Housing and Regeneration Bill

I am not in support of this amendment, and I will explain why by way of illustration. The kind of committees and sub-committees that I imagine the Homes and Communities Agency will have will not be dissimilar to the type that we had at English Partnerships. One example would be the Milton Keynes Partnership Committee, where not only were non-executive board members of English Partnerships in membership, but the chief executive was the accounting officer of the organisation, so it is not dissimilar to what is being proposed in London. The practical point is that not only was the Milton Keynes committee very time consuming and we could not always ask non-executive board members to give the amount of time or expertise that was necessary, but there were day-to-day delegations to that committee that could best be supported by full-time members of staff. The sub-committees that the agency will have are different from the kind of committees and sub-committees that one might find in a local authority—they tend to be more executive in nature than concerned with policy. For those reasons, I would encourage the Minister to resist the amendment. I have a good deal of sympathy with the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, about the mayor chairing that London committee. We must remember that more than half the budget of this organisation will be invested in London, so this sub-committee will be an immensely powerful body. Notwithstanding the nature of the London sub-committee, the accounting officer of the organisation will still be personally accountable to the Secretary of State and to Parliament for the use of those funds, so it is essential that the accounting officer is a member of that committee. However, I would think that the more appropriate opposite number for the mayor would be the chair of the new organisation, although it is important that the accounting officer is there. For reasons of practicality, oversight and providing the best kind of advice, we must resist an amendment that would cut the accounting officer out of sitting on these committees. We could cast the net more widely and make sure that we had the right kind of executives on the type of executive committees that this agency will principally be engaged with.