Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for the way in which she has moved the amendment. I am not sure what the Minister’s response to it will be, but all through we have expressed our concerns about how the RDAs work and the likelihood that they will have more regard for the bigger urban areas than for the rural areas. So I take the comments that the noble Baroness made. I think that this is the only opportunity for me to bring to the attention of noble Lords a particularly important issue. Would this be something that the CRC would deal with? On the issue of affordable housing, some safeguards were put in place in 1992, after a long struggle, which ensured that no more than 80 per cent of affordable housing equity could ever be bought by occupiers of rural shared-ownership houses. That restriction gave landowners, planners and parish councils confidence that those houses would never be sold on the open market. That stayed in place until recently. I understand that, from 1 April, the 80 per cent restriction will be removed straightaway. If that is so, it is a very worrying aspect of an extremely important part of rural life. I was not sure where else I could raise the matter. I have written to the Minister directly on it, but I make no apology for raising it again. The issue that my friend Moira Constable raised with Ms Cooper was the right of staircase and rural shared ownership. The difficulty that I find myself in—the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, just referred to the need to alert the DTI to the difficulties—is that the matter actually lies with the ODPM. I thought that both examples sat very well with each other. Here we are creating a new body, which Defra is instigating, but it overlaps with two departments—and maybe several others as well. This is a real issue, and my question, in the light of what the noble Baroness said, is whether this is something on which the commission could have said ““Stop, this is one step too far””? Is it a Defra matter or a ODPM matter or a DTI matter? Where does it go? I thought that this was an ideal opportunity to raise an issue that would affect the RDAs as well. What input will they have? At the end of the day, who has the final say on what the outcome will be? I apologise for raising the matter, but the issue is extremely urgent, because this will happen on 1 April. I gather that, at the moment, unless we can persuade the Minister and he can talk to other Ministers, it is a fait accompli and there is nothing that we can do about it. It will hugely detrimental in the rural areas to housing that we have now and, more worryingly, for housing that we hope to prepare in future.