers, because peace does not seem to be quite so urgent an issue now as it was before the election, that does not mean that swathes of people are not dying, for a cause about which I have many, many doubts. Having said that, I make no doubt at all about the fact that I voted for the war. I voted for it with reservations; none the less I voted for it. Therefore I and every other Member of the House who voted for the war have a responsibility to see that the situation in which we now find ourselves is carried through with dignity and courage to a proper conclusion. That is why I worry very much not only about the comments made by the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife, but about Government defence policy. Sadly, there are no Defence Ministers on the Treasury Front Bench. I hope that those Ministers who are present will be kind enough to pass on my views.

It concerns me that we are talking about a timed withdrawal from Iraq. It concerns me that we are talking about following in the wake of the United States; that whatever policies they have and whatever political agenda they set, American timelines will dominate and ensure that British troops move according to their diktat, not to ours.

It concerns me that we do not seem to have grasped the essential element of what is going on in Iraq. Large areas of the country are now peaceful. Any Members who have visited the country will know that. One can drive for many hundreds of miles without being conscious of any violence whatever, apart perhaps from the wreckage left behind after the Iran-Iraq war some decades ago. But some provinces are every bit as bad as they were when the invasion first occurred, and in some areas they are worse.

In my experience, one reason why people continue to revolt and to give succour, aid and military assistance to Islamist Jihadists who are coming into the country is the fact that reconstruction, rebuilding and aid are not progressing fast enough. There is no indigenous security force to speak of, and the police force and the army have not been rebuilt successfully because so many of them are killed before they can be recruited or trained, and many of them are so terrified of the prospect of serving their country that the numbers of policemen and soldiers are simply inadequate.

It is clear to me that if we wish rebuilding in all its aspects to continue, from equality for women, through education, through to the security sector at the other end of the spectrum, we in the west must continue to ensure that there is some form of security present. Money that is being dedicated cannot be spent if the non-governmental organisations and other bodies on the ground who will carry out the reconstruction are simply too scared or incapable of doing so because of the danger. Sadly, that means that troops must be present. Sadly too, that means that Iraqi indigenous forces must be trained in such a way that they are numerous enough to look after themselves when they have to take the field.

Yes, of course Britain must be looking for a time when her troops, treasure and money can be drawn down; when our boys can be brought home. But I urge the Government to understand and to honour the words of the Minister—that we must wait until the job is done. That is why I am so puzzled about one particular element of our defence policy, which is now widely known, and that is that the majority of our forces in Iraq will shortly be withdrawn to bolster the garrison in Afghanistan. I draw particular attention to the speech made by Joan Ruddock, which was not only excellent, but touched closely and clearly on the problems in Afghanistan. The fact remains that we simply do not have enough troops to garrison Afghanistan and to continue garrisoning Iraq. Harsh decisions must be made by Ministers. This year we will see the withdrawal of the Polish forces, our close allies, in multinational division central. They will withdraw and that will leave a gap for us to cover. Our American allies expect us to cover that gap, but will we do so? Do we have enough troops to take on that commitment and to allow the Americans to start their drawdown in the north? Do we have the political bottle to operate outside the Basra area? Do we have the courage to make the right commitment to the Iraqi police and the Iraqi army to make sure that that nation can stand on its own two feet? I wonder.

I am particularly puzzled by the decision, which appears already to have been made, to move large numbers of our troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. If we had more troops, it might make sense; if we do not have the troops, it cannot be done. I am extremely interested to hear how the Minister intends magically to create extra resources in order to conduct both of those tasks simultaneously.

While we plan to deploy the headquarters of the Allied Command Europe Rapid Reaction Corps to Afghanistan and to maintain large numbers of troops in Iraq, we must examine the conditions of service for men serving in both of those theatres extremely carefully. To reduce the discussion from the strategic level to the tactical level, the Minister should be clear about the effect that the Trooper Williams case has had on every man who carries a rifle with live ammunition. In the Trooper Williams case, the judgment of a commanding officer—in that case, of the Royal Tank Regiment—under the Army Act 1992 was overturned in court, which means that no soldier can depend on the judgment and protection of officers who have seen soldiers in action and who understand the circumstances in which such difficulties have occurred. To overturn the judgment of a commanding officer is, at a stroke, to destroy Tommy Atkins' confidence in the officers who lead him.

How can the Government send troops on operations and make some of them redundant when those troops are facing this country's enemies? The Army is currently gapping 190 majors' posts, so why have the Government decided to make 180 such officers redundant? Why have some of those officers received that news when they are facing this nation's enemies? I could go on.

After regiments return from Iraq, they start operational training to deploy to either Afghanistan or Northern Ireland within four months. Many career courses inside the Army are now under-subscribed because non-commissioned officers and junior officers are seeking to spend more time with their families rather than qualifying themselves for further promotion. That situation is unprecedented in the Army, and the Ministers must examine it urgently.

When soldiers go to places such as Afghanistan and Iraq in order to re-establish democracy, they should not find that their own Government have disfranchised them from this country's general election. A considerable number of servicemen failed to vote in the past general election, and I have no doubt that the Minister will try to address that problem, because it is deeply demoralising for soldiers to find that they cannot influence their own Government.

If one has served in the countries that I have described, it is difficult to face the disbandment of one's own regiment on one's return to this country. There has been a lot of talk that the regimental system is unimportant—the previous Secretary of State for Defence said that his local county regiment was "looking forward" to being scrapped—but it is utter nonsense. The regimental system has served us well, and it continues to serve us well. It would be an error to tinker with it, and it would not make sense to turn it on its head.

A reduction in current numbers of infantryman while, yet again, the Army faces a recruitment crisis, does not make sense. If, at the behest of Ministers, the Ministry of Defence intends to move large numbers of combat soldiers from Iraq to Afghanistan, there will be no room to remove four combat battalions.

The next few months will be extremely challenging as the problem in Iraq unfolds and evolves. If the Government are serious about pursuing a noble cause in Iraq and supporting the Iraqi people in their move towards freedom and independence, our troops and armed forces must be properly supported, manned and resourced. The Government cannot give a bad deal to the men and women whom they choose to put their lives on the line. The situation must not be allowed to continue, and I shall be interested to hear the Minister's response.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me at this stage. To use the term employed by Mr. Mullin, you have released me from "extraordinary rendition", which many other Members who are waiting to make their maiden speeches have been experiencing.

Yesterday, Mr. Speaker gave some good, sound advice to those of us who are new Members to the House and told us that we should seek out older Members to find out what is required from us. In my case, it would be more accurate to say that some of the older members of my party—I think that they were more nervous about this speech than I was—sought me out to offer me some advice. My party leader, my hon. Friend Rev. Ian Paisley, told me that I must remember to do three things, the first of which was to say nice things about my constituency. That is not difficult, although I must say, having listened to some Members who have given their maiden speeches here today, that I may have some difficulty in emulating their inventiveness and descriptions. I did not realise that so many estate agents had been elected in the new intake.

The second thing that my hon. Friend told me to do was to say nice things about my predecessor. Having spent the past four and a half years trying to get rid of him, I thought that that might present some difficulty, but I will seek to do it. The third, and perhaps most surprising, thing that he told me was: "Don't be controversial." Some may find that surprising coming from him. Anybody who says that things in Northern Ireland have not changed should take note.

The one thing that is clear to me is that this speech is a balancing act. I suppose that it is like one's first night out with a girl: one wants to do enough to impress but does not want to do too much and then get in trouble with her father—in this case, the Deputy Speaker or the leader of the party.

I wish my predecessor, Roy Beggs, well for the future. I have known Roy for many years; of course, he was originally a member of our party. He had an interest in education, and when I was a student I worked on some education issues with him. Then he left the Democratic Unionist party and joined the Ulster Unionist party. At that stage, the Ulster Unionist party had 10 Members of Parliament and my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim was the sole DUP Member. The parliamentary fortunes of the two parties are now reversed, although I am not saying that there is any link between that and Mr. Beggs going to the Ulster Unionist party. At the last election, my party increased its representation in this House by 50 per cent. and there is now one solitary Member of the Ulster Unionist party sitting in this House—Lady Hermon. I suppose that one could almost call her "Unionist Sinn Fein"—herself alone. I believe that that is a result of a sea change in the politics in Northern Ireland and people's reaction to those who were prepared to trust terrorists, to place them in Government and give them the benefit of the doubt, and then find, of course, that they did not live up to their promises.

Roy lives across the valley from me, so he is my neighbour. In fact, he is only a stone's throw away—I pick them out of the garden every morning. He is also a member of Larne council. I look forward to working with him over the next few years and wish him well in his retirement.

I am proud to represent East Antrim, a constituency that stretches for 60 miles from Newtonabbey on the edge of north Belfast right to the middle of the glens of Antrim and Carnlough. It has within its boundaries the historic town of Carrickfergus, with its magnificently restored castle, a modern marina that sits beside the castle and the old town centre contained within the original town walls.

The other major town in the constituency is Larne, which is the major land gateway to Northern Ireland and sits at the entrance to the renowned Antrim coast and glens. The town has been through a difficult period but has turned the corner and is attracting substantial new retail investment. It contains many sites with great investment potential because of their proximity to the port and the lough shore. One of the major difficulties for the town's development is the slowness of the planning process in Northern Ireland. As a public representative, I will be happy to get involved in addressing the problem, because it has held up much economic development that could have created jobs and improved the towns and the environment of Northern Ireland.

The coast road beyond Larne hugs the bottom of the steep cliffs of the Antrim plateau. Around each headland is a bay, which usually has a picturesque village and a glen running upwards to the Antrim plateau. Tourists can enjoy walking holidays there and the hospitality in small rural pubs and high-class restaurants and hotels. It is an unspoilt area of Northern Ireland. The two picturesque villages of Glenarm and Carnlough have great development potential. The secret and the challenge for everyone who is involved in developing that part of the coast is maintaining the quality of the built and the natural heritage while releasing the tourist potential of the area.

The constituency has a connection with this House, because on 14 June 1690, King William III landed his troops at Carrickfergus. The aim was to defeat King James, who was attempting to use Ireland as a base from which to regain the throne of England and undo the gains and achievements of the Glorious Revolution, which had eroded the tyranny of the king and strengthened the powers of this House. The defeat of King James followed at the battle of the Boyne 17 days later. That event is still celebrated in Northern Ireland on 12 July and is one of the most colourful and largest pageants in Europe. It brings in vast amounts of revenue in tourist income to Northern Ireland. Despite attempts by republicans who wish culturally to cleanse many things from Northern Ireland, the 12 July celebrations are still a major event.

Our relationship with Europe is one of the huge foreign policy issues about which we have heard today and that will face Parliament and our country in this Session. I welcome the commitment to a referendum on the EU constitution. Those who fought to free the House from the tyranny of the monarch in the past would be bewildered by the enthusiasm that some Members have displayed in their desire to hand over a wide range of powers from this House to the tyranny of a commission in Europe or European bureaucrats. The party to which I belong will oppose ratifying the intrusion of Europe into the House. We shall seek to ensure that the terms of the referendum are designed to provide a fair test of public opinion both through the wording of the question and the arrangements for its conduct. I firmly believe that the people of this country will not permit their country to become a sub-part of a European superstate or allow this mother of Parliaments to be reduced to a county council with a consultative role.

Kenneth Clarke wondered whether we should have a referendum if the French turned down the European constitution in theirs. I did not understand his logic. He seemed to suggest that, if the French said no, we would not need a referendum, yet if the Dutch said no, we would need one. That sounded like double Dutch to me. He seemed to take an illogical view of the matter. I believe that the people of this country should have a say on whether we are absorbed into a European superstate. If the French put those who wish to enlarge the powers of Europe on to the canvas, it would be all the better to keep them down on the ground with another referendum. That is why, regardless of the outcome of the French referendum, there should also be one here.

I note that the Government have said that they will support the Iraqi Transitional Government. Having started the job in Iraq, it is important that we finish it. That means making a commitment in terms of troops, as Patrick Mercer said, and the continued involvement of our servicemen in that war zone. My party had reservations about the invasion of Iraq, but we supported the Government nevertheless. Hundreds of servicemen from Northern Ireland—from the Royal Irish Regiment and the Territorial Army—have served with distinction in Iraq, mainly in the Basra area. Although various Administrations in this House have treated us as though we were almost semi-detached from the rest of the United Kingdom, even to the point at which one Secretary of State publicly declared that the Government had no economic, strategic or political interest in Northern Ireland, the one thing that we can say about the citizens of Northern Ireland is that they have lived up to their obligations as citizens of the United Kingdom. They have given and served at times of national crisis.

Hundreds of members of the Royal Irish Regiment live in my constituency, and one of the blows that has hit them is that, while they were serving in Basra, the defence review recommended that the home battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment be disbanded, putting thousands of people on to the dole. There will always be a garrison in Northern Ireland—according to a previous Minister, it will contain about 5,500 men and women—and the cheapest option is to use locally based servicemen and women. The most efficient option is to use locally based members of the regiment who have a knowledge of the area. Given the way in which the services are stretched at the moment, it is nonsense to dispense with a locally based regiment and bring other regiments that are already overstretched into the Northern Ireland garrison. I hope that, when the defence review comes out in the autumn, there will be no mention of doing away with the home-based battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment, which has served honourably. Indeed, many of its members have been killed in the terrorist campaign.

Another important factor is that the Government not only look after the troops serving our country in foreign parts, but recognise their responsibility for those who suffer loss as a result of serving their country. A number of my constituents have suffered as a result of the cocktail of chemicals that they were given when they went out to fight in the Gulf war. Many of those people have been abandoned shamefully, and I hope that the Government will take on board the recommendations of the Lloyd inquiry and fulfil their obligations to the people who have suffered as a result of serving in previous conflicts in the middle east.

The defence of this country does not, of course, depend only on the actions of our armed forces. It also depends on the political decisions made by the Government. The Minister said this morning that one of the priorities would be tackling terrorism. It rings hollow with people in Northern Ireland when they hear that the Government intend to tackle international terrorism, while home-based terrorists are shown through the doors at Downing street to discuss the strategies that might be employed to get them into government in other parts of the United Kingdom. The Government need to take a consistent attitude towards terrorism. Home-based terrorism is as bad as international terrorism and those who have killed thousands in Northern Ireland should not be admitted to government in Northern Ireland.

I want devolution restored. Going from door to door in East Antrim, I have observed the frustration of people who feel that direct rule Ministers, however well intentioned they may be, do not reflect the views of people in Northern Ireland. There is, for instance, the question of our education system—an excellent education system based on merit and academic selection alone—which is now being attacked by a Government who, according to the Queen's Speech, will continue

"to improve quality and choice in the provision of schooling, and build on the progress already made to improve educational standards for all", but at the same time, against the wishes of the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland, are destroying the excellent schools that we have there and wish to introduce comprehensive education.

That policy was, of course, started by the Education Minister who had total, unaccountable powers in the old Northern Ireland Assembly: Martin McGuinness, the Minister who thought that the three Rs were reading, writing and Armalites, and who went on to try to destroy our education system. That policy has been followed through, although 62 per cent. of people in Northern Ireland expressed their opposition to it in the biggest consultation exercise to be carried out. Many other issues, such as the introduction of a double charge for both water and water rates, should be dealt with by a devolved Administration rather than by direct rule Ministers.

I hope that during this Parliament we shall see the restoration of devolution in Northern Ireland but, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim said yesterday, we will not accept it at any price. If the price of devolution for Northern Ireland is the inclusion of terrorists in government, that is not acceptable, and we will not move on. We cannot advance on that basis. If we did, the system would collapse with the first act of criminality or terrorism carried out by those who hang on to the coat-tails of Sinn Fein, to which they are inextricably linked.

I thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak, Madam Deputy Speaker. I trust that I shall have other opportunities to discuss issues of both local and national importance, and to reflect the views of the constituents who have overwhelmingly elected me to the House.

It is a great pleasure to follow Sammy Wilson, who has certainly enlivened our debate. He said at the outset that he had been given three bits of advice, and taking two out of three was not bad in the circumstances.

It was clear from some of the hon. Gentleman's remarks, particularly those about Europe, that we will not always agree with one another, but I do agree with what he said about the beauty of Antrim and his constituency. I was born in Dundonald, my family are from Donaghadee, and I still have many relatives in Northern Ireland. Last year I took my wife to Northern Ireland for her first visit. We experienced the delights of the Donaghadee lighthouse and toured around old haunts. It was a pleasure to take her to Antrim, although, after the rather dreich weather, she will have to hear the hon. Gentleman's tourism pitch before I can persuade her to go back.

It has been an interesting debate. Patrick Mercer, who is now not in his place, gave a careful analysis of the defence arena. I do not necessarily agree with everything that he said, as will become obvious, but like him I pay tribute to the quality of the speeches from those making their maiden contributions, including my hon. Friend Mr. Rogerson. Like him, I pay tribute to his predecessor, Paul Tyler. I am delighted that he will soon, we hope, be in another place to continue his contribution to Parliament. Sir Peter Soulsby made an early bid for a note in the Whips' notebook with some of his comments about the issues in the Government's programme about which he is concerned. Although I did not hear every part of it, as I nipped out of the Chamber briefly, the contribution by David T.C. Davies illustrated that he will be a strong contributor to the House. I wish him and the others every success.

This is clearly not my maiden speech but, at the election, I discovered myself fighting a substantially altered seat in the Scottish borders. Just as right hon. and hon. Members had got the hang of Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale, the boundary commission vandalised it all and I am now pleased to represent the seat of Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk, where I count among my important constituents Mr. Ancram. I do not know whether he counts his home near Jedburgh as his first or second home, but he knows the area well and will understand why I regard it as a great privilege to be able to represent all Sir Archy Kirkwood's old seat, while retaining part of my old seat around Selkirkshire.

May I, in the manner of maiden speeches, pay tribute to Sir Archy, who, like Paul Tyler, will, I hope, soon be in another place? He was well respected in the House as a fair and impressive Chairman of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions over the previous two Parliaments. Behind the scenes, he was an important character in the House of Commons Commission and in many other aspects of Westminster life. He regularly says that he has been in this institution as a man and boy, for over 30 years. I am delighted that he will have the opportunity to continue to contribute to parliamentary life in the House of Lords in due course, and it is a great honour to be able to succeed him in his old seat.

The hon. Member for Newark took issue with some of the comments by my right hon. and learned Friend Sir Menzies Campbell about the situation in Iraq. I listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman's analysis, much of which I share. He is in danger of oversimplifying the situation as we have put it forward. We believe that now is the appropriate moment to make it clear what the exit strategy is to be in Iraq. We believe that the end of the United Nations authority under the existing resolution at the end of this year offers a clear target which we can aim for to begin a phased withdrawal from Iraq, but we accept that there are key issues to do with security there. As my right hon. and learned Friend made clear, we accept that there are severe difficulties in the provision of services in Iraq. The way people live day to day in that country is a terrible way to exist. Clearly, we have an ongoing responsibility to the country to ensure that those services and, above all, the security situation improve but, beyond all else, we must stop being part of the problem. We have not provided the solution that was expected or that was claimed would be provided. We must make it clear that we will do our bit to ensure that we develop that solution.

I heard the hon. Gentleman say that his policy, or that of his party, was to have a target of a phased withdrawal beginning at Christmas this year. Listening to his right hon. and learned Friend Sir Menzies Campbell earlier, I understood him to say "a phased withdrawal by" Christmas of 2005. One has an end date; the one that the hon. Gentleman has just announced could be as long as a piece of string. Perhaps he would clarify.

I have set out already, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman was listening very carefully, the fact that there are some key factors in determining what would be the appropriate moment, but we think that unless we make it clear that we support and will deliver a phased withdrawal of our troops, the continued insurgency and the growth in the strength of opposition to the coalition forces will get worse.

In the past few years we have witnessed a rapidly changing world, from a situation where the cold war dominated our military thinking to a situation that changed out of all recognition after the tragedy of 9/11. But in that period between the end of the cold war and 9/11 we had the terrible situation in Rwanda, and nearby, on our own European doorstep, in Bosnia. Our previous assumptions about the security situation in the world were turned on their head and the precariousness of our world security was illustrated in so many different ways.

Joan Ruddock highlighted the ongoing difficulties in Afghanistan. In the past few weeks we have seen the focus shift to Uzbekistan, and we all now live in an era of greater uncertainty perhaps than at any stage in the past, complicated by the existence and growth of international terrorism and an increasing realisation that the number of failed states in the world is growing, with instability arising owing to scarce natural resources and the poverty from which many countries cannot escape.

Above all else, we are rightly concerned about the risks of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In recent years there has been a flurry of different responses from the Government reflecting those rapidly changing circumstances, with the strategic defence review, the new chapter, and the White Paper in December 2003, accompanied as it was by the Foreign Office's own White Paper, which highlighted among other things the need to ensure that the United Kingdom was safer from global terrorism and WMD, that we focused on an international system based on the rule of law, and that we created an effective European Union in a secure neighbourhood. The ongoing difficulties in the Balkans, in particular, emphasised the importance of that. We have been broadly supportive of that approach and shared the analysis, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Fife said earlier.

We have strong defence and armed forces in this country. That is partly as a legacy of our role in the world over the last century, and also in support of our important position at the United Nations, which places upon us special responsibilities. Collective security and the proper functioning of a system of international law are all vital to us and it is important that Britain plays its part in that, not least because British interests across the globe are substantial.

The current broad position of the defence forces in this country has always allowed us to be in a position to carry out expeditionary work across the world, and we support that, while recognising that stabilisation and a response to emergencies are growing features of demands on our armed forces. That requires a certain level of public expenditure and we broadly support the level committed to defence at present, but we do recognise that there is an ongoing need for reform and modernisation. We do, however, continue to question the reduction in the number of battalions in the Army and the misjudged abolition of the regiments, not least in Scotland. Nobody doubts the wisdom of strengthening the support and logistics for the Army or of reforming the arms plot, but we still question whether this is the time to be cutting back on the front line battalions, on the basis of big assumptions about the situation in Northern Ireland and the scale of our ongoing demands in Iraq. When we add to the mixture the extra demands placed on our armed forces for homeland security, that is surely something the Government should be rethinking.

As a plea for the regiments, I wish to make a local point to the Minister of State, Ministry of Defence. If we cannot persuade him to rethink his proposals, will he at least look again at the proposed name of the King's Own Scottish Borderers and Royal Scots Battalion within the new Royal Scottish Regiment? The proposed name has absolutely no support in the south of Scotland that I can find and has sought to keep both historic names without, I suspect, finding a solution that is acceptable to the Army or to those who support the traditions and regiments in localities such as those that I represent.

The United Kingdom rarely acts alone. A core assumption runs through defence White Papers and Government foreign policy that we will operate in coalitions informally or through alliances. We remain strong supporters of NATO. We also wish to see the development of the European security and defence policy. We do not believe that those are mutually contradictory or inconsistent; they ought to be complementary. We are encouraged to see the way in which European Union forces have begun to operate together in places such as Macedonia. We should not be choosing between those alliances but working with both.

One of this afternoon's themes has been the risk of proliferation. Jeremy Corbyn made a heartfelt plea, as he did during the previous Parliament, about the need to focus attention on the review conference for the non-proliferation treaty. This is a serious time for us, with concerns about the existence of nuclear weapons in India, Pakistan, Israel and elsewhere and with the threat that other countries, such as North Korea and Iran, might obtain the technology to enable them to create nuclear weapons.

We have a major responsibility at that conference, and as minds are concentrated on the difficulties in Iran and North Korea, we hope that all the existing nuclear powers will take the opportunity to lower the tension about the need for nuclear weapons, as some countries see it, and ensure that we make strong strides towards global disarmament. Without that, we run the risk of uncontrolled proliferation occurring.

We have supported the Government's efforts so far. I pay tribute to them for the disarmament that they have undertaken in recent years. We remain committed to a minimum United Kingdom nuclear deterrent, but we recognise that, as Ministers flagged up before the election, one of the big issues that we will face in this Parliament is the beginning of the debate about what might succeed the existing Trident missile system.

We are extremely well served by the men and women who make up our armed forces in this country. As we debate these matters in the House and take decisions about what should happen in Britain's name and about committing the armed forces to conflict, as we did on Iraq, we must never lose sight of their bravery and professionalism and the debt that we owe them. Hon. Members on both sides of the House can agree that we are well served by them, and that it is important that we continue to have strong armed forces in this country.

We have had a very good debate this afternoon. We have heard four excellent maiden speeches so far, including those by the hon. Members for Leicester, South (Sir Peter Soulsby) and for North Cornwall (Mr. Rogerson) and by my hon. Friend David T.C. Davies.

We then heard an excellent maiden speech by Sammy Wilson, who represents one of the most beautiful parts of these islands. I am sure that he will be an excellent MP for his constituency, as he demonstrated this afternoon. However, I want to say a word about the success of his party in the general election. The success of the Democratic Unionist party, which is very much the largest party in Northern Ireland, places a great responsibility on its shoulders to deal with the democratic deficit in Northern Ireland. Members on both sides agree with it that those who fail to renounce criminality should not be part of the process. That view is felt as much south of the border in Ireland as it is north of the border.

I am sorry that the leader of the DUP is not in his place, but I want to make a plea. For all the time that I have been in the House I have been a member, in various guises, of the British-Irish Interparliamentary Body, which, sadly, has not had much representation from Northern Ireland in the past. It meets later this year for the first time in Northern Ireland—in Belfast, in November—and I hope that for the first time, we will include members of the DUP in the UK delegation to that body, which has taken forward much of the peace process in the past.

This debate is very much about foreign affairs and defence, and I want to talk about a subject that was little raised nationally in the general election. However, at one or two hustings meetings that took place in my constituency, the whole question of Europe, the referendum and the European constitutional treaty was certainly an issue. It is ironic that my UK Independence party opponent in the election described me on many occasions as fabulously pro-European. That was usually after I had explained to him why I opposed to the constitution. However, the new Minister for Europe in his opening speech would have described me as anti-European, because he lumped together anybody who opposed the constitution as anti-European. I do not know whether he included in that definition the 54 per cent of the French population who look as if they are about to reject the European constitution. To describe them as anti-European may be stretching it a little.

Whether or not I am simultaneously fabulously pro-European and anti-European, I will restate what I have said to the House on a number of occasions. I have been a great supporter of Britain's membership of the European Union ever since we joined 30 years ago, but I am seriously concerned that in that time, we have failed to take the people with us on the journey of the EU's development and evolution. We have now reached the stage at which most people in this country have little understanding of, and little confidence in, what is being done in their name in the European Union.

Euroscepticism is not unique to Britain. It exists throughout Europe, and the democratic deficit with regard to the EU seems to be worse in a number of other states where people feel that things are inevitable and that they can do nothing about them. However, the French and the Dutch have yet to speak in their referendums later this month. They will have an opportunity to send a message to the political elites of Europe, saying that the people would like an explanation of what is going on and what has been done in their names—in the past 30 years in this country, and for somewhat longer in a number of other member states.

For all the Minister for Europe's spin on the treaty, it does not provide the answer. When I read the Laeken declaration in 2001, I thought that we were beginning to go in the right direction and posing some of the right questions. However, when I read the English language version of the treaty—all 511 pages of it—I remembered one phrase from the Laeken declaration:

"Simplification of the Union's instruments".

There is no simplification in the constitution, and it contains so much detail that it can hardly be described as a constitution, but as a management textbook. Even the explanatory commentary that goes with it runs to 500 pages. If any of our citizens would like to buy the documents from The Stationery Office, the constitution itself costs £45 and the explanatory memorandum another £45. However, I somehow doubt whether they would be any the wiser after reading both documents.

The constitution is nowhere near being a simplifying treaty. It contains the minutiae of management detail that one would expect of those responsible for looking after our interests to come up with as their modus operandi, but it is not something to be put before the people in a referendum. Much of what is in the document could soon be out of date. What we now need is what the Laeken declaration referred to as

"the creation of European institutions that are closer to their citizens".

The constitutional treaty does create the provision for the Council of Ministers to make decisions in public. That would go some way towards making the institution more transparent and accountable. However, if one reads the documents and listens to those who understand the matter, one finds that decisions will be taken and votes will be held in public, but that the general proceedings of the Council will not be held in public. What is the point of that? It is rather like putting cameras in our Division Lobbies, but taking them out of the Chamber so that the public are not informed about the debate that goes on before a vote.

Most of our citizens support the broad aims of the Union, but they do not always see the connection between those goals and the everyday actions of the Union's institutions. We all know that Europe has changed and is changing. With the 10 new countries that joined last year, it now has 25 member states. Bulgaria and Romania are on track to become members. I hope that Croatia and Turkey will be there in the not too distant future. The enlarged Europe needs to be more effective and democratic, so we need a simple and transparent constitutional treaty, which is what the document that we shall consider was supposed to be.

An effective European Union is in Britain's interests. It is in our national interest to be a member of that Union because we have so many aims in common with other countries. However, we need a new treaty that spells out in black and white the powers of the various parties in the Union. It should state explicitly that the EU has only the powers that member states choose to grant it. It should clarify what the EU institutions can and cannot do.

The constitution is unacceptable, but that does not mean that I have become—in the words of the Minister for Europe—anti-European, that I do not want the European Union to succeed, or that I want us to be relegated to the position of Norway and Switzerland, with an expensive, subservient and passive relationship with the European Union. That is not an option for the British people. We need a tidying-up and simplifying treaty—but that is not what we have.

I can happily say that the leaders of Europe should face rejection in the forthcoming referendum, and the referendums in France and the Netherlands, and that they should go back and reconsider the constitutional treaty. I would support a treaty that made the EU more open and accountable. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend David Heathcoat-Amory and Ms Stuart for their work on the Convention and their subsequent comments in the House and elsewhere. Neither of them favours the document and, despite their efforts, we have not got the treaty that we need. As we move towards a referendum on ratifying it, we should be clear that conveying a message to the leaders of Europe that the document is unacceptable in no way means that we are anti-European or that we do not want the European Union to succeed. I stress that we want it to succeed, and I certainly want it to succeed.

There is a danger of overreacting to the undoubted success of the UK Independence party in last year's European elections and its participation in the no campaign, but we have to make it clear in opposing this constitutional treaty that withdrawal is not an option, and that rejection of the treaty does not imply any such action.

The anti-Europeans often tout the examples of Norway or Switzerland as attractive alternatives. We must make it clear in the debate on the constitution that those alternatives are not acceptable to the British people. We must reject such a fantasy. To gain full access to the single market, Norway has to implement all the EU regulations that we have to implement, but with no say in the way in which those regulations are set. In fact, the Norwegians often refer to their country as a "fax" democracy because the laws by which they live arrive from Brussels on a fax machine. Switzerland is bound by the same laws, as are Iceland and Lichtenstein.

Recent figures from the European Commission, however, show that Norway has a better record of implementing EU regulations than we do. Indeed, it has a better record than 14 other member states of the Union. It has failed to implement only 0.7 per cent. of those EU regulations. The UK's failure rate is about 1.5 per cent. When it comes to gaining access to the single market—the most important aspect of the European Union—Norway must comply with the rules and regulations laid down in Brussels. So the option suggested by the UK Independence party for this country, whereby we would step back and adopt the same status as Norway or Switzerland, is totally unacceptable.

Do not let us forget also that both Norway and Switzerland must contribute to the EU budget. There is a myth about that as well. The Norwegians are committed to paying some €1.1 billion over the next five years. Last year, Switzerland agreed to pay €650 million over the same period. So that, too, is not an option.

I hope that it will become clear, as we approach the referendum that we are likely to get next year, that what the British people need and want, and what the peoples of Europe want, is a simplifying, tidying-up treaty—a short document that merely lays down the competences and makes the institutions and processes of the European Union both transparent and accountable. The constitution that the Government have negotiated, which will come before us and the British people, does not do that. It should be rejected by the people in a referendum. We should renegotiate it to bring about something much more in line with the Laeken declaration.

I am delighted to participate in the debate, and I have heard some excellent speeches. In particular, my hon. Friend David T.C. Davies made an admirable maiden speech.

We heard much in the Queen's Speech about the forthcoming presidency of the EU. As I am sure many hon. Members know, I take a great interest in the region of the Balkans. I want to ensure that the Government realise that that part of the world must be taken seriously in the coming months and during the presidency.

Let me start by considering the position with regard to Serbia. I might find myself a little lonely in this Parliament, having lost a good ally in the former Member for Halifax, Mrs. Alice Mahon. Although we were diametrically opposed on many issues, we both found ourselves speaking up for that part of the world. I ask any new Members who are interested to put their applications on a postcard to me. We are always keen to have new members of the all-party groups on those areas.

The problem with Serbia is that it has largely been ignored. After the bombing, we left the area and hoped that it would get better on its own. Unfortunately, that does not happen unless the EU puts action in place of words. There are many things that we can do, but the most important is to help the economy. The economy in Serbia is in a pretty poor state. Bad economic conditions inevitably lead to problems with dissatisfied populations. Over the past few years we have seen increasing radicalism and national identities coming to the fore, not necessarily in the most positive way. Unemployment is very high, too.

Ministers and Conservative spokesmen on international development have talked a lot about helping other countries, mainly with regard to Africa and Asia—but, incredibly, there are very serious problems in our own continent of Europe. In Serbia and elsewhere in the region, there are refugee camps for internally displaced people, which I have visited. That fact has been largely forgotten. We should bear in mind the fact that in years to come, it will be the EU that helps to solve the problems and heal the scars in that area—but that is some way off.

There are defence experts present who will probably be able to enlighten me about the current situation in Kosovo in their winding-up speeches, but from what I understand, it is far from good. A great deal of effort has been made, but it seems that there is an independent state—whether run by the EU or by NATO. It is because the solution to the problem is so difficult to find that nobody really wants to address the matter. I cannot say that I blame the Government; it is a huge problem—but it must be solved.

Some of us said at the time of the intervention that the current situation was inevitable. Everybody recognised at the time that what was done in Kosovo and Serbia—Yugoslavia, as it then was—was contrary to international law, but nobody kicked up too much of a fuss. In the light of the latter deployment in Iraq, I find it ironic that the Liberal Democrats, who have been keen on saying how they opposed war in Iraq—and they certainly did—were at the forefront of wanting to bomb the hell out of Serbia.

To characterise our position as saying that we wanted to bomb the hell out of Serbia is a grave injustice. There was an immediate humanitarian crisis in Kosovo. There is an emerging doctrine of international law that intervention may be justified in such circumstances. The Prime Minister expressed that in his Chicago speech, which the hon. Gentleman might find rewarding to read. That seems to us a perfectly legitimate basis on which to support Government action. They were not engaged in regime change. That is the difference between Kosovo and Iraq.

I bow to the right hon. and learned Gentleman's wisdom, but it has to be said that the precedent was set to allow action that was illegal under international law. He talks about humanitarian reasons for the action in Kosovo, but the Government could advance the same reasons for their action in Iraq, even though we were told that it was about weapons of mass destruction. It was most unfortunate that the action in Kosovo did not attract so much protest. I say that the Liberal Democrats were at the forefront of those calling for that action because, having sat here during the debates in which concerns were voiced by Labour and Conservative Members, I cannot recall hearing any Liberal Democrat speak against it. If I am wrong, I shall stand corrected, but I do not recall those of us who wanted to point out some of the things that were going on receiving any support from the Liberal Democrats.

Another lesson should have been learned from Kosovo. The Liberal Democrats talk about exit strategies, but I do not think that anybody had any idea about an exit strategy from Kosovo, or that anyone thought about the post-war reconstruction. We did not learn that lesson, and we have lived to rue it.

A slightly happier part of the region is Macedonia. My hon. Friend Mr. Walter talked about countries that hope to join the EU. Often when that subject is discussed Macedonia is not mentioned, yet Macedonia is making good progress toward joining the EU and has lots of things going for it. I believe that the Government's position is that they look forward to accepting Macedonia into the EU when it has met all the criteria. Macedonia has done a lot to solve some of its internal problems—like many Balkan countries, it has a diverse population—and I consider it a model of what can be achieved.

A positive step that the Government could take during their presidency of the EU—one that would enable them to show a bit of leadership—would be to try to ensure that the EU recognises Macedonia as the name of the country. It might surprise some hon. Members to learn that although we talk happily about Macedonia, officially it has to be referred to as "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia". We know why that is: one of our fellow EU states—Greece—dislikes the idea of the country being called Macedonia. However, it is fair to say that Greece would not like to be referred to as "the former Ottoman domain of Greece", any more than my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth would like Wales to be referred to as "the former English colony of Wales". In today's EU, when Yugoslavia no longer exists, to call a country "a former Yugoslav Republic" is pretty demeaning.

In addition, during our EU presidency the Government should examine the position on visas. I find it incredible that Macedonian diplomats have to apply for visas to enter this country. If we cannot even acknowledge that Macedonia's diplomats should be able to come here without a visa, as do the diplomats of almost every other EU country, we are not sending the Macedonian people the right message about our willingness to welcome their country as a member of the European Union.

There are plenty of defence experts in the House, so I shall not dwell on the subject except to say that I believe that, sadly, the RAF will leave Uxbridge during the course of this Parliament. It has been there for nearly a century. When I first came to the House eight years ago I thought that that was a fight that I would have immediately, but it has taken eight years almost to come to fruition. I am sad, and all I can do at this stage is to pay tribute to the hundreds and thousands of servicemen and women who passed through RAF Uxbridge. The station has a place in our history as a centre from which the battle of Britain was conducted.

I had set my heart on speaking on environment matters tomorrow, but being a retailer by trade, if I see an opening in the market—I have not seen a great deal of support from Labour Members coming into the Chamber to say what a wonderful set of proposals have been made in the Queen's Speech—I am inclined to take it, and I thought that I might take the opportunity of speaking today. With only the tenuous link that this country's defence has often relied upon the fact that it is an island, I shall refer to marine law.

Over the past four years, despite the landlocked nature of Uxbridge, I have often found myself raising in this place the issue of the protection of the marine environment. Having introduced a private member's Bill on marine wildlife conservation in 2001, I was delighted to see the inclusion of a draft marine Bill—it was not mentioned in the Queen's Speech but it was included in the stuff that comes out afterwards that sets out all the exciting things that the Government are up to, and it will feature in the new legislative programme.

The likely provisions seem to be pretty good. I understand that the proposed legislation will streamline the planning system and the managing of activities in coastal marine waters. It will give new powers to protect important marine areas, species and habitats. It will improve the UK's capacity to plan and handle growth in offshore developments. That is all well and good. I am a little disappointed that the proposed legislation was not highlighted and flagged up more by the Government, because I think that all three major parties have made a commitment to such a Bill. If the Government are to bring it forward, I will say well done.

I mentioned better marine management during the debate on the 2003 Queen's Speech, and I said that waiting for it was rather like waiting for Godot. In a way we are still waiting, because the Bill will only be a draft. However, I am quite a fan of draft Bills because I think that they result in better legislation, and I hope that that approach is not an excuse to kick proposed legislation into the long grass—or perhaps seaweed. This much needed legislation should pass through the House as quickly as possible.

I am sure that right hon. and hon. Members will be aware that not long before the end of the previous Parliament there was a large lobby from the Wildlife and Countryside Link in support of the proposed legislation. Many Members were visited by their constituents. I can see a glazed expression on the eyes of the occupants of the Treasury Bench, because this is not their area. That is fair. I am sure that there will be opportunities to raise the matter on other occasions, and it would be unfair of me to go on at length. If Ministers want to contact me later, I could enlighten them on some of the finer points of the legislation that I would like to see on the statute book. I hope that the Government will take me seriously, and I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your patience in allowing me to raise those matters.

I am proud to have been elected to serve as the Member for Halifax, which is my home town where I was born and educated. I am proud also to be part of an historic third term of a Labour Government.

I pay tribute to my predecessor, Alice Mahon, who served Halifax as its MP for 18 years. That is an excellent example. I am sure that the House will agree that it is a tough act to follow. Alice was respected and highly regarded not just in Halifax but throughout the country and abroad. She was an extremely hard-working MP, and her life revolved around her commitment to our town. She played a major role in debates on Iraq.

During my campaign it was heartening to undertake an audit of the many achievements of Alice and the Labour Government since 1997. Our streets are safer and crime is down. There are now 66 more police officers fighting crime in Halifax and 237 more officers across west Yorkshire than in 1997. Unemployment is down by 53 per cent., and nearly 3,000 people have gained jobs, thanks to the new deal. In my constituency, the winter fuel allowance has warmed the homes of nearly 18,000 pensioners since February 2004. We are helping all pensioners to enjoy a decent and secure retirement. More than 5,000 pensioner households in Halifax now benefit from the pension credit, with a local award of nearly £39 a week.

In 1997, there was no guaranteed child care for parents. Now, 4,500 three and four-year-olds have received free part-time nursery education places from Calderdale local education authority. We have a new hospital that benefits Calderdale residents. As a non-executive director of the hospital trust for more than five years, I have had the pleasure of working with the talented staff of that hospital. There has been massive investment in new schools and others have been refurbished. There are more teachers, nurses and doctors, so we have a record to be proud of. As a councillor of many years' standing, I know that political initiatives aimed at alleviating poverty have transformed the lives of many of my constituents, both young and old. Such programmes include the Sure Start initiatives in north and west central Halifax.

Hard-working families have been helped enormously by tax credits. The Government's recognition that our streets need to be safer led to investment in street wardens and community support officers. Working closely with the police, they have helped to achieve safer, stronger communities. The press is often maligned with some justification, but I pay tribute to my local paper, the Halifax Evening Courier, which campaigned against binge drinking and yob culture long before it was fashionable to do so. During the campaign, I showed visiting Ministers, including Estelle Morris and my hon. Friend Caroline Flint, some of Halifax's hidden treasures. We visited the historic Shibden hall, which has been restored to its former glory with a Government grant. I put the Government on notice that I will lobby hard for a similar investment for the Piece Hall, a unique building in Halifax that truly deserves investment. That heritage attracts many tourists to Halifax and, apart from Liverpool, we have more listed buildings than any other area outside London. Clearly, one small local authority cannot find the resources to restore all those buildings to their former glory. We need help, and as the MP for Halifax, I will be pushing to receive it. We have a unique and wonderful department store in Halifax, which is the product of the vision of Roger and Sue Harvey, residents of the town.

In the campaign, transport, especially buses, was raised regularly with me on the doorstep. Since the deregulation of the buses, hilltops and isolated communities have often found themselves without any public transport. In the Gracious Speech there was a commitment to give more power to local government, and I hope that that includes public transport. As a committed trade unionist and Co-operative party member, I am pleased that my Government agreed not to implement the review of public sector pensions. Public sector workers often work for less money than people in the private sector simply because they believe that their pensions will be secure. To remove that incentive would further undermine the morale of part of the work force that has come in for unacceptable assault from those on the Opposition Front Benches.

I would also like to pay tribute to Kris Hopkins, the Conservative candidate for Halifax, who fought a good campaign on issues, not on personalities.

In conclusion, Madam Deputy Speaker, and with your permission, I cannot let this maiden speech pass without referring to the growing threat of the extreme right to our way of life. In my constituency, the British National party polled around 2,000 votes—5 per cent. of the total. In towns and cities across the north of England the menace is real and it is growing.

The Minister for Work, my right hon. Friend Margaret Hodge, wrote a most illuminating article for The Observer on 8 May, and I agree entirely with what she had to say. If Labour does not listen to its heartland voters it will lose them. If people feel neglected or ignored, or that the pace of change is too slow for them, they will turn elsewhere, attracted to the simplistic so-called policies of the hard right. Or they will simply go nowhere and drop out of the democratic process altogether.

On the steps of Downing street the day after the election, the Prime Minister said that he had listened. I do hope so, because we have also talked a lot about connecting with people and now we must act. As my right hon. Friend said in her article, strong, bold leadership is required and multiracial communities are here to stay, and thank goodness for that. People turn to extremists, not just out of racism, but also out of fear and frustration: frustration with us, the politicians. That is a challenge, if I may say so, for all who serve in this House. It is a challenge that I accept with honour and not a little humility.

It is a great pleasure to follow Mrs. Riordan in what was an excellent maiden speech. She has certainly shown that she knows her constituency very well. I thank her for her generous remarks about Kris Hopkins, her Conservative opponent, whom I visited during the course of the campaign, when he showed me some splendid parts of her constituency. I also thought that it was politically astute of her in her maiden speech to praise her local newspaper. I am sure that that is a lesson that we can all learn from.

We have had a splendid crop of maiden speeches today. They have been some of the best that I have heard for a long time. Sir Peter Soulsby was fluent and showed that he is a good salesman for his constituency, and I am sure that we will hear much more from him on that. Mr. Rogerson told us about the importance of ensuring that Cornish pasties are Cornish. I once visited a Cornish pasty factory in a neighbouring constituency, although I rather gave up when I was asked to taste an Indian curry Cornish pasty, an extension of pasties that I had not come across before. I just say gently to the hon. Gentleman—Mr. Moore might like to pass this on to him—that although he mentioned his desire to see a Cornish assembly I think his party's policy was one of regionalisation, and the region in which Cornwall would have been was the same region as my constituency at the other end would have been in, namely the south-west. So unless he departs from party policy, I fear that his aspiration is unlikely to be met.

I listened with some nostalgia to the maiden speech of Sammy Wilson. His robust attitude brought back some happy memories of my four years in the Northern Ireland Office. He was sitting next to his leader, Rev. Ian Paisley, who used to abjure me, saying "Minister, you are digging yourself a Sadducee's grave." When I asked him what a Sadducee's grave was, he said "'Tis a grave from which there is no resurrection." So I know that the hon. Member for South Antrim had to be careful in what he said today.

I should like to pay special tribute to the maiden speech of my hon. Friend David T.C. Davies. It was an excellent speech: one of the best that I have heard. It had everything in it. He paid tribute, as I think both the Secretary of State and I would like to do, to the work done by the Territorial Army. Given its problems, it has served the country remarkably well in what it has been asked to do. He also showed a degree of passion which will serve him well in the future, and I look forward to many more contributions from him.

The debate has been wide-ranging. I did not expect to have this much time in which to speak. I do not know about the Secretary of State, but I do not intend to divide the time between now and 7 o'clock—I shall leave him the majority, if he wants it.

My right hon. and learned Friend Kenneth Clarke gave us his traditional tour d'horizon of the political scene. When, in his excellent critique of the Government's present standing, he called the Prime Minister "irretrievably damaged" and said that the Government are "weakened", Government Members did not respond with a single sign or sound of dissention. Perhaps his analysis is absolutely right.

I listened to Mr. Mullin with great attention. I am sorry that he is no longer a Front Bencher, because he did a great job at the Foreign Office. I know that he is disappointed, and I share his disappointment. He said that he is back in his natural habitat, but I think that his natural habitat is dealing with Africa, and I am sorry that I will not hear him discuss Africa from the Front Bench again. He said that in the hour in which he was the only elected Member of Parliament in this country—the count is conducted very quickly in Sunderland, South—he decided to form his own Government. He said that he had picked his Cabinet, but he refused to tell us their names—at some point, I hope that he succumbs to temptation and lets us know who was in his Cabinet.

My hon. Friend Peter Luff made a remarkable speech. He discussed India, and hon. Members should pay tribute to his work not only creating closer relations with our friends in India, but pointing out that we do not make enough of our opportunities in India. I share his desire to see that situation being remedied.

Once again, my hon. Friend Patrick Mercer gave us a clear analysis of the situation in Iraq, and I always listen to his remarks with a great deal of care and attention. He has a deep insight into the situation in Iraq, and his analysis was spot on.

Mr. Moore represents some wonderful parts of the Scottish borders. I say that not only because I have a house in the area, but because 31 years ago I represented Berwickshire in this House for six short months, and I am sure that he will enjoy representing the constituency as much as I did. He is the new Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, and he said that their exit strategy from Iraq is one of planned withdrawal, beginning at Christmas. However, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, Sir Menzies Campbell, said that their policy is one of phased withdrawal, ending at Christmas. One of those phased withdrawals would end at Christmas this year; the other would start at Christmas this year. Once again, the Liberal Democrats have two policies in response to one problem.

My hon. Friend Mr. Walter reminded us that being Eurosceptic is not the same as being anti-European and pointed out that other parts of Europe contain many Eurosceptics who are not anti-European. One of the false arguments in this country over the past few years has been that if one questions anything to do with the European project, one is anti-European. My hon. Friend is against the constitution and wants to return to the Laeken principles, and he indicated that the debate is too important for Government Front Benchers to continue to treat it peremptorily.

My hon. Friend Mr. Randall reminded us of the problems in the Balkans. I do not know whether the Secretary of State will tell us what he thinks is happening in Kosovo, but yesterday's American newspapers contained some interesting suggestions on that point, and later in my speech I shall ask him about the possible implications for defence. However, we are all interested to know whether changes will be made in relation to Kosovo.

I should like to start my remarks about defence by paying heartfelt tribute to the commitment and dedication of our armed forces wherever they are deployed. They carry out on our behalf their difficult and often dangerous tasks with enormous courage and professionalism, and we thank them for what they do in our name. The death of Guardsman Wakefield reminded us very graphically of the sacrifices that we ask of our armed forces. I am sure that our thoughts and prayers are with his family and those who were his loved ones, and I hope that those thoughts and prayers will be passed on to them.

We hear more about some of our armed personnel than others. On my last visit to Afghanistan, I was told by a soldier that with the spotlight on Iraq they felt themselves to be the forgotten army. I am sure that the House will agree that they are not forgotten, and we must ensure that they never are.

I take this opportunity to welcome the Secretary of State for Defence to what I can only call his latest post on his ministerial merry-go-round; he seems to move Ministries as often as other people take holidays. I do not know how long we will have him in this post, but I wish him well and look forward to facing him across the Dispatch Box for many more weeks to come. More seriously, he was the principal architect of the 1998 strategic defence review and now has the unenviable task of reconciling today's reduced and overstretched force levels with the bold assumptions that were made in his SDR. I shall return to that later.

We are lucky to have the right hon. Gentleman with us today, as he has only just returned from a visit to Iraq. Rather more than that, in the past two months the sighting of a Defence Secretary has become almost as rare as seeing the abominable snowman. During the recent general election, not only was defence not mentioned by the Government, but we experienced what I can only call the syndrome of the invisible Hoon. I think that he was spotted for a moment in Rutland, although that has not yet been corroborated; certainly, he was not a leading player in the election. There was a rare moment of light when a leak suggested that the Government were planning the next generation of nuclear deterrent, but a left-wing squawk of protest soon put paid to that and we heard no more about it. The truth is that the greatest losers in the general election were our armed forces, who in many cases, outrageously, were not even able to cast a vote because the Government failed to make sure that they were registered in time to do so.

I fear that the Government's savage list of cuts, which we have pledged to reverse, will now be implemented. No service will be spared—the Royal Navy, the Army and the RAF will all feel the impact of the Government's axe. This is not happening in a static situation. Today, our soldiers are on operations around the world—notably, of course, in Iraq, where they are expected to remain for some considerable time. It is a matter of anger to me that having been assured time and again by the Government that there was a comprehensive post-war plan for Iraq, we now know that there was not. I condemned at the time the decision in which the Government were complicit to dismantle Iraq's own internal security apparatus—its army and police. That decision left a security vacuum that was readily filled by insurgency and by violence, and we are now paying a heavy price for that failure to plan in advance. Ironically, and far too late, we are now retraining and redeploying the same people whom we so casually dismissed when we dismantled those internal services.

We will also need to increase our commitment to Afghanistan to meet our forthcoming lead NATO role in ISAF—the international security assistance force. That confirms our commitment to Afghanistan's future; indeed, it also confirms our commitment to NATO as the pre-eminent military alliance and the cornerstone of our own security and defence.

Today's new strategic environment requires those deployments. We live in an increasingly unstable and uncertain world. Developed nations such as ourselves find that we are facing a new generation of threats. It has never been so important that we ensure that our armed forces—the main pillar of our nation's security and defence—are properly equipped, properly trained and thoroughly sustained in every way, yet this Government have failed our armed services in almost every significant respect. While committing our armed forces to five wars in eight years, they failed both in the strategic defence review of 1998 and the subsequent White Papers to close the ever-widening gap between military means and strategic ends. That capability gap is widening. With the last of the Sea Harriers taken out of service soon, the Royal Navy will have no close air defence until 2015. The much vaunted and essential aircraft carriers look unlikely to enter service before today's carriers are withdrawn. The early withdrawal of the RAF Jaguars by 2007 will leave a similar capability gap before the ground attack version of the Typhoon enters full operational service at the end of the decade.

Now, at a time of increased threat, the Government plan to cut further our already overstretched and undermanned armed forces. The plan to take four front-line infantry battalions out of the line at a time when they have never been busier is utter folly. Surely the lessons from the operations in the Balkans, Afghanistan and especially Iraq are that numbers—boots on the ground—matter, particularly infantry numbers. At a time of considerable terrorism at home and abroad and major military deployments overseas, what possible military logic or sense can there be in cutting infantry numbers?

I referred earlier to the Secretary of State's involvement in the strategic defence review. He must explain what has happened since 1998 to convince the Government not only to reverse the planned SDR increases but to introduce further cuts. The threat has not decreased—indeed, the opposite is true.

"Since SDR our Armed Forces have conducted operations which have been more complex and greater in number than we had envisaged. We have effectively been conducting continual concurrent operations, deploying further afield, to more places, more frequently and with a greater variety of missions than set out in the SDR planning assumptions. We expect to see a similar pattern of operations in future."

Those are not my words, but those of the Secretary of State's predecessor in the supporting essay that accompanied the December 2003 White Paper. He saw the commitments increasing, yet the capability is reducing. The Secretary of State must explain why that dangerous gap is being allowed to grow.

Why are there cuts? Is it because the security situation warrants a reduction in our military capability? That is clearly not the case, as the White Paper confirms. There can be and is only one explanation. The cuts are driven by a Chancellor who demands them—what the Chancellor demands, he gets, whatever the impact on our national security and armed forces. That is the test for the Secretary of State: is he brave enough to stand up to the Chancellor? Will he take urgent steps to fix that which his predecessor allowed so supinely to be broken?

The Government are taking six warships from the Royal Navy. That is a massive cut beyond what the SDR set out. Even in 1998, the Secretary of State considered that to be the absolute minimum required. At the bicentenary celebrations of Nelson's supreme victory at Trafalgar in July, we face the ignominy of the Royal Navy's presence being dwarfed by that of the French navy. That says something about the Government's defence policy.

The procurement programme is in crisis, too. The Government's record on defence procurement is lamentable. The sums wasted on cost overruns are staggering. Despite the launch of the smart procurement initiative in January 1998 under the mantra of "faster, cheaper, better", there has been little evidence of success. What is the Government's answer? Their answer is the appointment as Minister responsible for procurement of a man more versed in offshore tax havens and in receiving Government contracts than in placing them.

In the past eight years, the Government have overcommitted our forces while presiding over cuts, shrinkage and downsizing. Intervals between operational tours are well below the guideline figure of 24 months, with some people having as little as six months' respite between operations. The impact of that overstretch on individuals and their families, especially those in areas that are experiencing significant manning shortfalls, is an issue of extreme concern. I represent the military town of Tidworth and I have first-hand experience of the pressures that the Government's conduct of their defence policy creates.

The Government have the unqualified obligation to support our armed forces in the tasks that they ask them to perform. Yet the current gap between strategic ends and military means cannot be exaggerated. There are few indications that the objectives facing our armed forces are getting any easier.

I hope that the Secretary of State will now give us his latest assessment of the progress being made in the following theatres, all of which have been discussed in this debate. He has just returned from Iraq. We need a clear assessment of any progress that is being made in the genuine domestic stabilisation of that country which might allow us to consider drawing down our forces there. I also hope that he will tell us when that might start happening, if such stabilisation is occurring.

What is the current assessment of the security situation in the Balkans? What impact will the United States' plan to start negotiations with Serbia on the final status of Kosovo have on the future deployment of our troops there? Presumably there has been some contingency planning against that possibility, and I hope that the Secretary of State will give us some information on that today. Will he also give us the latest assessment of military and strategic progress in Afghanistan? Is there any truth in the speculation that the situation there is currently considered a strategic failure?

The British armed forces have a reputation for excellence and skill that is unrivalled throughout the world. They are the benchmark by which many other armed forces are judged. They have proved, time and again, to be the most adaptable and successful of flexible international forces. They have never let us down, but they currently feel totally let down and betrayed by this Government, who talk big yet deliver nothing but cuts in numbers, inadequate equipment, a lack of training and a callous insensitivity to the genuine concerns of those who serve us so well.

The Government face a number of major challenges over the lifetime of this Parliament. First, however uncomfortable it might be, they are going to have to address the future of the nuclear deterrent. I agree with the hon. Member for Sunderland, South when he said that he hoped that the discussions on that issue would take place in this House and not behind closed doors. I hope that the Secretary of State—who is listening to someone else at the moment—will take account of that. The point was raised by his hon. Friend, and I hope that he will give us an undertaking that there will be a full and open debate on the matter in the House of Commons. Will he also tell us whether a decision in principle was taken on the issue some time ago without being debated in the House? If so, I hope that he will arrange for a debate on that matter as soon as possible.

We shall also demand that the equipment programme match the needs of the armed forces, and we shall continue to scrutinise the operation of the Defence Procurement Agency. Britain's defence industry requires the implementation of the international traffic in arms regulations waiver—the ITAR waiver—which the Secretary of State's predecessor signally failed to secure from the American Congress. What plans does the Secretary of State have to persuade Congress that the waiver should be allowed to be implemented?

The continuing erosion of military ethos, arising from a misplaced obsession with human rights, must stop. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newark rightly said, the case of Trooper Williams is widely regarded as a disgrace, and we welcome the fact that the unjust case against him has now been dropped. We shall judge the proposed new military discipline legislation announced in the Gracious Speech against a benchmark of its effect on ethos and on the chain of command. We shall also monitor the misapplication of health and safety measures which threaten military preparedness.

I hope that the Secretary of State will start to give our armed forces the support and resources that they so badly need. They are supremely loyal to us, and it is time that the Government began to show them the same loyalty in return.

I approach the Dispatch Box this evening with a combination of pleasure and humility. I feel pleasure at being back at the Ministry of Defence and at being able to work with such fantastic people. I feel humility because I know that any contribution that I or any other Member of the House makes is nothing compared with the commitment, sacrifices, courage and occasional heroism of the hundreds of thousands of young men and women who serve in this country's armed forces. I am therefore greatly privileged to be in this position, and I intend to enjoy it—even the abuse from Members on the other side.

I started with a tribute because the respect and admiration for the British armed forces is an area on which we can all agree. It never ceases to amaze me that Her Majesty's armed forces can carry out such acts of determination, sacrifice and heroism in so many spheres of the world. That they can record hit videos at the same time is a measure of the quality of the British armed forces, and we welcome that.

I shall say more about the armed forces later. First, let me make it clear that any responsibility for the controversies, difficulties, differences, disputes and arguments that we experience in foreign policy should be laid where it is proper to lay it: on the Floor of the House, at the feet of the Government or on the desk of this Minister, and never on the backs of the young men and women in our armed forces. Given that they deny themselves the opportunity of participating publicly in such debates, it is our responsibility to ensure that whatever differences people may have with our armed forces, we make it absolutely plain that the responsibility for decisions to dispatch them to foreign fields, and occasionally to foreign wars, lies with this Government and this Minister—and I will fully accept that responsibility.

Let me now pay tribute to some who are present today, and to some who are not. First, I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend Mr. Hoon, whose lengthy tenure displayed increasingly a degree of expertise, always a degree of commitment, and a huge degree of steadfastness under fire, almost to the extent of stoicism. I think that his example provides a lesson for us all. I congratulate him on his new post as Leader of the House, as opposed to leader of our defence effort, although I fear that he may not enjoy the period of rest and recreation to which he is fully entitled.

I also pay tribute to our dear departed hon. Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames), whose contribution as Opposition defence spokesman was enormous in every sense of the word. Obviously, taking over from him presents a voluminous challenge to Mr. Ancram, whose appointment I greatly welcome. I thank him for his generous offer not to share the remaining time with me—which has, however, deprived me of the common ministerial excuse that were it not for the shortage of time, all Members' points would be dealt with. I must also tell him, in the spirit of comradeship that normally marks these debates, that I do not think it is getting off to a good start, on the 200th anniversary of the battle of Trafalgar, to suggest that the French Navy is more capable than the Royal Navy—but perhaps that was a slip of the mind rather than an intentional statement from the Dispatch Box.

Although he is not present now—dealing, no doubt, with other weighty issues related to foreign affairs—I welcome Dr. Fox to his post as Opposition foreign affairs spokesman. It will be known in the House that he and I share an origin and background in Lanarkshire, and although he is not the first Fox to come out of the west of Scotland, he is by far the most celebrated.

I welcome the Minister for Europe, my right hon. Friend Mr. Alexander, to his new position and to his status as a Cabinet colleague. I also welcome the new Liberal Democrat spokesman on foreign affairs, Mr. Moore. I was amazed to learn today that one of his predecessors was the Conservative defence spokesman, the right hon. and learned Member for Devizes. I did not know that he had spent some time representing that constituency. The hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk is thus a classic case of downward social mobility in terms of the representation of those in the area, but of course that does not detract from his status.

I was pleased to note that, in his first speech as foreign affairs spokesman, the hon. Gentleman seemed to have made—intentionally or otherwise—a very significant and sensible change in Liberal Democrat policy in Iraq. As the right hon. and learned Member for Devizes pointed out, the hon. Gentleman changed Liberal policy tonight—I notice that he is not taking the opportunity to deny it—from calling for the withdrawal of all British troops from Iraq by Christmas to calling for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq from Christmas onwards, which seems to bring him into line with the policy of the Government. I congratulate him on his courage in overturning the position that was adopted by the person who is sitting two yards from him and who was until 30 seconds ago a close colleague of his in the Liberal party.

I turn to the debate, having carried out the courtesies and formalities; the fact that they are conventions does not mean that they are any less well meant. Debates on defence, to which I have returned after some years, are normally marked by a degree of quality, breadth and expertise on defence and foreign affairs matters that is not always matched in the other debates in the House. Today was no exception. The maiden speeches were of considerable merit and they certainly prefigure a continuation of substantial debates in the House.

We had maiden speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Leicester, South (Sir Peter Soulsby) and for Halifax (Mrs. Riordan) and the hon. Members for North Cornwall (Mr. Rogerson), for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) and for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies). All showed that, although new to the House, they were not new to logic, thought or argument. They were of a sterling quality. I welcome those who made those contributions, some at the second attempt, including my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, South. I am pleased that he has joined us.

In North Cornwall, we have a change of person but not of regime. In welcoming the new Member, we will want to remember the contribution of his predecessor, Paul Tyler. It will in no way diminish the hon. Member for East Antrim, whom I know, respect and like very much, which always helps in these matters, if I say that we will miss his predecessor. I know how close they were—a stone's throw apart, I think he said earlier, which just about sums it up. I spent many happy hours with Roy Beggs in my previous incarnation. I welcome, too, the hon. Member for Monmouth and his contribution, although of course I regret that Huw Edwards is not with us. He was a very good Member of the House whom all of us respected.

In welcoming our new colleague from Halifax, I pay tribute to her predecessor. I cannot say that we agreed on everything in defence matters—

Or on anything.

We agreed on some things, which may come as a surprise, not least to those on the Labour Benches. She was a fantastic advocate for her constituency and her beliefs and principles. Therefore, it is with respect that we remember the contribution that she made.

Substantial contributions have been made, too, by many returning Members. I will try to deal with some of the points that they raised out of respect for their passion and their insights. May I start with Kosovo, which was of considerable interest to Alice Mahon and which was raised by Mr. Randall, among others? The international community has made it clear continually and again recently that Kosovo has to demonstrate its ability to meet expected standards of a civilised society across a range of areas before we can begin to address the issue of status. It is hoped that the United Nations review of standards in Kosovo will take place this summer. It is imminent and preparations are under way. A successful review of standards in Kosovo would enable the international community to address Kosovo's future status, so the first and most immediate issue on the agenda is to make that assessment of standards.

The remainder of 2005 will therefore be a challenging time in Kosovo and NATO must and will stand ready to meet any security challenges that arise out of that. The United Kingdom will play its full part in that, as normal, and through the provision of a small but effective UK contribution we can play a larger role in ensuring a safe and secure environment in Kosovo.

I ask this very seriously. Today there was a report in an American newspaper that the State Department wants to make an announcement that negotiations are going to open with Serbia on the granting of independence to Kosovo. I wondered whether the right hon. Gentleman had anything to impart to us on that.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman may not be surprised to know that I have not seen that report, because I was on a troop flight back from Iraq earlier today, just before I came to the House. I will check on that. I think that he mentioned negotiation. To my knowledge, I do not think that that has started. The sequence of events is as follows. The first thing to be done is to carry out the United Nations review and assessment of the standards in Kosovo itself; thereafter discussions will be widened. Whether or not preliminary talks are started and whether or not those are part of ongoing discussions between the United States or the United Nations elements in Serbia and Montenegro I do not know, but I will check on that and if he will permit me, I will write to him, because I am not in a position to comment on reports in the past few hours. What I am in a position to say is that, in Kosovo, NATO has continued to improve the flexibility and usability of troops since the violence there in March 2004. A lot of progress has been made, but all nations continue to press for further improvements. That is the present position.

I want to comment on a point made by the hon. Member for Uxbridge on the original intervention in Kosovo. I would not want to set a precedent that we continue to follow in protecting the Lib Dems against unfair criticism—or any criticism at all—but in this case he unfairly criticised the Lib Dems for what he regarded as an inconsistency between their support for intervention in Kosovo and their lack of support for intervention in Iraq. In fairness, we should recognise that there are several major grounds on which military intervention can take place. One is obviously self-defence and another is impending humanitarian catastrophe, which was the case in Kosovo. A third, of course, is United Nations Security Council resolutions. So I think what the hon. Gentleman said was unfair.

If I may be more helpful, if the hon. Gentleman really wanted to point out the glaring contradictions of the Lib Dem position he might compare, not Kosovo and Iraq, but Iraq 1998 with the last intervention in Iraq. Exactly the same legal grounds were used as a basis for military intervention in Iraq in 1998, and accepted and defended in, I think, both Houses of Parliament by the Liberals, as were later disputed by them in the recent intervention.

I am sure that the Secretary of State for Defence will give way.

I am surprisingly asked to give way, and I will.

I welcome the Defence Secretary to his new position. He and I shared Opposition defence spokesmanships for a considerable time. I fear that he is doing us an injustice, no doubt inadvertently. If he remembers, in 1998 the reason that provoked military action was the fact that the inspectors were being denied access to a number of facilities. The military action that was taken was designed to destroy those facilities. It was taken over a period of some three days. It was entirely proportionate. It was a last resort because Saddam Hussein would not submit to any diplomatic initiative and it did not have as its objective regime change. Those are three very substantial differences in principle from the basis of the military action taken against Saddam Hussein in 2003, as we now know from the leaked minutes of the meeting held in July 2002.

With great respect to the right hon. and learned Gentleman—and I do have great respect for him—none of that holds water. Resolution 1441 was the last resolution demanding immediate, unconditional and full disclosure and acceptance of all the UN resolutions thus far, and its purpose was not regime change, but to respond to the breach of the UN resolutions, so the substance of the legal basis for the 1998 intervention and the latest intervention is exactly the same. What had changed in between was the Liberal party's view of the political landscape in this country, I am afraid to say. Although I credit him and his party with being consistent from the time when they last changed their position onwards, I am afraid that I cannot credit them with being consistent over the past period. Nevertheless, let us turn to the other points that were raised.

Peter Luff referred to a multiplicity of questions arising from his and others' interest in India. On that question, I hope that he will forgive me if I refer him to the Foreign Office, and I have already briefly mentioned it to my colleague, the Minister for Europe. I hope that they will respond on those issues.

I will mention Iraq later in the context of my visit, but let me take some of the points that have been raised by the hon. Member for Woodspring, who speaks on foreign affairs for the Conservative party, by my hon. Friends the Members for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) and for Halifax and by the right hon. and learned Members for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) and for Rushcliffe (Kenneth Clarke), among others.

As the House knows, the present position is that coalition forces are in Iraq under the terms of UN Security Council resolution 1546 and at the request of the Iraqi Government. The Minister for Defence in Iraq, al-Dulaimi, whom I met in the past 24 hours, is clear about the value of our presence—he reinforced and confirmed that to me—and the continued need for that presence for the time being.

The Government have a consistent position about our future plans: they should be based on conditions, not on a chronological sequence of events irrespective of the reality on the ground. We will stay no longer than necessary, and we will withdraw once Iraq has made sufficient progress, with our assistance, in building the capability of its own security forces to the point where they are able to deal with the security situation unaided.

I will return to several of those points later, when I briefly mention my visit to Iraq yesterday, but that is essentially the present position. There is no significant change, except that, of course, in Iraq itself, there has been a build-up of the Iraqi capability—Iraqisation, as it is sometimes called—to combat the insurgency and terrorism and to facilitate political developments and the appointment of Ministers to the Transitional Government, several of whom come from the Sunni community.

There has been great interest in the resources needed to sustain Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition to the hon. Members whom I have mentioned already, that issue was raised by Patrick Mercer. We remain in close discussion with our coalition allies in Iraq about force levels. We are confident that the commitment to the coalition remains strong across a very wide number of participants. The withdrawal of the Dutch and their replacement by the Australians in our sector illustrates the flexibility of those arrangements. We will co-ordinate closely with our NATO allies to provide a UK contribution to help to expand the NATO mission in Afghanistan.

The claims of overstretch, which were repeated by the right hon. and learned Member for Devizes, are wide of the mark. Our future plans, to which he referred, are to rebalance the Army and to create expeditionary forces with a greater degree of flexibility, reach, speed and deployability, thus improving our ability not only to respond quickly, but to mount simultaneous campaigns.

The right hon. Gentleman said explicitly that troops would not be withdrawn from Iraq until the time was right or, in his earlier words, until the job was finished. For the sake of clarification, can he give the House the assurance that that will be done as a joint decision with the United States and that there is no possibility of American troops being withdrawn earlier, leaving British troops in place on their own?

I am not aware of anybody suggesting that we should withdraw the United States forces from Iraq, thus leaving the 8,000 British forces there to cope. I am trying to understand the question. Certainly, as a generic response, I would say that we would not take any of these decisions without the fullest consultation with our allies, prime among them, of course, the United States, which is making a huge contribution not only to countering the present insurgency and terrorism in Iraq but to training forces. All that will be done, but we reserve the right, as does any sovereign nation, to make our own decisions ultimately; but we have always done that in the fullest consultation with our allies and will continue to do so.

The point applies not only to Iraq and Afghanistan, but to other areas of the world. The right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife and my hon. Friend Mr. Mullin raised the question of Darfur and whether more should be done to strengthen the United Nations mandate. We are putting pressure on all sides to try to find a peaceful resolution to this difficult and tragic crisis while, in the meantime, putting pressure on all sides to observe the ceasefire and their other commitments under it. The Government of Sudan and the Darfuri rebels must co-operate with African Union mediators so that there can be an early resumption of the Abuja peace talks. We therefore welcome the EU's decision to double the size of its monitoring mission. We have already provided in the order of £14 million to that mission and we are looking to see how we can assist its expansion, including through the possibility of NATO or EU help.

Another issue that was raised by several Members, including the foreign affairs spokesmen for the Liberals and the Conservatives, was the Chinese arms embargo. Of course, there are concerns about China, particularly about human rights, that do not need to be re-expressed in the House. The EU has agreed to review the embargo, and that review is ongoing. We believe that the embargo is an ineffective means of controlling arms sales to China and that the revised code of conduct would be more effective. However—and I stress this—no date has been set for a decision on lifting the embargo. As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has previously made clear, China's recent anti-secessionist law has created a very difficult political environment in which to discuss these matters. I fully understand the concerns expressed not only by hon. Members in the House but by the United States, and I agree on the importance of maintaining security as a major factor in our consideration of the east Asia region.

May I welcome my right hon. Friend to his new post? As he is new to it, may I ask him to study the report of the Quadripartite Committee that was published just before the election? It refers specifically to China in some detail.

I am aware of the report, but I cannot say that I have read it verbatim. However, on the advice of my hon. Friend, who, from our past discussions, I have always found wise on these matters, I shall return to it.

We will have big decisions to make quite apart from those on Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of operational disposition of our troops. One was raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Islington, North and for Sunderland, South, and they were visibly and helpfully assisted by the right hon. and learned Member for Devizes. I refer to Trident and the continuation of our nuclear deterrent. I think that we have been pretty open about that. The defence White Paper in 2003 indicated clearly that it was likely that decisions on whether to replace Trident would be needed during this Parliament and that we were taking steps to keep options open until a decision point was reached, and that continues to be the case.

It would be irresponsible of me to speculate from the Dispatch Box within days of arriving in my position about exactly what decisions might be needed, or exactly when they will be needed. However, I shall keep the House informed about the matter, as we have tried to do in the past. As I have been asked questions today, I confirm to the House that no decisions on any replacement have been taken in principle or otherwise. However, it is likely that such decisions will have to be taken during the course of this Parliament.

Will my right hon. Friend give me an assurance that before any irreversible decisions are taken, proper discussions will take place in the House about the merits of a new generation of nuclear weapons?

My hon. Friend has answered that question himself by raising the matter several times during today's debate. I have no doubt that a matter discussed in the first debate in the House will be raised continually. Obviously the Government will listen to hon. Members on both sides of the House before taking the decision that we are elected to make in the course of discharging our responsibilities. I do not think that I can be more specific than that because the decisions that must be taken and the exact time frame in which that must happen are not yet clear.

I want to avoid the situation that occurred in the latter days of Mr. Callaghan's Government, when a decision was taken without most of the Cabinet or the House being informed. Labour Members discovered that a decision had been taken only when Tory Defence Ministers revealed some years later that a decision had been taken under the Callaghan Government. We do not want that to happen again, but I am sure that it will not, will it?

Not if it is up to my hon. Friend or me. Without going into specifics, I can tell him that we do not regard the development of the Chevaline project as a role model for decision making by this Government.

I congratulate the Secretary of State on his new appointment. He will no doubt have heard earlier contributions to the debate. I specifically raised the non-proliferation treaty conference in New York that is going on at present. Will he give us some indication of whether the UK Government's position is to support a reiteration that there should be no new nuclear weapons and the ultimate removal of all nuclear weapons, including those held by the five declared nuclear weapon states?

Our policy has not changed on either of those issues. Of course we would all like a world in which there were no threats and thus no requirement to develop a response to threats. However, we live in a world in which there are such threats. I shall deal with this matter in detail at a later stage, but we must decide the best way of handling our response to them. We have tried to do that over the years and our policy remains exactly what it has been on nuclear weapons and deterrents, although of course we must deal with the changing nature of threats. I give my hon. Friend the assurance that I think he and his colleagues want: as the discussion develops, we will try to keep the House informed in a way that will satisfy hon. Members.

The Secretary of State will remember, as I do, endless debates provoked by the then Conservative Government in an attempt to embarrass the Labour Opposition about whether the fourth Trident submarine should be constructed at Barrow-in-Furness. Those debates were, frankly, hopeless as a basis for discussing nuclear policy. He knows, too, that nuclear policy is arcane and sometimes pretty difficult to grasp. Will he give an undertaking that when allowing the House to reach what will be a significant decision, he will, without breaching secrets or anything of that kind, make as much professional information as possible available to hon. Members? Will he assure us that there will be no question of people scrambling to find information that is available to Ministers, but no one else?

Let me say two things. First, the idea that a decision of that nature could be taken in all contexts without an open and continual discussion in this House and elsewhere, including the United States, is not realistic. I think that it will be open and continual. Of course, when it comes to nuclear deterrence and other matters relating to this country's security, it is not possible to put everything into the public domain. We have found from our experience over the past few years that when we try to do that and ensure that the sanctity of some of the information is retained, it is easy for people to accuse us of misrepresenting the information that is in the public domain. It is a continual challenge, but I think that the process will be much more open than people perhaps think.

Secondly, the great debate on the fourth Trident submarine and so on took place in an entirely different context. The right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife will remember that it took place in the context of a Labour party that was accused of having a defence policy that was basically "Surrender. Hands up." Those days are long gone, just as the days when Labour was regarded as a party of economic incompetence and the Tories were regarded as a party of economic competence and as strong on defence have gone.

We know what the contrast is now. We introduced a £3.7 billion increase in defence expenditure under my predecessor, now the Leader of the House. We know that we have reconfigured the British armed forces, with all their failings, in the strategic defence review, which was lauded internationally as well as here. We know that during the election there was no debate whatsoever on defence—[Interruption.] Perhaps the right hon. and learned Member for Devizes can contain himself for a second while I finish.

People contrast that record with the 29 per cent. cut in real terms in defence expenditure that took place under the previous Government in the terrible days running up to 1997 and with the flip-flopping over Iraq, when the defence policy of the Leader of the Opposition appeared to be determined by him wetting his finger and sticking it in the air to see which way popular opinion was going. The whole context has changed. There is a degree of confidence in the Government's posture on defence. I can give a degree of confidence to my colleagues that we will, as part of a Government who are confident in our willingness and ability to defend our country, discuss such matters a little more openly than might otherwise have been the case.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

I will, but then I must make progress.

It is kind of the Secretary of State to give way a second time.

In the context of what we have said about the non-proliferation treaty and my right hon. Friend's response to the questions asked by my hon. Friend Mr. Mullin, will he confirm that there is no preparation at the Atomic Weapons Establishment Aldermaston for the construction of a facility to make any new nuclear weapons, free-fall bombs or anything similar, and that all decisions will be in the open before such construction work begins?

My hon. Friend posits something that envisages a qualitative and quantifiable watershed between the maintenance of facilities, whereby they are updated and rendered continually safe so that our existing nuclear deterrent is made more effective, and a new weapon. The world does not work like that any more than one day we will have capitalism and the next we will have socialism, but my hon. Friend and I have argued about that as well. I do not think that the world develops like that.

The reality is that the preparations necessary to maintain a nuclear deterrent in a safe condition, which is constantly updated to meet new threats in terms of accuracy and new technology, are an integral part of what might become—I do not say will become—one possible avenue for one of the many alternatives that we might have to consider if are going to update, replace or modernise our nuclear deterrent. That is as honest an answer as I can give to my hon. Friend. In the real world, there is no such complete gap.

Talking of the real world, I have managed to deal with only three areas and I have been questioned on 15. If I may, I shall be much quicker in dealing with some of the others, but that does not mean that I do not regard them as major issues.

Hear, hear.

My right hon. Friend helpfully shouts "Hear, hear", as he has to pore over papers on, among other things, Uzbekistan—a serious issue, which has been raised in the debate.

The Government—and I am sure the whole House—are very concerned by what has happened in Uzbekistan. As a result, we are reviewing bilateral activities with the Uzbeks. Those are limited in scope and aimed at encouraging reform in the management of defence and at promoting higher professional standards. All export licences are assessed against European Union criteria. In the light of recent events, the Government have revised all licences to Uzbekistan, so that we are assured that they all conform to the criteria. Most are for dual-use equipment. I hope that the House is reassured by that.

The subject of Iran was raised by spokesmen for both Opposition parties. We will continue our effort to obtain guarantees that Iran's nuclear programme is explicitly for peaceful purposes. We have to continue that. We are committed to trying to make the E3 process a success. The Foreign Secretary has made it clear in talking about Iran that he can envisage

"no circumstances in which military action would be justified".—[Hansard, 9 November 2004; Vol. 426, c. 686.]

He said that such action would form no part of Government policy.

I hope that I have done justice to most of the points that have been raised—admittedly, at length. I thought that as the new Secretary of State for Defence I should reply as fully as possible in this first debate attempt from the Dispatch Box. Of course, there are wider issues of context in which such questions have been raised.

It is our job in government and in the House to assess and plan for the security challenges that we now face and will face in future. That goes to the heart of some of the points raised by the right hon. and learned Member for Devizes. We believe that in the foreseeable future there is unlikely to be a resurgence of a conventional threat to the territory of the United Kingdom or of our allies. We say that with all the caveats that history places on that in reality, and with all our knowledge of the bland assumptions of the past that there would be no territorial threats of the sort which events—the terrible harbinger of difficulties—have thrown on us from the early years of the last century through to the Falklands in the 1980s.

That does not mean—and we must never be lulled into believing that it means—that the threats out there are any less dangerous or immediate. The threats to international peace and stability that have emerged since the end of the cold war are more asymmetric—in modern coinage—than that of one nation threatening the territorial sovereignty of another. However, they are no less immediate and serious. The threats and challenges posed by international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, particularly when unconstrained by any democratic control, by failed or failing states, or by what are sometimes called rogue states, each have the potential to damage global security and well-being and to threaten our security from afar. But in combination, the whole of the threat is even greater, much greater, than the sum of its parts.

That is not the world in which we have chosen to live, but the world that we inherited—a world that continues to change very rapidly. In 1997, as the hon. Member for Woodspring pointed out, we undertook the strategic defence review. I was privileged and proud to play a main role in directing the course of that review. We did that because of the rapidly changing world after the cold war. Since 1997, under previous Secretaries of State, we have constantly evaluated our ability to meet fast-evolving security challenges. That process began with the SDR, which has been followed by constant—almost permanent—revision and renewal as the world changes at a rate that has accelerated exponentially. Following the atrocities of 11 September 2001, our thinking evolved through the new chapter to the SDR. More recently, in December 2003, we published the defence White Paper, "Delivering Security in a Changing World", which broadly confirmed the rationale behind the SDR but suggested the need for even greater reach, speed of deployability and agility of response. The White Paper recognised that the opportunities to act to counter the threats we faced might be fleeting.

Bearing in mind the points made by some of my hon. Friends and by Liberal Democrat Members, let me say that of course we cannot solve all those problems by military means alone. There are some problems to which there are no solutions, and some to which there are no exclusively military solutions. Whatever we think about the efficacy of our armed forces, we recognise that the potential and, if necessary, actual disposition of military fighting power is rarely a sufficient condition to address the challenges that face us. However, it is often a necessary condition, and not only in counter-terrorism: the capabilities of our armed forces are equally important in responding to humanitarian crises. Our ability to put fighting power in the field is both necessary and sufficient to meet some challenges, but it is not sufficient to meet others and we need to deploy the whole gamut of diplomatic, financial and legal mechanisms as well as military means.

In the modern, interdependent world, we can rarely go it alone. We need both better cross-departmental working inside Government in our internal affairs and better international working in our external affairs. That, among other reasons, is why the United Kingdom remains wholly committed to working through international organisations such as the G8, the United Nations, NATO, the EU and—let me reassure the hon. Member for Woodspring—the Commonwealth, which remains a potent vehicle for tackling challenges both specific and general. We are committed to working through all those organisations to develop effective collective responses to global security challenges. We shall use our presidency of the G8 and of the EU to advance our higher priorities, which include tackling poverty in Africa and climate change as well as the other issues mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe when he opened the debate. We do that because it is in our self-interest and because it is our responsibility as citizens of the wider world to promote international stability and development.

I look forward to playing my part in the multinational forums in which defence has a prominent profile. In that context, let me restate that NATO is the cornerstone of our collective security—a point recognised in the EU treaty—and that the UK will continue to play a full and, wherever possible, leading role in that alliance. This will include continuing to modernise and transform NATO to face its new 21st century challenges.

I am delighted that one of the decisions that we took in the strategic defence review, which was implemented by my right hon. Friend the former Secretary of State for Defence, was the purchase of the C-17, or rather the leasing of the C-17 heavy and very large aircraft for strategic lift. [Interruption.] I do not know whether praise is being showered upon me from a sedentary position by Sir Menzies Campbell. However, I am convinced that it is one of the best decisions that we have taken in recent years. That has been confirmed by my recent discussions with servicemen and women in the RAF, who assure me that it was an important and huge step forward in our strategic lift capability.

In that way we enhanced not only ourselves but also the European powers, by making it possible for us to operate strategic lift where previously we were not able to do so. In the EU, we will work to build up the European security and defence policy as part of the common foreign and security policy.

Our aims during the United Kingdom's presidency of the EU are to continue the agenda that will see the European security and defence policy become more capable, more coherent and more active. All the while we must ensure that the process is compatible with NATO's security structures and thus avoid unnecessary duplication of waste. We must also ensure that we play to the EU's strengths, such as the breadth of non-military tools that it can bring to bear in emerging or continuing international crises.

Our armed forces are making a strong contribution to international stability in conjunction with the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. As a force for good, our armed forces are called upon to perform a huge range of tasks around the globe. We have dealt with only the most obvious examples in Iraq, Afghanistan and so on. I am extremely proud, as I am sure we all are, of the part that our armed forces played in bringing about the right conditions for the recent successful elections in Iraq. It was an historic occasion. Despite the threat not only of terrorism but of death, in many cases the turnout was just under 60 per cent. It was not hugely different from the turnout in both of our most recent elections in this country. That is testimony first to the courage of the people of Iraq, and secondly to the role that the multinational forces are playing. As I have met for the first time Iraqi forces in the build-up of their 10th division, I pay tribute to the effective role that they played in protecting the people going to polling booths in Iraq.

The success of those security measures on the day was possible only because of the hard work of the Iraqi security forces and the supporting roles played by coalition forces. The violence of the past few weeks presents us with a huge challenge, but it should not be allowed to overshadow the enormity of the step towards a free and democratic Iraq.

As the right hon. and learned Member for Devizes mentioned, I returned this morning from visiting Iraq. I am refreshed and once again astounded by the commitment of that country's own young men and women in the armed forces. I am pleased that the Iraqis are building up their own strength to enable them gradually to take over leadership in the provinces throughout their country. More than 165,000 Iraqi personnel have now been trained and equipped by the coalition. For the first time, that number is more than the number of personnel trained by the multinational forces.

We are committed to Iraq for as long as the Iraqi Government judge that necessary. Progress towards withdrawal will depend on achieving certain conditions, as the Iraqi forces become more and more able to take on a full range of security tasks. That will be the arbiter and the benchmark of our decision-making process, which will not be confined to a set of preordained time scales.

I met the 10th division in Basra. I also met the new Iraqi Defence Minister, Mr. al-Dulaimi, who is a Sunni, part of the minority population of Iraq. He was appointed Defence Minister on the same day as I was appointed Secretary of State for Defence. He has probably already suffered just as many attacks and criticisms as I have in that short period. However, I know that he is fully committed to ensuring the peace and stability of his country, and he is a Sunni who is committed to working for all of the people of Iraq who want to offer a better future for all the people there.

I met General Casey, the four-star US general in charge of the strategic direction of the multinational force, who was generous with his praise not only for the British armed forces but for the work of civilian staff in the reconstruction effort and for the leadership role played by my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield in that effort.

In Iraq, we remain committed to assisting the new Government in stabilising the country. [Interruption.] The usual complaint from the Opposition is that I do not answer in detail all the points that they have made. It is refreshing, if annoying, to be criticised for doing the opposite today In conjunction with officials from the Department for International Development, British armed forces have supported the reconstruction of the country's dilapidated infrastructure. That is a genuine problem, and it is essential that progress on maintaining security in Iraq is accompanied by political, social and economic development. The Iraqis are making progress in all areas, but they need our help.

In Afghanistan NATO, as well as the international coalition, is playing its part in bringing security to the more remote areas. I have already dealt with issues arising from that, so I shall mention some of the other areas in which our forces are playing a vital role, including the Balkans and sub-Saharan Africa. Our commitment to the task in the Balkans is demonstrated by the current UK leadership of the EU force that took over command from NATO in Bosnia and Herzegovina in December 2004.

The House has previously discussed our ambitious modernisation programme, as set out in the future capabilities paper published last year. Given the time available, I shall not go into that programme in detail, and will merely point out that the Opposition's pervasive assumption that bigger is better and smaller is worse is not a working assumption for the chiefs of staff, the military or, indeed, myself. Many changes have been introduced, including new equipment and capability.

Is the Secretary of State saying that the chiefs of staff agree with the number of men proposed at the moment? I seem to recall that General Sir Mike Jackson said that he could do with a lot more men.

In an ideal world we would have bigger and better—

indicated assent.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is nodding at that statement, as if it verified the wisdom of his belief. Agreeing with oneself is the norm in the House, but that does not necessarily make something true. Of course, instead of two 20,000-tonne aircraft carriers there is a desire to have two 60,000-tonne carriers. We have heard such requests. People want five aircraft carriers, twice as many troops and 300 Eurofighters.

What about ships?

In the past 20 to 25 years, we have had two through-deck cruisers, which are smaller 20,000-tonne aircraft carriers. The Government have committed themselves to two 60,000-tonne aircraft carriers by 2012. We are committed to that forward programme. Nothing like that was ordered under the previous Government. We have ordered the one of the best combat aircraft in the world, the Typhoon, previously the Eurofighter, which is second only to an American model. We have introduced an immense range of equipment and capital expenditure. Of course, we must try to balance that with the number of personnel, but the Opposition should not consider that the reconfiguration of the infantry division is merely a way of cutting numbers. It is not—it is a thorough reorganisation in which we have got rid of the arms plot and all the inefficiencies involved in training people for six months to a year, giving them two years in a particular role, then retraining them. I can assure the Opposition that that has been warmly welcomed not only by General Jackson and the chiefs of staff but by the infantrymen and women whom I met in the past 48 hours. It is a long overdue modernisation and reform of infantry battalions.

Is it not also correct that General Jackson has put in place and supports not only the arms plot but the efficiency measures to which my right hon. Friend has just referred, none of which steps were taken during the 18 years of Conservative Government? Is it not also a fact that communities such as the north-east will benefit from the biggest shipbuilding programme in this country's history, which contrasts with the record of the Conservative Government, who closed down shipbuilding in the north-east?

Both those points are true. I stand second to no one in my respect for General Jackson and the other chiefs of staff. The decisions were taken by Ministers and I fully accept responsibility for that, and for implementing them. But I make it plain that, in terms of the advice that we received about the reconfiguration of the infantry battalions and modernising them so that we did not incorporate within a severely pressed defence budget—[Interruption.] It is hugely bigger and increasing, compared with the budget under the Conservatives, which was hugely smaller and being cut by 29 per cent.—but it is still a hard-pressed budget. I accept that, and we had to take some difficult decisions, but they were for the benefit of the capability of fighting power that can be achieved with the money and the people that we have.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, provided that he does not then complain from a sedentary position that I am going on too long.

I am delighted to assure the Secretary of State that I shall not complain about his answering the questions put by my right hon. and hon. Friends, but let me put this question to him. He has asserted that the chiefs of staff are happy, yet he himself set out in the strategic defence review that there should be 32 surface vessels. The Government are now proposing to reduce those to 25. I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman talk to Sir Alan West, the First Sea Lord, and see what he thinks about that reduction, because he has said that it puts him in a difficult position and he wants to know which tasks he will have to forgo in order to meet his tasks with a substantially reduced surface fleet.

It will come as no surprise that I do speak to the First Sea Lord—[Interruption.]—Alan West. Yes, I know his name. I knew him when he was Chief of Defence Intelligence, and before that. I dare say that I know him better than Mr. Robathan does. I am glad to see him agreeing with that. He made the not startlingly surprising assertion that one cannot be in two places at the same time, and nor can a ship be in two places at the same time. Mr. Howarth is saying that hard decisions had to be made, even within an increasing defence budget, and that is absolutely correct. But what I am saying is that there may be people in here, although I do not know who they are, who can criticise me from a position of advocacy of a hugely increased defence budget, but it is not the hon. Gentleman or his colleagues. First of all, they slashed the budget by 30 per cent. in real terms in the 10 years before Labour came to power. I may not hold him personally responsible, but he supported the Government. Incidentally, some of that happened during his period as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the admirable Lady Thatcher, who talked a good game, and cut Britain's defence budget as no one ever had before. [Interruption.] Yes, I have told her that to her face, as well as in the House.

I did not notice a Conservative party manifesto pledge hugely to increase the budget. Not only did it not promise to increase the budget, but at best it said that it would freeze it in real terms—

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Just a minute, I have not finished with the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I have one or two more kicks before he gets up. Not only did the Conservative manifesto on foreign affairs and defence not provide any real solace to servicemen and women; it did not mention Burma—an omission that was complained about today—and for the first time in 50 years it did not contain the words "the United States of America". How one can write a manifesto on foreign and defence affairs without even mentioning our biggest ally and the most powerful nation in the world in military terms is beyond me, but perhaps the right hon. and learned Gentleman, new to his post, will explain all the faults of his predecessor in writing it.

I am all for having an argument with the Secretary of State, but we must base it on accurate facts rather than fiction. Our manifesto stated that we would increase the defence budget by £2.7 billion more than the Government's proposal. If that is not an increase, I do not know what is.

The Conservatives said that they would make £1.8 billion of efficiency savings, but nobody believed that they could take £1.8 billion out of the Ministry of Defence by saving paper clips and making sure that staff used one pen rather than two per fortnight. At best, they would have frozen defence expenditure, and they would probably have cut it. [Interruption.] No one should be surprised, because that is exactly what they did when they were in government. Let us conduct this argument on the back of a series of empirically based and historically verifiable facts—we have increased defence expenditure in real terms; they cut it by 29 per cent. over a 10-year period.

Personnel suffer most when defence expenditure is cut. One can train and educate forces and one can buy aircraft carriers, ships and planes, but the third element of fighting power, people and their morale, which concerns leadership, bonding, traditions, commitment and determination, is at the core of defence. Accordingly, we have made a large investment in welfare. When we deal with great geo-strategic issues in this House, little matters do not seem to bear much discussion, but access to telephones and telephone cards, deliveries of letters, receiving British Forces Broadcasting and Sky and watching the latest films and videos mean a lot to people if they are in a camp in the middle of a desert on a dark night.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Minister of State on his emphasis on welfare, and personnel in Basra, Baghdad and elsewhere made that point to me as recently as 24 hours ago. Welfare services help to make a very difficult life tolerable, which is why the new pension and compensation schemes include greatly improved death benefits and widow's benefits. The MoD has recently announced that the service group life assurance scheme will offer the armed forces insurance without exclusions at premiums comparable to those offered by civilian schemes. As one supermarket says, "every little helps", and all those little things add up to make a huge difference to the welfare of soldiers, sailors and airmen.

Although I accept that advances have been made in welfare provision, will the Secretary of State make a commitment to respond urgently to the Defence Committee report on the training regime? The report raises many concerns and contains many recommendations, which are a matter of ongoing concern for families involved in events at Deepcut and others. An early response would help not only the Committee but young people, who should be confident if they join the armed services.

I assure my hon. Friend that we will respond to that helpful document within the time frame.

In the course of this Parliament, we are also committed to modernising legislation on discipline in our armed forces. We will introduce an armed forces Bill to bring together all such measures in the armed forces, which is something that should have been done at some point in the past few decades.

I hope that we have raised the profile and importance of our veterans through the schemes and initiatives that we have introduced for them—no veterans units existed before I set one up in 1997.

Rather than spending my time reading papers at my desk, I have gone to the most important location in the armed services in the course of the past week, which is with the men and women who serve this country, and I pay tribute to them. Whether it is the men and women on HMS Illustrious, who are north of Scotland en route to other tasks after the ship's refurbishment, whether it is 101 Squadron, which is carrying out air transport and air refuelling, whether it is those who pilot our C-17s, whether it is those involved in pilot training at Brize Norton or whether it is our servicemen and women in the Gulf, my admiration for how they conduct tasks set by this Government and this Parliament is undiminished.

In drawing the debate to a close, it is right that we should focus on those people's exceptional contribution. They have served their country with courage and dedication over the past year, most obviously in the areas that we have mentioned in Iraq, but also in the Balkans, in Afghanistan, in west Africa—in Sierra Leone—in Northern Ireland, in the Falkland Islands, in Cyprus, and in response to the south-east Asia tsunami. I am proud to be associated with them, and I thank the Government for the opportunity to be so again. I am sure that the whole House will join me in sending them our thanks and best wishes for the future.

Debate adjourned.—[Mr. Heppell.]

Debate to be resumed tomorrow.