---

Business of the House

On nuclear power, I cannot promise when there will be a debate on the issue, but the energy review will be published and then, in due course, there will be a debate on this country’s future energy needs, including the role that nuclear power should play. Let me point out to the hon. Gentleman that people forget that nuclear energy currently plays an extraordinarily important part in energy generation. It accounts for 75—[Interruption]—terra-watt hours. I am learning. I am very happy to explain, but afterwards. That is 20 per cent. of total electricity generation. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) will know that, because of the decline in North sea production of gas in particular and oil, unless we take other steps to rebalance the generation of energy, including nuclear power, we will become quite unnecessarily reliant on overseas sources of energy. He will also know that the idea that renewables could possibly replace the loss of generating capacity from nuclear power is simply not the case. Even in a country such as Germany that has huge numbers of wind farms—far more than I think would ever be found acceptable here; its generation of electricity by wind is only a third of that generated by nuclear power in this country. On the regionalisation of police forces, the orders will go through the House in the normal way. I cannot recall the procedure exactly, but I think that many of them will be taken upstairs. On the reorganisation of police forces, I know, as a former Home Secretary—everybody in the House knows it—there is simply no necessary connection between the efficiency of a police service, the degree to which the service is delivered at a local level and the overall size of the constabulary. Moreover, the current boundaries were in effect settled following the royal commission report on the police in the early 1960s. Forty years on is not too short a time to reconfigure police force boundaries to take account of the dramatic changes in our social structure in the meantime. On a list of ministerial responsibilities, there are in the Library of the House and available on the website letters that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has sent to each departmental Minister setting out responsibilities. The detailed list of ministerial responsibilities will be published in the normal way. However, having watched oral questions every day since I became Leader of the House, I cannot say that the absence of the list has caused any difficulty whatsoever to either Ministers or Members. On the Human Rights Act, the hon. Gentleman says that it was the finest thing that I ever did as Home Secretary. If he does not mind, I would like to say that it is one of the finest of a long list. Future historians of the Home Office may say that the finest thing that I ever did as Home Secretary was to survive four years. There needs to be a proper debate about the Human Rights Act. That is what we are proposing. Following 11 September, the circumstances today are very different from those anticipated at the time of the passage of the Act. There are some who say that the Human Rights Act is a problem; there are others who say its interpretation is a problem. Let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater, but look sensibly—which is what the Prime Minister wants—at how the Act is working and whether it or its interpretation should be changed.