Housing and Regeneration Bill

My Lords, it has been a thoroughly excellent debate. I congratulate everyone who has taken part in it. A wealth of experience has been demonstrated across the House, and I would expect no less. I start by saying how grateful I am for the welcome that the Bill has received from all over the House, and how much I look forward to Committee. Many issues have been raised this afternoon, and I know that we will have a good debate in Committee. First, I say to the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, that the Bill is in good shape. We listened hard in the other place, which means that we can concentrate on the outstanding issues in this House. I have no doubt, from the range of—not least opportunistic—recommendations and the opportunities identified, that we will have a broad debate in Committee. I was very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Best, for identifying the list of stakeholders and their arguments, but pointing out that they all want the Bill. That is perfectly clear. I advise noble Lords—and I do not mean to be presumptuous in saying this—that it is always wise to think of that as lobbying material. There is a broad context to the arguments in lobbying material. I was grateful for the comments of my noble friend Lady Ford on the appetite for what we are trying to do for stakeholders across housing. We have had various forms of evidence this evening, suggesting to me that the Bill is indeed welcome. Of course we will debate the detail, as we must. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester talked about the importance of asking ourselves what causes communities to flourish. We should keep that question in our minds as we debate the Bill. I will talk about purposes rather than processes in winding up, and noble Lords will forgive me if I cannot answer their many excellent but detailed questions. One of the purposes is to bring together all those elements, agencies and funding streams which make up a community, and which we have seen in the work we have done in growth areas and regeneration situations. You need it all; you need the infrastructure, the land and the leadership. I did not recognise what the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, said about the Bill; I will come back to that. You also need the ability to work as a team across all these elements—that is what the Homes and Communities Agency gives us for the first time—to draw on the expertise of people such as the noble Lord, Lord Mawson. I hope he will have the opportunity to talk to Sir Bob Kerslake because nothing could be nearer the sort of vision that Bob Kerslake is offering than drawing on the genuine expertise that is derived across this area. We are now in a situation where we have a clear set of objectives. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, asked whether I can give assurances that there will not be a destructive and protracted process. I can assure her of that. A tasking framework and a business plan are in place that set out very clearly the processes that are being gone through and that will have to be gone through. I again pay tribute to the leadership of Sir Bob Kerslake, as everybody has done, because not only does he come out of local government and is so successful that he knows what works, but he knows how to manage change. That will drive this in as speedy and efficient fashion as possible. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, asked about Wales. I can assure him that officials have agreed provisions with our Welsh counterparts and they continue to be in close contact with them, so I do not think he should worry about that. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, and my noble friend Lord Sawyer were right when they talked about the need not for structural change but for cultural change. However, I hope I have made the case that we need the structural change in the single agency in order to bring cultural change, bring people together and find new ways of working. I am sure that that cultural change will be delivered. We had a discussion about why the market cannot provide in this way. The noble Lord, Lord Best, and my noble friends Lord Morris and Lady Jones paid tribute to that, but we also had serious comment from noble Lords about the nature of the situation in the market. Noble Lords were right to do so. It is precisely because we are facing a different situation that we need a Homes and Communities Agency that can deliver not just the existing programmes of the housing corporations and EP but the flexibility to be able to have different approaches in different areas to meet different needs, which is the key to delivering in a period of uncertainty. It is obvious that the HCA would want to prepare to deal with the present situation as flexibly and imaginatively as possible and to prepare for a market upturn by putting together the key infrastructure, the key site assembly decisions and the capacity of local authorities so that we will be ready when the situation changes. I share noble Lords’ admiration for the role of the RSLs. They are right to draw attention to it. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, raised a few issues about governance. All I would say is that there is a distinction between strategic development. On CLG, the Government continue to lead on strategic policy, but the HCA will be the delivery support and engagement authority. That is how it will work. Noble Lords—the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, in particular but also the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, in his wind-up—asked about powers. This is an important area. With powers come relationships, particularly relationships with local authorities. The powers of the HCA are wide because the task is wide. I believe the objectives that we have already expanded upon in another place meet the task before us. Because the objectives are wider, the powers we are taking—in relation to planning they are inherited powers—will be wider, too. Let me give the sort of assurances that were given time and again in another place by Ministers that the powers that we have taken are exceptional. They will be exceptional in use and will be governed by the Secretary of State’s involvement. We will be in discussion with local authorities on the very rare occasions when the HCA needs to take planning powers. The critical thing will be consultation with local authorities first. I can certainly give that assurance. They will be used only in very rare circumstances. It is probable that, as they have been used very rarely in the past, they will be used to deliver complex regeneration projects. I turn to relationships with local authorities, which goes to the heart of much of what the HCA will be able to achieve. The noble Lord, Lord Smith of Leigh, and many noble Lords addressed the issue of the HCA’s regional and local responsibilities. The HCA sits within the planning system. Nothing that the HCA will do will be outside the planning system. Its relationships with the regions—the regional spatial economic strategies, the future single regional strategies and local development plans and frameworks—will be crucial. Of course, it is a national agency, but the key to success will lie in its ability actively to collaborate at regional and local levels. It will be a bridge between the delivery of national targets and the realisation of local ambitions. It cannot be remote—to address the question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, it cannot be a monoculture. There is too much diversity locally for it even to begin to be a monoculture. That diversity will be reflected in how it works. On its relationship with local authorities, we are in the process of drafting a concordat document, similar to the one that sets out the relationship between central government and local authorities, which will establish the relationship between the agency and local authorities. The concordat will set out how we expect the agency to operate with local authorities. Of course, we have special arrangements for London. My noble friend Lady Dean said that it will be a partner authority for the purpose of local area agreements and multi-area agreements. That is exactly what it will be—a partner authority. That will be key to its success. Everyone is well aware of that. I turn to some of the questions raised. The noble Lord, Lord Mawson, asked about regeneration capacity. We have experience of regeneration—not quite his experience, but in the HCA we now have an opportunity to bring our best experience of regeneration together. We will do that not only in urban but in rural areas. I say to my noble friend Lady Dean that, as she knows, rural housing is a very important aspect of the Government’s plans. I am telling her what she knows here but, traditionally, we set Housing Corporation targets to reflect rural as well as urban aspirations and needs, and that will continue. We indeed have some very specific challenges in rural areas, but our ability to bring people and agencies together to consider the rural situation will be more powerful and more focused. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester asked about eco-towns. We are not forcing eco-towns on communities; there was an invitation process. However, I listened hard to what he said. We will ensure that growth is taken forward sustainably. We have powers in the HCA to deal with infrastructure, which is essential if we are to deliver proper communities. Clearly, there is an active debate around the whole issue of eco-towns and the Government are listening. On the speeches made by my noble friend Lord Howarth—who gave a tour de force of the issues about design and quality, especially his emphasis on the term ““beauty””—my noble friend Lady Whitaker and the noble Lord, Lord Patten, we had an excellent debate the other day on architectural design and quality. This debate had echoes of it. I know that noble Lords are asking me to strengthen part of the Bill in that respect. We are listening hard. I take the point about design-review panels. We will look in all the ways in which we can to strengthen the already vast range of opportunities, incentives and requirements. Quality in the terms of our objective means designers, but we will go on listening to this debate. The same applies to accessibility in lifetime homes, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, referred. We have made a lot of progress in establishing a timetable for lifetime homes and public housing and a timetable of 2030 for all housing. We have now established a proper dialogue with industry and we will help it to achieve progress, but we will have no problem regulating if it does not make enough progress. However, by making lifetime homes such an important aspect of our work, not only in relation to ageing but for all of us, we will be in a much stronger position to make the sort of adaptations that we want for people who are in wheelchairs, for example. I will think more about what the noble Baroness said about how we can ensure in policy in general that we pick up that important point. On villages and allotments, we have strong and specific legislation on allotments, as the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, well knows. We know, because the allotment societies tell me—I meet all of them—that we have enough legislation but that it is probably not implemented systematically in some places. We have therefore put out guidance rather than looked again at what the law might do because that is not the point. On the noble Baroness’s general question, the Bill does not change the current position on the protection of green spaces, open spaces and allotments. I can give her that assurance because I think she thought that Schedule 3 in some ways weakened that provision. It does not. My noble friend Lord Graham of Edmonton talked about community land trusts. I am sure he will know that we are sympathetic and that we continue to provide support to the University of Salford’s pilots. We will support such support in principle, but I look forward to any further debate which he provokes if he makes any attempt to improve the Bill, as he would see it, in that respect. Likewise, on park homes, my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State with responsibility for housing announced in a debate on 27 March that we are committed to reviewing the existing system of licensing park homes and that we will publish a consultation paper later. I shall move swiftly to Part 2 and to the point about regulation, which is obviously as important. Many noble Lords addressed the problem of the domain and why we are excluding local government and the private rented sector. These are good questions. On local government tenants, all I can say is what I have already said; we are fully committed to it. We have made a pledge that we will include local authorities within two years. The private rented sector is a very different and problematic area—no one knows this better than the noble Lord, Lord Best—but the work that is being done by Julie Rugg is fundamental. It looks at a whole range of issues, and I feel fairly confident that we will come out at the end of that with a set of proposals. On the point made by my noble friend Lord Smith about retaliatory eviction, Julie Rugg’s review was almost prompted by the cases that were brought by the CAB, so she will obviously look at that issue, which I agree with him is very serious. There was much debate, powerfully led by my noble friend Lord Filkin, on the position of tenants and the question of choice. I do not agree, I am afraid. The provisions for tenants and choice are very powerful. The point about the regulator—Cave rightly identified the absence of choice as a reason for regulation—is that we want a dynamic market in housing management. We aim to achieve it through the Bill. The regulator’s objective is to promote choice, and the registration of a wider range of providers will extend choice. But the Bill has the fundamental objective—objective 3—of involving tenants for the first time. I hope that that will address some of the anxieties of the noble Baroness on the Liberal Democrat Benches who spoke about that. Clause 202 requires the regulator to provide information on the performance of providers. I am sure that we will have lively debates on the nature of that information. The Bill provides for the greater ability of the regulator to require providers to contract out management following an inquiry. We certainly have a set of propositions to debate in detail in Committee. My noble friends Lord Morris and Lady Jones raised non-housing activity. Essentially, regulators can set standards for non-housing activities, but they will need to be connected to social housing. The regulator should not seek to stifle innovation, which is the opposite of what we want. The issue of non-housing activity is quite complex. My noble friend Lord Whitty raised a set of issues, including the duty to engage with tenants. I say to him and to my noble friend Lord Filkin that we are listening hard to what is said about the issues that they raise. I am glad that my noble friend Lord Whitty welcomed the change to tenant ballots, but I am not surprised that he is not entirely satisfied with it. I look forward to further debate with him on the nature of information; we always listen closely to his concerns. On the HRA subsidy, the HRA review will look at a wide range of those issues. To conclude, listening and responding to tenants will be at the heart of the culture of the regulator. Listening and responding is what we do. My noble friend Lady Billingham talked about regeneration. With her enormous experience, she spoke about sport and leisure essentially being two of the most important factors for driving regeneration. The experience of Corby is outstanding in that respect. The problems that she raised about the ability of the planning system to respond to what she wants to see are known to me and I am sure that we will have an active debate on that. It is part of our approach to making the community more vibrant, more resilient and well provided for. Listening and responding to tenants is at the heart of the culture of the regulator and at the heart of this Bill. For the first time, housing association tenants will know what they have a right to in terms of standards of accommodation and the quality of their homes. They will know when those standards have been breached and what action has been taken, which takes us a long way forward from the situation that we have had in the past. There will be much to discuss on the detail. I am sure that the amendments that come forward will be creative and thoughtful. It will be a pleasure to engage in that debate. For the moment, I thank everyone who has spoken. I am grateful for the welcome that has been given, not least to those provisions at the back of the Bill about Gypsies and Travellers, the Armed Forces and the important changes in the HRA system, on which I am quite sure that we will have separate, but very good, debates. I commend the Bill to the House and I look forward to the next stage. On Question, Bill read a second time.