16 Most Recent Press Articles

Does GM have a big part to play in securing the future of food supplies?

Written by Dr Evan Harris MP on Thu 19th Jun 2008

IN 2004 the largest scientific experiment of its kind anywhere in the world took place in UK fields when scientists conducted the farm-scale evaluations (FSEs) of GM crops.

The idea was to look at what effect growing GM crops had on farmland wildlife, to see whether it would be safe to grow them in the UK. Despite repeated attempts by anti-GM campaigners to vandalise the experiment, the scientists published their results. They were mixed: some GM crops seemed to damage biodiversity while others appeared better for many groups of wildlife.

But, despite concluding on the basis of these trials that there was no scientific case for a ban, the government decided not to go ahead with commercial planting of GM crops.

Now that we are facing rising food prices, growing concerns about poverty in the developing world and environmental damage, the public - and hence the government - is getting over some of its initial revulsion against GM crops.

GM crops could be developed that are more resistant to drought and pests, and could be part of the solution to these problems.

At the moment the door is slammed shut on GM crops in the UK, closing a potentially promising avenue of research. Developing crops that are more productive and sustainable, and that could be grown commercially in the UK in the future, will open the door to investment in research which can harness some of the potential benefits for us all.

The UK pioneered the gathering of evidence on the safety of GM crops and then ignored the results. It is time to base our policy on the evidence and not just on public opinion.

Read "Does GM have a big part to play in securing the future of food supplies?".

Ageism Conspires Against Ming

Published on Mon 22nd Oct 2007

Following the announcement of Ming Campbell's resignation, the Lib Dems will be electing - under one member one vote - a new leader. I had the privilege of working with Ming on speech writing as well as on my science brief. He was a real gentleman and thoroughly good but tough bloke. I ran up against on a couple of policy issues and he was always very decisive and also pretty uncompromising.

While we have dipped in the polls that was not - in my view - the reason why Ming resigned. The problem that he saw no way of effectively improving the situation while there was so much media speculation over his leadership. The real reason for this was not - if we all honest - any question of his health or abilities. He was a former Olympic athlete and top barrister who had consistently got it right on issues like Iraq, Climate Change and the threat to our civil liberties. The real reason was the innate and unpleasant ageism - little short of prejudice - prevalent in the media and the political classes. Commentators would often say that Ming was too old to lead, without ever being able to point to any infirmity or frailty that was evident. They would never say that Paul Boateng was too black to be the first ethnic minority cabinet minister, or that David Blunkett was too disabled to be Home Secretary. Racism and prejudice against the disabled is unacceptable. Why isn't it as unacceptable for newspapers to print cartoon implying that old people are frail (zimmers always in the sketch) or demented (forgetfulness jokes). Ming would have out-sprinted most of those scribblers and was much sharper than most of his younger political foes.

Senior citizens should be outraged at the media message that David Cameron is a better leader than Ming because he is younger. Mr Cameron supported sending our troops to an ill-fated and often fatal mission to Iraq on the basis of gung-ho support for George Bush and the alleged fight for freedom. Older, wiser heads thought better of it. After all with age comes wisdom and that experience should command respect.

It looks as though all the candidates lining up for the leadership election are the same age. They will not be arguing that they are whiter, maler, fitter, or younger than one another. They will be talking about the challenges facing the country - to protect our environment, save our public services and protect our troops. They will also be talking about how to make Britain a fairer country. Fair for rich or poor. Fair for black or white. Fair young and especially for the older.

Read "Ageism Conspires Against Ming".

Ten Steps to Zero Carbon Britain

Written by Dr. Evan Harris MP on Wed 19th Sep 2007

Man-made climate change poses an increasing risk to people and businesses across the globe. There will be disastrous consequences if we don't act now. So this week, the Liberal Democrat Conference backed proposals to act now.

We propose to make Britain carbon neutral by 2050. Our plan is not a quick-fix but a clear, long-term strategy to set this country on the path to a carbon-neutral future.

Our commitments - a 10-point plan - will actively reduce the emission of carbon throughout everyday life, from providing the power to light our houses from carbon neutral, non-nuclear power generation by 2050 and targeting help for each of us to make our houses more energy efficient, to increased investment in greener forms of transport to make it possible to live a greener lifestyle and taxing pollution to cut taxes on people. And these commitments are not empty. Each one is costed and mapped out to ensure the money and methods are in place to reach the targets when we say we will.

Unlike the Government, who have finally had to admit that they will not meet their domestic target of a 20% cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2010, and the Tories who are only aiming for an 80% cut in carbon emissions - we are the first major party to respond to the weight of scientific evidence and aim for what is needed to stop climate change in its tracks - a carbon neutral Britain.

And the Lib Dems have not forgotten those already suffering the effects of climate change. We recognise the new threats to life in the UK posed by the climate changes that have already occurred and so will establish a UK national adaptation plan to boost flood defences and respond to other new threats.

Our plans ensure that everyone takes climate change seriously, leading the way to global-action.

Read "Ten Steps to Zero Carbon Britain".

Kidneys in Parliament

Written by By Dr Evan Harris MP, Co-chair All-Party Kidney Group on Fri 6th Jul 2007

The Dutch hoax kidney transplant TV game show which attracted much media attention recently certainly brought into the public eye the issues facing those waiting for a kidney transplant. Whether it did much good outside of Holland, or even in Holland, is hard to say. We in Britain are rather more low-key on how we do things but that should not mean we are reticent about raising the profile of kidney disease or the plight of patients.

The recent news about the little girl, Zoe Chambers, waiting desperately at the top of the waiting list for a transplant brought into clear focus the issues facing transplant patients.

The All Party Parliamentary Kidney Group last summer invited the key experts from across the transplant and renal communities to a summit to discuss what is going right and what is going wrong with kidney transplantation in the UK.

Kidney transplantation can revolutionise the life of of a patient on the waiting list

Faced with the facts that there is an official waiting list of 6000 kidney patients awaiting transplants; 800 potential donor organs are lost each year from non-heart beating donors; and that around 50% of organs from people are lost as a result of relatives refusing to permit the use of organs, the summit set out to look at how these issues could be solved.

The group produced a report, More Transplants, Saving More Lives, which was launched at the National Kidney Federation Annual Patient's Conference last October. This spelled out a 10-point action plan calling for sweeping changes to the current organ transplant system that could double the number of kidney patients receiving transplants each year.

The recommendations made by the report were broadly welcomed by other communities hit by low transplantation rates, such as hepatitis C sufferers.

In response to this report, the Department of Health has taken action. They have established an Organ Donation Task Force with a remit to identify the barriers to organ donation, analyse current issues that may have a bearing on donation rates and recommend action to be taken to increase organ donation. The APPG on kidneys welcomes this response but will keep the pressure up, monitoring the progress of this task force over the coming months, awaiting the results and ensuring that they are acted upon.

I anticipate the Group will be helped in this by other communities hit by low transplantation rates. Together, the joint influence of these concerned communities can keep up the pressure on the Department of Health to seriously consider our recommendations and make some practical changes to the system for the better.

I personally believe that the UK should move to a system in which consent for organ donation is presumed and those wishing that their organs should not be removed for transplant should 'opt-out'.

In 1999, I proposed a motion at the British Medical Association Annual Representatives Meeting calling for a system of presumed consent on organ donation to be adopted. The BMA now campaigns for the introduction of such a system. The Liberal Democrats have also backed the policy.

In early 2004, as the Human Tissue Bill progressed through Parliament, I proposed an amendment which, if successful, would have brought presumed consent into legislation. Unfortunately, the Government opposed the amendment and it failed.

It is still early days for the policies in transplantation instigated by the Human Tissue Act 2004 and we must allow time for the Government's Transplant Strategy to take effect. But we must keep up the pressure to ensure the Government reviews the success of the Transplant Strategy over the coming years and, if there is insufficient progress in increasing transplantation rates, allows Parliament to consider alternative measures to tackle the plight of those on the transplant waiting list, such as presumed consent for organ donation with opt-out.

There are many other avenues by which transplantation rates can be increased which must also be explored. I actively support investigating methods to raise public awareness about organ donation and instigating more efficient systems in hospitals to ensure more transplants can take place.

After the huge success of the summit last year, next week the All Party Parliamentary Kidney Group is hosting a Dialysis Summit with a view to producing a similar manifesto to drive improvements in this area. The most pressing issues currently facing the dialysis community are up for discussion including capacity, service delivery, the importance of patient choice over dialysis provision and some of the factors influencing their experience of receiving dialysis.

Holiday dialysis and transport as well as access to surgery will all hopefully be covered. Our aim is to produce another report to force the Government to listen to our concerns.

Read "Kidneys in Parliament".

Jews need a Secular Europe not a Sectarian one

Written by Evan Harris and published in Jewish Chronicle on Wed 21st Mar 2007

The late comedienne and avowed secularist Linda Smith, used to say, "I'm not religious - I get on with everyone!" Clearly, being religious should not prevent anyone getting along with her fellow human beings. But when it comes to the state and politics, not being religious really is the best bet. Not only does it avoid an auction of requests for favouritism or special favours from individual religious organisations, but a secular liberal democracy is the best guarantee for everyone of freedom of religious belief and freedom to manifest that religious belief in ways that do not restrict rights of others.

The debate about the role of religion in politics is hotting up again in the UK and in Europe. Here in Britain the House of Commons voted by a large majority to have a wholly elected upper house, which clearly has implications for the presence in our legislature of 26 Church of England bishops. Having unelected clerics in the legislature as of right is not unique in the world. In this respect we are joined by Iran. Like Iran, ours are all men, and like Iran they are more conservative on social issues than the average elected representative.

There are plenty of religious people elected to Parliament, and many are there because of there strong religious views. That is fine, but fortunately we do not (yet?) in this country have religious parties, standing on a platform of bringing in "God's law". Israeli politics has some good points - democracy for one - but few would argue that it benefits from the influence of religious political parties.

The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has - following her visit to the Pope last year - reignited the argument about whether the EU should "do God", saying, "We need a European identity in the form of a constitutional treaty and I think it should be connected to Christianity and God, as Christianity has forged Europe in a decisive way." Ms Merkel is focussing her efforts on a Berlin Declaration to be launched on 25th March, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, which laid the foundation stone for the creation of the European Union.

The wish to reassert Europe's Christian roots is no doubt at least partly in reaction to the new-found assertiveness of Europe's Muslim minorities. In a recent survey, some 40% of young British Muslims said they would prefer to live under Islamic Sharia law. But if the Berlin Declaration makes reference to Europe's Christian roots, it will encourage the churches to make further demands for special consideration within Europe's political institutions. The response from Islamic leaders is easily predictable. They will condemn all such efforts as "anti-Islamic" and demand - at the very least - equality of special treatment for Islam. The stage will be set for sectarian conflict for generations to come.

Deeply alarmed by this prospect, hundreds of Europe's leading intellectuals, politicians, academics and writers have lent their support to an alternative vision for Europe, the Brussels Declaration, a single-page restatement of Europe's shared values: respect for the dignity and autonomy of the individual, human rights, tolerance, democracy and the rule of law.

"We do not see regression to a Europe in which religion plays an increasing, and divisive role in our institutions as the answer to our problems." said Roy Brown, coordinator of the "Vision for Europe" project, speaking at the launch of the Declaration.

Encouragingly, the Brussels Declaration has found support from Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jewish and Humanist leaders, from scientists, academics, writers and journalists, and from Conservative, Liberal, Social Democratic and Green politicians from across Europe. Among the organisations supporting the Declaration are the Catholics for a Free Choice, Ekklesia (a Christian think-tank), British Muslims for Secular Democracy, the National Secular Society and the World Union of Progressive Judaism.

From a Jewish perspective we are faced with a clear choice. We could support attempts by the Catholic and Protestant churches to stress Europe's "Judeo-Christian" values as a bulwark against the growing influence of radical Islam. But this is a high risk strategy which could fail if force of numbers became the determining factor. Seeking to defend a "Christian Europe based on semi-recent history and numbers of adherents" may, in the short term, help to recruit to an evangelical form of Christianity as a reaction to radical Islam, but it sells the pass and encourages an battle of orthodoxy and war of numbers that has no winner.

The alternative is to work with other liberals and intellectuals towards a secular Europe. Secularism is not at all the same thing as atheism, nor is it anti-religious (despite claims to the contrary by many church leaders). The secular state is neutral in matters of religion and belief, and thus provides the only framework within which all Europeans, of all faiths and of none, can enjoy equal freedom and equality of treatment.

Let us keep religion in the home, in the shul and in the community. Let us keep it out of the role of the state. As it says in the Bible, you reap what you sow. Let us sow tolerance and diversity, not zealotry and division.

Dr Evan Harris is Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West & Abingdon and a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights.

Read "Jews need a Secular Europe not a Sectarian one".

Religion and politics

Published on Wed 25th Oct 2006

Religion is big in the news at the moments and the political approach we take is very important. I am an honorary associate of the National Secular Society which means that I am keen to see religion kept separate from the state and from public functions. So for example I do not think that state funded schools or hospitals should be run exclusively for certain religions or that religious organisations should have preferential treatment compared to non-religious ones.

A good example is the out-dated idea that our King or Queen as head of state should be "Defender of the Faith", that is a special defender of Protestantism. Given the bloody sectarian history of this country with one version of Christianity burning alive those of another version and then vice-versa, it is surely time to end the link of Crown with religion. Given the way that Catholics have been persecuted in this country over the years, the ridiculous rules which prevent a monarch marrying one - or being one - must end. We must not have Bishops sitting in Parliament as of right and MPs should not have turn up to prayers at the start of the day to book a seat.

As for Prince Charles' idea that he should be the "Defender of [all] Faith", that is even worse as it simply singles out those who are not religious to be "undefended".

Having said all that the way that some politicians have gone on about the veil is highly irresponsible. Clearly teachers should work in schools with their face visible and so I believe that the Employment Tribunal came to a sensible judgement on the question of Ms Azmi the teaching assistant who insisted on wearing one when male teachers were around. . But I simply can not understand jack Straw saying that he asks muslim women wearing a face veil who come to see him in his surgery to remove it. It is hard enough for some people - especially ethnic minority women to get to see their MP - without fearing they will be confronted by such an impertinent request. Mr Straw and his supporters may not like it - I don't like eyebrow rings - but it is not up to MPs to tell people what to wear! It would also be a fashion disaster of course.

The race relations minister who called for the sacking of the muslim teaching assistant before the Tribunal had even met was way out of order. David Cameron was right to call for political restraint, but he should have a word with his mate David Davis, who said that muslims were causing voluntary apartheid - another inflammatory comment.

Read "Religion and politics ".

Ming the merciful

Published on Mon 16th Oct 2006

One of the unique things about the Liberal Democrat conference is that the Party leader, even at the peak of his popularity, never has an easy time. In fact, no Lib Dem leader probably enjoys his conference. Having said that at least the experience is "character-building".

Ming Campbell came to this year's conference under some pressure and indeed abuse from the media. That was not reflected the Party, even from the former rival leadership camps, and I speak as one who came from Simon Hughes'. Personal abuse about age - especially for a vigorous ex-athlete in his sixties - was never likely to bother activists - or the voting public, made up as it is of often less vigorous middle-aged and older people. But Ming had a very good conference. Although it was mixed one for the party - and for the same reason.

The Party adopted a new tax policy which is radical and redistributive, as well as green and simplifying. The problem with a tax policy which aims to simplify the tax system is that it will consist of a series of measures which abolish the complexities, which taken as whole appear complicated! Furthermore any policy that is going make a £200billion pound tax system fairer can not fiddle with income tax changes of less than £5bn; more shekels must be shifted to have an effect. So we have a policy of lots of tax rises (on the wealthy and on pollution/polluters) and lots of tax cuts (on poorer and middle income tax-payers). Our political opponents will focus exclusively on the former (how shallow you might say!) and so, sad to say, will most of the media. It seemed to many of us that the best way of selling the policy was to have a relatively "popular" and relatively understandable tax rise as part of the package to act as a signal for the "pain", so that we could spend our time talking about the "gain". That is why there was an intensive and - as these things go! - exciting debate on whether to include a 50p top rate income tax rate in the overall package, to make it even fairer and just as green. I led the rebels, Ming backed the main motion. He won - comfortably in the end, after a high quality debate.

The outcome was good for Ming, in the short term, since it enabled him to have a "good" conference. But also in the longer term it will make his advisers less worried about the threat of party conference which in turn will keep at bay the sort of paranoia about the grass roots which so debilitates the leadership of Labour and the Tories. It was also good for the delegates and activists who saw a great debate, and good for our reputation as a party prepared to debate contentious issues where the result actually changes the policy. Even I survived unpunished.

I still think the new and highly progressive tax policy is going to be more difficult sell without the top-rate tax headline. As my colleague Phil Willis asked the Conference in a rip-roaring speech "Can we see our spokespeople rallying the crowds with a line like "WHAT DO WE WANT? The abolition of Capital gains Tax Taper Relief!! ' WHEN DO WE WANT IT? On the liquidation of fixed assets!! Not really!"

The leader's speech was reckoned to be pretty good by the conference and even by those dark forces in the media who judge these things. The - in some parts - worried about Kennedy return went smoothly for the Party and for Charles who was always well-liked and now well-regarded.

It was the best attended and most professionally run conference I have ever attended so far which bodes well for the future of the Party. Mind you, both the activists and their sparring partners in the leadership are doubtless planning next year's bout.

The Parliamentary party in the meanwhile has started campaigning immediately on the Green tax switch with a set piece opposition day debate on the 16th October and action week later in the month. It is agenda-setting stuff!

Read "Ming the merciful".

The party conference season

Published on Wed 27th Sep 2006

The party conference season is upon us and both Lib Dem and Labour conferences have been interesting - within reason of course! - although for rather different reasons.

At the Lib Dem conference, among other things, we debated a key issue of tax and how to make it fairer. We now propose to raise taxes on pollution and on the wealthy and to use the money raised to cut tax on people, work, and earnings. So we would raise the personal tax allowance by thousands of pounds taking millions of the poorest tax payers out of tax altogether, cut the basic rate of income tax by 2p down to 20p and increase the threshold for higher rate tax. We want to abolish the hated council tax and replace it with a fairer tax - local income tax - related much more to the ability to pay. I led a move during the debate to include, on top of all this, a new top rate of income tax of 50p on very high earners. Although I was defeated by the Leader, Ming Campbell, and his supporters it was victory all round since firstly I was able to rebel with no "punishment". Secondly, our debate was widely considered by the media to be high quality and entertaining, and the vote at the conference actually mattered in deciding our policy. No other conference will have proper democratic debates which are binding on the party's and the leadership's policy.

Mind you at least the Labour Party conference had some personality-based drama in the Tony-Gordon-Cherie pantomime. I fear (but I do not worry!) that the Tory Party conference will simply be a stage managed and slick collection of set piece speeches - light on policy but heavy on spin and sound-bites. Sadly this represents the increasing Americanisation of our policies.

What is the point of becoming a member of the Labour or Conservative parties? You do not have a vote on policy matters and you cannot debate issues with the leadership without being called "disloyal". You just write a cheque and get told when to clap. No wonder turnout and engagements is falling in this country.

Read "The party conference season ".

Are we making a hash of drugs classification?

Written by Dr Evan Harris MP on Wed 2nd Aug 2006

Are we making a hash of drug classification? Should the activities of the UK security services be monitored? Two reports I have been working on over the past months hit the headlines this week.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights inquiry into counter-terrorism policy took me as far as Canada, to explore other countries solutions to the problems of using sensitive intelligence material in criminal trials. Our report concluded that preventing terrorism is not easy, but the Government can do more to tackle it without sacrificing our fundamental liberties in the process. In order to do this, we made recommendations including allowing intercept evidence to be used in court and working on ways to use intelligence as evidence in trials. The Government could also make it easier to charge and prosecute suspects while increasing the opportunity to question them after they have been charged.

I am also a member of the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology which reported this week on an investigation into the classification of drugs, part of a bigger look into the use of evidence in the Government's policy making.

Our inquiry found that the drugs classification system of successive governments is neither evidence-based, nor even evidence-aware. Rather than basing classification on scientific assessments of a drugs harm to a user, it is currently based on a hotch potch of historical assumptions and criminal penalties, sending out chaotic messages to drug users and young people. Can it be right that ecstacy, responsible for around 50 deaths a year, is in class A, the same class as heroin, responsible for 764 deaths in 2003? In our report, we recommended a more systematic approach be adopted, as developed in part by the work of one of my constituents, Professor Colin Blakemore, Head of the Medical Research Council, to arm the public with the facts about drugs and their effects.

Over the summer, I'll be doing background work on two new enquiries. One looking at human trafficking, the horrific practice of transporting people for exploitation through violence, coercion, deception or the abuse of power, and the other into scientific research institutes such as the Oxford Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.

Read "Are we making a hash of drugs classification?".

Health Policy and NHS Practice

Written by Dr Evan Harris MP on Tue 4th Jul 2006

It has been a busy and important last few weeks for health services locally and health policy nationally.

I was at the BMA's annual conference during some of last week in Belfast, representing local doctors and talking to doctors' leaders about the key issues. On the first day I heard the sad and dramatic news that 2 over-worked consultant surgeons were being made redundant at the Oxford Radcliffe, probably on the say-so of a team of over-paid accountants recruited by the Government to "turn-round" performance!

It costs hundreds of thousand s of pounds to train surgeons to consultant level and the sort of work done by these doctors - including cancer surgery - is very well regarded in the region and in the country. We need more of it, not less and as I told the BMA - it is a crying shame that is happening for the medics and the patients alike.

In the same week, my colleagues and I who support changes in the law to make assisted dying for the terminally-ill lawful (with safeguards to prevent abuse) were disappointed to see a well organised campaign by opponents of such a change succeed in reversing the BMA's policy on the issue. Last year I succeeded in getting the BMA to adopt a neutral position on the principle of liberalising the law in this area but this year my opponents, mainly on religious grounds, managed to change the policy back to one of opposition. As it happens the House of Lords - heavily lobbied by the Bishops there - had already blocked Lord Joffe's private members bill so we wont see the issue return for at leas a couple of years.

On behalf of Oxford's doctors I proposed a motion supporting a recent court ruling that doctors acting as expert witnesses in court should be subject to the jurisdiction of the court only - just like all other witnesses - and have immunity from being sued by disgruntled defendants in a civil action or through the GMC. The media hounding of cot-death paediatrician Prof Roy Meadow - who was eventually cleared by the High Court, has deterred many doctors from being willing to help vulnerable children by providing testimony, which is in no-one's interest.

Finally back in Parliament, I spoke in a debate on embryos and abortion where many MPs from all parties joined me in calling for a review of abortion law. In my view - after 40 years it is high time that we look at whether later abortions can be reduced by making earlier abortion easier to access and see whether medical advances have had any impact on the ethical underpinning of the current time limit. The Government - as usual - said "No, now is not the right time". But when will it ever be?

Read "Health Policy and NHS Practice".

Watching Tony Blair on behalf of AIDS victims

Written by Evan Harris on Tue 6th Jun 2006

Last week, I added my 'eyes' to join 5180 pairs already watching Tony Blair to make sure he keeps his promise, made with other world leaders at the G8 summit last July, to ensure there is AIDS treatment for all those across the world who need it by 2010.

This year is the 25th anniversary of the first HIV diagnosis and yet most people living with HIV in developing countries still lack many of the vital resources we have in the UK. Nowadays, if you are HIV positive in the UK, you can expect access to the latest medicines, doctors and clinics and AIDS is no longer an inevitable consequence of HIV, but many of the 40 million people who are living with HIV worldwide cannot even get these basic health requirements.

The Stop AIDS campaign wants to change this. It is calling for three things. Firstly the money. To reach the 2010 target will need money but currently the donor Governments, including our own, do not have a plan for where this will come from. A good first step would be to fully finance the international Global Fund, set up to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria and currently experiencing a critical shortfall meaning programmes which are successfully saving lives may be cut. But this needs to be accompanied by a commitment to find a total of $20 billion a year for AIDS in the future including the money to reach the 2010 target.

Secondly, making drugs affordable. Generic drugs for HIV and AIDS are much cheaper but developing countries need us to provide them with financial, technical and political support to ensure they can buy them. The Government has commitments already to work on improving access to medicines and it must ensure it meets these, but it is vital that it continues to work to guarantee that new, cheap versions of key drugs become rapidly available in countries ravaged by AIDS.

Finally, improving health services. In many poor countries healthcare fees discourage people from seeking treatment and force poor families into poverty. At Gleneagles, world leaders committed to supporting free healthcare for the world's poorest countries and we must keep this commitment. Poor countries must be encouraged to invest in health care, training and attracting doctors and nurses to stay in their home countries, and improving the delivery of HIV services throughout local communities.

This week I am in Ukraine with the international campaigning charity RESULTS to look at the problems they are facing from TB and AIDS. Keeping the promise will be a huge step towards saving millions of lives.

Visit - www.actionaid.org.uk/eyes

Read "Watching Tony Blair on behalf of AIDS victims".

The Politics of Housing Need

Published on Wed 7th Dec 2005

Affordable housing is sadly not a high enough priority for national politicians and even at local council level excuses are always found for not providing more. In my own constituency, Oxford West and Abingdon, there have been several very good examples of the way that even with the best intentions it is desperately difficult to provide social housing for rent.

In one example, there was an area of land along the river mostly in private ownership but some publicly (City Council) owned. City Council policy at the time indicated that the publicly owned land should be used to maximize the amount of social housing, especially given the reliance by the Council on bed and breakfast for the homeless; this was made clear in the Local Plan. The rest of the land was developed by the private sector and financial contributions were made available for transport and other facilities.

Due to bad management and difficulty in getting any funding from the Housing Corporation to develop the Council-owned land, by the time the planning application was put in to build the social housing, the privately built houses were occupied. The Council-owned land had been a waste dump but was now overgrown with thick bushes. Some of the new private residents argued against giving planning permission for the social housing element of the overall development on the basis that they did not want to lose this "green area" within the development. It is obviously hard to judge how much of the opposition was due to a specific interest in the "natural overgrowth" and how much was due to an unwillingness to see social housing built on the site. The campaigners identified a legal provision whereby they could claim that the land was a "village green" despite it not looking anything like a green or the surrounding houses anything like a village. So far they have been successful in the courts and the case is now before the House of Lords. Politically it has been a difficult issue. I have been of the view that housing need is the most important factor here. In contrast the Green Party, while always talking about the importance of social housing, are strongly supporting the application for social housing land to be denoted as a village green.

Oxford City Council, for decades run by the Labour Party, has an unfortunate history of collecting financial contributions from private developers, from a range of exclusively private projects, and then using them to create areas of exclusively social housing in other parts of the City.

While this might be defended as a financially efficient way for building social housing, it has the unfortunate consequence of having created sink estates with multiple social problems and effectively separating out the "haves" from the "have nots". More recently the Council, under Liberal Democrat - and even under Labour - control has seen the error of this and is insisting through the new Local Plan that large private developments contain at least 50% of affordable housing and as such, housing is mixed in as far as possible with the private units. In my view small areas of publicly owned land within existing exclusively private developments should still be used for 100% social housing to meet the need, especially when we are only talking about a small development of 100 houses or less. Bizarrely however, it is now being argued by some that in order to avoid the creation of socially troubled large estates, even small tracks of publicly-owned land should be offered for 50/50 private/social housing. It is hard to escape the conclusion that this is intended to aid the financing of such a development at the expense of maximizing the number of social units.

Predictably the only lobbying letters I have had are from existing (well-housed) residents in the private development making their case for the village green. The people in desperate housing need who would benefit from social housing are not in a position to write to their MP or to turn up at planning committee meetings or campaign rallies. Those of us who want to see more affordable housing need to find a way to mobilize the dispossessed and the homeless, the overcrowded and the poorly housed. Only then will we start to have a balanced debate at local level and in the national arena about priorities for land use.

Read "The Politics of Housing Need".

The complete Oxfordshire NHS Adjournment debate

Written by Hansard on Thu 17th Nov 2005

This is the complete debate from the 16th November from the Hansard source.

4.55 pm

Dr. Evan Harris (Oxford, West and Abingdon) (LD): I am grateful for the opportunity to have this debate. I welcome the Minister and other hon. Members whose timetables may have been slightly affected by the inevitable delay to the start of the debate owing to Divisions in the House. I am happy to see that the hon. Members for Banbury (Tony Baldry) and for Wantage (Mr. Vaizey) are in their places. I know that they hope to catch your eye, Mrs. Dean, as does the right hon. Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Smith). I intend to sit down at seven minutes past 5 o'clock, after 12 minutes, in order to give those hon. Members a chance to have three or four minutes among them and still leave the Minister a chance to reply.

I have given the Minister notice of the broad subjects on which I wish to speak. I have no prepared script, because the problems are obvious and not much preparation is required to address them. Oxfordshire's health economy is faced with huge cuts because of the savings that it has been asked to make this year. Those savings are to be made this year, not over a number of years through a financial recovery plan, which many of the units of that health economy—especially the hospitals and trusts—are undertaking. Those cuts represent about £30 million. Given the scale of the savings that must be found and the fact that the decision comes after years of cuts because of the need of many trusts to achieve financial balance through financial recovery plans, it will be impossible to meet that target without cuts to front-line patient services.

As other hon. Members representing Oxfordshire constituencies will know, this matter must be seen in the context of the history of repeated annual cuts in social services provision. The pressure on the Oxfordshire social services budget is a result of an unfair formula, the imposition of extra duties on local authorities that have not been properly funded by central Government, and a capping regime that prevents local people from voting to preserve services to the vulnerable, even at the cost of increasing an unfair tax that I would like abolished in favour of a fairer one. The matter must also be seen in the context of cuts in funding for the Supporting People programme owing to an irrational change in the funding formula. That will result in extra pressure on the health service.

The strategic health authority was told in July that it had to break even within a year without brokerage from the wider NHS. It is not possible, fair or reasonable to impose that time scale. There will need to be hundreds of whole-time equivalent job losses even to begin to meet that. The Government must step in and say that that is not what is supposed to happen in the NHS. If there must be a cuts programme, it ought to be phased, so that huge cuts are not made that result in redundancies.

The strategic health authority decided to impose the cuts on a formula that is based mainly on staff numbers. That is unfair on those specialties and services that are human-resource rich compared with the broader operating figure or turnover of a trust. That applies especially, but not exclusively, to mental health and learning disability services. There are questions as to what consultation took place with providers when the

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formula for allocating the cuts was set out and, indeed, on what wider consultation occurred before that decision was taken. It is one thing to have to make cuts, but another to create an arbitrary basis on which hospitals should make them when, by common consent, many of the hospitals instructed to cut budgets are not responsible—having met their financial recovery plans—for the position in which the Oxfordshire health economy finds itself. The Oxfordshire health economy is faced with an impossible situation: the Government have asked it to do things for which there has not been sufficient funding while still meeting its targets.

The Government will say one thing that I would like to address pre-emptively: more money has gone into the health service nationally. That is a fair point to make to those who voted against the tax increases that brought that extra money for the NHS, but the Minister will know that I voted consistently for the tax increases, and I am still concerned. I did not criticise the tax increases to pay for the NHS. Indeed, my party said that we should implement them before the election in 2001 and not just after it. Obviously, people who do not support tax rises to pay for the NHS have to find other ways to provide the money, but the imposition of political targets that Oxfordshire health trusts have been told to meet or they will be named and shamed or zero-starred and the managers sacked means that they have chased the targets at all costs. That may not have been the right thing to do. I think that they should treat patients at all costs, not chase targets. It is not fair that patients should suffer because of the cost of meeting the targets.

The sort of cuts that we are discussing—we do not have time in half an hour to go into them in detail and we know about only a few of them at the moment—apply already to the pain clinic beds. I gave the Minister notice of this list. I am referring to the in-patient beds to treat people suffering from chronic pain. That measure will, as I understand it, save only tens of thousands of pounds—it will not make a big dent—and the service is a specialist one for a very special group of patients who do get relief from it. A community-based service, without in-patient beds, cannot provide that service. When I was a doctor in the Oxford area, I recognised the value that other clinicians placed on it.

We have heard about the proposed closure of the Barnes unit. That is the acute psychiatric service at the John Radcliffe hospital, on which when I was a doctor in Oxford we relied in accident and emergency to deal with people whose physical problems were based on or largely due to acute mental impairment. The fact that a unit was embedded in the hospital took a big load off the emergency department. Losing that service without there being a direct replacement will put more pressure on beds elsewhere in the hospital, and patients will be treated in inappropriate beds, which is extremely unfortunate.

That situation is associated with seven consultant job losses. At a time when the NHS needs to be growing and there is a shortage of psychiatric posts, to say that there will be a loss of seven posts, even though the post holders have been saved through a merger, is a worrying sign of things to come. As I understand it, the scale of the cuts that have to be made across Oxfordshire means hundreds of redundancies. We would not often expect to find ourselves talking about a bigger NHS, as the

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Government tend to, and then about making doctors, who cost a fortune to train, redundant. That is not a good way to seek to recruit people into Oxfordshire.

There are other cuts in mental health and learning disability services. Horton general hospital, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Banbury, is also affected by these provisions. The only response that there seems to have been to the general concern about the extent of the cuts is a bizarre proposal to privatise the management of the primary care trust. Will the Minister tell me about the Department of Health's role in the genesis of the idea that the solution to Oxfordshire's problems was to sack some managers in the new PCT and to outsource the management by tender, probably to a private company, which would then have the commissioning role? As we have discussed in this Chamber before, there are real problems to do with the vested interests that private companies would have in commissioning services from themselves or their commercial rivals. The proposal seems to miss the point in a big way.

There was no consultation. The notice about the idea said that there had been consultation of key stakeholders. I do not want to give myself or other Oxfordshire Members airs, but clearly the health service in Oxfordshire does not think that Members of Parliament or the PCTs are key stakeholders. I presume that we are talking about the Department of Health. I would be interested to know, if the Department of Health was not behind the proposal—Lord Warner said in the Select Committee on Health recently that the proposal would not be imposed, because it would be a matter for the PCT—whether the Minister is happy that we have a health service that proposes something and then gets it withdrawn. At best, the situation is a mess; at worst, it is a U-turn forced by the opposition to the measure. If we could have some explanation of what on earth was going on in relation to the proposal, and reassurance that it is firmly off the table, I would be grateful.

I have a thick file of letters from concerned constituents, and I am sure that that applies to other hon. Members from Oxfordshire. Our constituents are very worried about the impact that the proposal will have on patient care.

I share with the Government the aspiration of a bigger, wider NHS that is properly funded. I do not see why Oxfordshire should be left out of that wish and why Oxfordshire patients, across the board, should be facing such cuts. If there have to be reductions there needs to be time to plan them, but I cannot believe that it is beyond the Government to find a way of ensuring that patients and, indeed, hard-working staff, are not punished for the fact that what the NHS is being asked to do by the imposition of Government targets and, I accept, by patient need is greater than the amount of resources available.

There are particular issues in Oxfordshire such as the need to employ agency staff; it is difficult to recruit and retain staff because of high living costs. There are special factors but they are not adequately recognised in the funding formula, although generally I support a funding formula based on need. Oxfordshire has particular problems and I urge the Government to do something

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about that, because it is a centrally funded service—centrally funded by the Government. There is no option for local people to be able to contribute and they should not therefore be facing such cuts. I urge the Minister in her response to give some comfort to Oxfordshire patients, and to the doctors and nurses.

5.6 pm

Mr. Andrew Smith (Oxford, East) (Lab): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) for making available this opportunity, albeit brief, for other hon. Members from Oxfordshire to intervene in the debate. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister and the Government will take note of the strength of feeling on the issue in Oxfordshire, which is reflected by the fact that hon. Members from all parties are raising concerns on behalf of their constituents.

I want to make four points: first, patient care must be paramount. Secondly, the scale of the deficit in Oxfordshire this year cannot be eliminated in one year without unacceptable damage to patient care. It is a tragedy that we are faced with these cuts when £15 million a year extra is being put into the Oxfordshire health economy. That puzzles local people. It is their unanimous view that things cannot be straightened out in one year.

Thirdly, the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon did not mention that the region had to find £15 million extra this year for Milton Keynes. Milton Keynes has a very good case, but it has limited the ability of the strategic health authority to help with the situation that Oxfordshire faces. If the Government wanted to make some extra help available without setting a precedent nationally, which for various reasons might be difficult for them to accept, I suggest that that is a particular and very important factor that should be considered.

Fourthly, I want to highlight the putting out of primary care commissioning to private tender. An indication of delay in that respect is not good enough; it would be much better for it to be refused now, because when several trusts are grappling with financial imbalances and other difficulties, the last thing they want is that threat and uncertainty hanging over what should be the core responsibility of primary care trusts. It is a bad idea, which it would be better to bury now.

5.9 pm

Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) for allowing me to intervene in the debate. I agree with almost everything that he and the right hon. Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Smith) said.

I shall say a quick word about deficits. Originally it was said that there would be a deficit in the Thames Valley strategic health authority of £35 million and in Oxfordshire of £25 million, mostly in the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS trust. I understand that at a recent meeting of the strategic health authority it was said that that figure may have come down to £15 million, but the figures £23 million and £18 million have also been bandied around. My first request, therefore, is please can Richmond House—the Department of Health—and the strategic health authority agree on the size of the deficit? That surely must be possible.

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Secondly, the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS trust did not start this year with a deficit. It had a three-year recovery programme, so all the deficit is in this year because of what the Oxford Radcliffe hospitals—the John Radcliffe and the Horton—have been doing to meet the Government's waiting list targets. It has not been financial recklessness. My next request is please can we have a clear indication from Ministers whether the hospitals can have more than one year to pay off the deficit, as the right hon. Member for Oxford, East said, or will it all have to be done by the end of this financial year?

When I wrote to the Secretary of State about this matter, I was told that it is the responsibility of the strategic health authority. I have written to the chief executive of the SHA, but I have yet to receive a response. However, I understand that Sir Nigel Crisp has signalled that in-year deficits must be met by the end of this year. The Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS trust would have to find about £18 million or £15 million in this financial year. That cannot be done without crazy slash-and-burn policies. That would have a dramatic impact on both the John Radcliffe hospital and the Horton general hospital in my constituency.

I have two simple requests for the Minister. Can we agree on the deficit and can a clear signal be given to the Thames Valley strategic health authority that it is not feasible for the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS trust to save £15 million or £18 million in a single year, especially as that would come after a three-year recovery programme? There has to be a sensible proposal for how that money can be recovered over a number of years. Unless that is made clear now, we will have a disaster in the last quarter of this year. In order to make such savings, the chief executive and the board of the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS trust will have to make cuts, not because those cuts are rational but just because they are the quickest way of saving money. That will damage patient care.

5.11 pm

Mr. Edward Vaizey (Wantage) (Con): When I asked the Prime Minister about this issue this afternoon, I quoted from an excellent and closely argued editorial in The Oxford Times, which concluded that Ministers must intervene, and set out three reasons why they should do so. The right hon. Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Smith) has four reasons why Ministers should intervene, and I have five reasons. The Prime Minister gave me the brush-off—to use a colloquialism—but I hope that the Minister will not do so.

There are five reasons why there must be intervention. First, historically, Oxfordshire has been underfunded; we receive 85 per cent. of the national average. Secondly, as the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, £15 million has gone to Milton Keynes. That is a demonstrable case of underfunding; the money has gone there because the population of Milton Keynes has increased rapidly over the past four years, but the funding is still based on the 2001 census. Thirdly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) pointed out, the John Radcliffe hospital has done such a good job in meeting its targets and cutting waiting lists that that has put a strain on finances.

My fourth reason is a more general point. Health inflation is running at about 6 per cent. The Prime Minister said that funding had increased by 6.5 per cent.

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Therefore, in effect, that increase is almost negligible. Finally, we have had a bureaucratic organisation imposed on us—the five primary care trusts that were imposed from the centre. That is now being scrapped, as my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury and other Members mentioned, and one PCT will be formed instead. That has imposed costs on us that are not our responsibility.

In conclusion, I simply say that I hope that the Minister will intervene.

5.13 pm

The Minister of State, Department of Health (Ms Rosie Winterton) : I congratulate the hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Dr. Harris) on securing the debate. As he said, there is cross-party concern about the matter under discussion. I understand the points that have been made—

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

5.20 pm

On resuming—

Ms Winterton : Thank you for your indulgence, Mrs. Dean, in allowing us to carry on.

The hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon made the point that extra money has gone into the NHS. He also pointed out—I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Smith) would agree—that the Conservative party voted against the increases that have enabled us to put it there.

As my right hon. Friend said, our aim is to improve patient care, and we have to make sure that patient care is paramount. However, it is also important to realise that good patient care and good financial management go hand in hand. As my right hon. Friend said, an extra £50 million has gone into the Oxfordshire health economy this year. The primary care trusts in the Thames valley have received an overall increase of £167 million this financial year and will receive £427 million next financial year.

We are devoting big increases in spending to the NHS. Despite that, the Oxfordshire health economy has built up a financial deficit. We need to make sure that that is sorted out; otherwise, one area in the strategic health authority will effectively carry on subsidising another, year on year—that will mean taking money from one area and putting it into another. It is therefore important that we are rigorous and firm in saying that the financial deficits need to be sorted out.

Both my right hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Vaizey) asked about Milton Keynes. Milton Keynes is in a situation similar to that of Oxfordshire, and the SHA is providing financial assistance there. However, the SHA has given £10 million in financial assistance to Oxfordshire and an additional £1.5 million to support the Oxfordshire mental health trust, and that has been achieved by using surpluses generated by other organisations within Thames valley. As I say, that situation cannot continue.

All hon. Members who spoke, particularly the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), asked about the balancing of the books for this year. The situation in Oxfordshire is fluid and can change month by month, so

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it is not possible at this stage to give a prediction of what any deficit may be. We never do that until we have audited accounts. However, SHAs are being expected to achieve overall balance this year. That means that they may adopt methods similar to those used previously: they may take surpluses from some areas and use them to subsidise areas with particular problems.

However, I reiterate that in such situations we expect the health authorities to achieve that overall balance and ensure what is best in the longer term for local people, patients and staff working in the area. I pay tribute to the staff working in Oxfordshire, who, I am sure, are doing everything they can to deliver good quality services to patients. Nevertheless, it is important for all concerned that we achieve that financial balance.

As right hon. and hon. Members know, the revenue allocations are made direct to primary care trusts, based on the relative needs of their population. A formula is used to determine each PCT's target share of available resources. There are always arguments about the relative merits of the formula, but we work extremely hard to ensure that it is fair.

I want to deal with some of the concerns about the proposed closure of services. NHS organisations have a duty to involve and consult patients, the public and their representatives in planning and development of and changes to the operation of services, and the overview and scrutiny committees also play a part when such changes are considered. Therefore, I would expect there to be good consultation.

I understand that the proposals for the closure of the acute psychiatric in-patient service at Moorview and the Barnes unit will be consulted on shortly and that the Oxfordshire Mental Healthcare NHS trust is seeking to redeploy staff in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire mental health services. I hope that that gives right hon. and hon. Members some reassurance. In regard to the closure of services at Henley, I also understand that Henley was a partnership between the council and the Oxfordshire learning disability trust. The council stopped funding the Chiltern centre at Henley and, for a while, the future of the service was in doubt. However, the charitable Chiltern centre for disabled children now runs the centre.

I think that all hon. Members referred to the possible out-sourcing of the management of Oxfordshire primary care trust. I shall use this opportunity to reiterate what we have already made clear. We want SHAs and PCTs to put forward proposals through "Commissioning a patient-led NHS", when it comes to the reconfiguration of PCTs. We want proper

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consultation on the proposals, and a model for organisational boundaries then to be determined. However, it will then be down to each PCT to propose how it will discharge its statutory functions. Only after some of the organisational changes are made will the PCTs consider how to make the changes, if they wish to do so, in running services.

Dr. Harris : I welcome that, which I recognise as the position put by Lord Warner in the Health Committee. I have two questions for the Minister. First, who is to blame for the fact that people were led to believe—it is clear in the SHA paper—that all this would happen very soon, long before the merger was complete and the PCT would decide itself? Secondly, did Ministers in the Department know at the time about the proposal, which has now been pulled, and did they say that it was unacceptable to make it so prematurely?

Ms Winterton : The Secretary of State has made it clear that the letter sent out on 28 July was not meant to indicate that the services provided by PCTs should suddenly be removed, but that we wanted proposals for organisational changes. If PCTs then wished to divest themselves of the provision of services, as opposed to the commissioning of services, they would do so only if they had fully consulted local people and felt that that was the right way forward for their local area. PCTs do not, therefore, have to divest themselves of services. I hope that that has now been made clear to all SHAs and will be reflected in the proposals that they put forward.

I shall now turn to the closure of the in-patient pain service beds at the Churchill hospital, which are part of a strategic review to look at ways of linking chronic and acute pain services and to ensure that the trust can continue to deliver high quality and integrated care, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, East referred. The trust is considering how to provide access to in-patient facilities in an alternative location within the hospital. It is following due process in line with the trust's policy on organisational change and redeployment.

I understand that the closure of an orthopaedic ward at the Nuffield orthopaedic centre is part of plans to modernise service delivery. The trust has reviewed its operation to ensure that service quality is maintained following the changes. Again, the overview and scrutiny committee has been consulted and has determined that the proposal does not constitute a substantial change to services.

It being twenty-eight minutes to Six o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the sitting lapsed, without Question put.

Read "The complete Oxfordshire NHS Adjournment debate".

NHS cash Crisis

Written by Dr Evan Harris MP on Thu 17th Nov 2005

Not education, education, education but health, health, health or rather cuts, cuts, cuts is the political legacy of the Tony Blair's Government in Oxfordshire.

It is remarkable that after 8 years of a Labour Government the main thing that patients, doctors and nurses are all talking about now is the prospect of appalling cuts to front-line services due to a cash crisis. What we know about so far - and this makes up only a fraction of the £30million that have to be found - are the closure of the acute psychiatric in-patient service at the JR, the closure of the in-patient pain service beds at the Churchill, cuts to the Horton in Banbury, the closure of an orthopaedic ward at the NOC, and cuts in the services for disabled children.

What is the health Secretary Patricia Hewitt doing about it? Nothing. In fact she is insisting that there are deeper cuts still because she wants to achieve break-even this year, not over time. There are other ways to break even without damaging patient services. The Government could provide more cash as a loan to the County - like it did just before the General Election or - just as good - stop setting political "must do" targets which force the local health authorities to break the bank to meet them, to avoid being "named and shamed".

All that Patricia has come up with for poor Oxfordshire patients and staff is the privatisation of the primary care trust management. That is market ideology, Thatcherism gone mad. For a start it means the redundancy (and redundancy payments) for the existing managers, and it means private companies with shareholder returns (not patient outcomes) as the main driver being responsible for hundreds of millions of pounds of NHS cash.

Nice one Pat!

Read "NHS cash Crisis".

Speech - Delivered by Dr Harris to FA delegates at the 'Football for All' Homophobia Summit

Published on Thu 3rd Nov 2005

"Joint Action Needed"

I am delighted that the Football Association is taking this initiative and that so many of the interested parties are involved. All are to be congratulated in getting this far, but we must all be aware that there is much to do.

I remember raising homophobia in football with the previous FA chief executive 3 years ago at a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Football Group. He was caught somewhat off-guard, but the FA and I pursued a correspondence which demonstrated that some thinking on this subject had been done even at that stage.

This was followed up by a meeting at FA HQ 18 months ago which some of you would have attended when the problems of homophobic player conduct, general crowd abuse, specific problems encountered by Brighton FC and other examples were aired. We also discussed the October 2003 statement of the Parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe which called on countries - among other things -

• to launch active campaigns against homophobia in sport

• to treat homophobia in the same way as other forms of discrimination and harassment

• to criminalise homophobic chanting at sports events to the same degree as racist chants

• to involve the lesbian and gay community and the NGOs in the campaigns

The Rapporteur for that statement was former sports minister and now Lord Tony Banks. He and I would rightly want to see action in this area from Government, sports organisations and the participants. While the FA and the game generally have made progress, there is much more to do.

From a human rights point of view and from the perspective of the infringement of dignity, there is no significant difference between racism and homophobia. It is potentially invidious to make a comparison or contrast, but attacks on someone on the basis of their sexuality (actual or perceived) just like with race, is an attack on our common humanity. It is crucially different from an attack on someone on the basis of their political views or their football allegiance, however deeply these are felt, because race, gender and sexual orientation are innate.

Because sexuality is - unlike race - usually a private matter, the public abuse that some players, officials and spectators receive has a hurtful quality which is peculiar regardless of the sexual orientation of the target. It can create pressure to - and even compel - people to deny that they are gay; which in turn makes life even more difficult for those who are gay who wish to protect their privacy. It is this pressure - including the pressure to live a lie - or to be forced to deny something that is your own business that can make stress so unbearable on an individual level.

So the wider recognition of this problem is overdue. Match officials and club officials, the administrators and the police must act and must be seen to act. On the one hand, the recent conviction of a Hill City fan for homophobic abuse of Brighton fans is encouraging, on the other hand the way that Robbie Fowler seemingly escaped any sanction from his club -and indeed match officials - following the disgraceful baiting of Graeme Le Saux in February 1999, demonstrated the disgraceful double standard that operated then and probably still does.

Homophobic abuse is a hate crime. Directed against individuals it is already a public order offence. The criminal law in this area lags behind the law against the incitement of racial hatred and racial abuse. Public order offences can be aggravated by racial and religious motivation, but not other grounds. But that should not disguise the fact that homophobic abuse is already an offence. It degrades not just those who are the targets but those who indulge in it - whether mindlessly or with malice aforethought. It also debases those who are playing or spectating and undermines the ability of the game to attract and maintain a family audience.

Government must lead the way in the way that it has not in the past when Section 28 - actively prevented councils from promoting equality and fighting homophobia.

The Government could and should do more. We need comprehensive equality laws which outlaw discrimination against gays and lesbians in the provision of goods and services and impose the same positive duty on public authorities to actively promote equality on the grounds of sexual orientation as already exists for race and is going through Parliament on gender. That would be section 82 - in a way - a section 28 in reverse - where we would be asking public bodies what they are doing to stamp out homophobia and promote non-discrimination and fairness.

I want to recognise the efforts of the Gay Football Supporters Network, by Stonewall and other groups. It is only right to point out what work the FA - and Phil Smith and Lucy Faulkner in particular - has done already and the progress made, the Ethics and Sports Equity Strategy of 2002, the evolving policy on discrimination coming from this, and the support of the play "Gaffer!" at the end of last year which dealt with issues of homophobia in football.

But this campaign really needs to be made more high profile. It needs to move from the inside pages of the Observer to the back page (or any page) of the tabloids.

The key test of the Football Association's commitment to this issue will be whether there is high profile public support by the England team and management as part of the valuable work they do to promote the game, the development of the game and the structures associated with it.

Although we all recognise that it is not easy for individual players to take a stand - although some could and should - the whole team could and should be expected at some time soon to highlight and mainstream the campaign against homophobia in football.

There are some glaring inconsistencies in football as in life. The authorities seem to tolerate excessive, prostrate, group kissing and hugging that occurs on the pitch in goal celebrations. It is peculiar that there is not clearer zero-tolerance of homophobia.

Football does not routinely penalise swearing and chat-back, so breeding a culture of dissent and abuse. I strongly believe that football can learn much from rugby and even cricket in this regard, without losing its popular and wide appeal. The promotion of the women's game and the vibrant youth game demands a de-machofication, to coin a phrase - indeed to invent a word.

Recent events lead one to assume that the football authorities sometimes wish they could drive heterosexuality - in its high- profile-front-page-of-the-tabloids form - out of football, and stamping out the worst excesses of homophobia will do know harm. As politicians like to say - much done, much still to do. I hope we can do it united.

Read "Speech - Delivered by Dr Harris to FA delegates at the 'Football for All' Homophobia Summit".

Kidneys in Parliament

Written by By Dr Evan Harris MP, Co-chair All-Party Kidney Group on Fri 6th Jun 2003

The Dutch hoax kidney transplant TV game show which attracted much media attention recently certainly brought into the public eye the issues facing those waiting for a kidney transplant. Whether it did much good outside of Holland, or even in Holland, is hard to say. We in Britain are rather more low-key on how we do things but that should not mean we are reticent about raising the profile of kidney disease or the plight of patients.

Kidney transplantation could be revolutionised by the opt-out scheme

The recent news about the little girl, Zoe Chambers, waiting desperately at the top of the waiting list for a transplant brought into clear focus the issues facing transplant patients.

The All Party Parliamentary Kidney Group last summer invited the key experts from across the transplant and renal communities to a summit to discuss what is going right and what is going wrong with kidney transplantation in the UK.

Faced with the facts that there is an official waiting list of 6000 kidney patients awaiting transplants; 800 potential donor organs are lost each year from non-heart beating donors; and that around 50% of organs from people are lost as a result of relatives refusing to permit the use of organs, the summit set out to look at how these issues could be solved.

The group produced a report, More Transplants, Saving More Lives, which was launched at the National Kidney Federation Annual Patient's Conference last October. This spelled out a 10-point action plan calling for sweeping changes to the current organ transplant system that could double the number of kidney patients receiving transplants each year.

The recommendations made by the report were broadly welcomed by other communities hit by low transplantation rates, such as hepatitis C sufferers.

In response to this report, the Department of Health has taken action. They have established an Organ Donation Task Force with a remit to identify the barriers to organ donation, analyse current issues that may have a bearing on donation rates and recommend action to be taken to increase organ donation. The APPG on kidneys welcomes this response but will keep the pressure up, monitoring the progress of this task force over the coming months, awaiting the results and ensuring that they are acted upon.

I anticipate the Group will be helped in this by other communities hit by low transplantation rates. Together, the joint influence of these concerned communities can keep up the pressure on the Department of Health to seriously consider our recommendations and make some practical changes to the system for the better.

I personally believe that the UK should move to a system in which consent for organ donation is presumed and those wishing that their organs should not be removed for transplant should 'opt-out'.

In 1999, I proposed a motion at the British Medical Association Annual Representatives Meeting calling for a system of presumed consent on organ donation to be adopted. The BMA now campaigns for the introduction of such a system. The Liberal Democrats have also backed the policy.

In early 2004, as the Human Tissue Bill progressed through Parliament, I proposed an amendment which, if successful, would have brought presumed consent into legislation. Unfortunately, the Government opposed the amendment and it failed.

It is still early days for the policies in transplantation instigated by the Human Tissue Act 2004 and we must allow time for the Government's Transplant Strategy to take effect. But we must keep up the pressure to ensure the Government reviews the success of the Transplant Strategy over the coming years and, if there is insufficient progress in increasing transplantation rates, allows Parliament to consider alternative measures to tackle the plight of those on the transplant waiting list, such as presumed consent for organ donation with opt-out.

There are many other avenues by which transplantation rates can be increased which must also be explored. I actively support investigating methods to raise public awareness about organ donation and instigating more efficient systems in hospitals to ensure more transplants can take place.

After the huge success of the summit last year, next week the All Party Parliamentary Kidney Group is hosting a Dialysis Summit with a view to producing a similar manifesto to drive improvements in this area. The most pressing issues currently facing the dialysis community are up for discussion including capacity, service delivery, the importance of patient choice over dialysis provision and some of the factors influencing their experience of receiving dialysis.

Holiday dialysis and transport as well as access to surgery will all hopefully be covered. Our aim is to produce another report to force the Government to listen to our concerns.

Read "Kidneys in Parliament".

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