Housing and Regeneration Bill

We have touched on the first major unresolved situation—the extent to which the Government, through the agency, are prepared to put their money where their mouth is to achieve their overall objectives over the years, or whether local authorities, generally of a different political persuasion, will stand firm and say, ““We are entitled to do within our own area what we believe our local people want””. There will be a dichotomy. We are all experienced people who have been in local and national politics for many years. When I was the leader of the London Borough of Enfield in the 1960s, as leader of the Labour council and as chairman of housing I received a visit from two people—one was Bob Mellish, the Minister for Housing, the other was Evelyn Dennington, who was chairman of the housing committee of the GLC. They set us an objective in Enfield of building 1,000 housing units—an unheard of figure—but this target was achieved two years after we left office. The change was in 1968 but the plans and the finance were there for completion in 1970. No one can dispute the object of the HCA to, "““improve the supply and quality of housing in England””," but it is not what you do it is the way that you do it, who you do it with, who gets the credit and who picks up the bill. All these things have got to be sorted out. I have come into this Committee anxious that, at the end of the day, there should be a workable Bill. We will not agree on every aspect but, for the first time in many years, there is an attempt to get a strategy that works between central and local government. If it does not work and there is a war or a battle, no one wins. The Minister and her colleagues are entitled to have ambition, incentive and inspiration, but that needs to be tempered with political reality. They need to understand that you can go only so far. We have not yet come across the nimby syndrome, but it is there about. When colleagues, noble Lords on the Benches opposite and I debated the Greater London Authority Bill, we came across shocking instances of the extent to which affordable housing was being provided in some of the richest boroughs in London. The boroughs were exercising their right and took the view that, as far as they and their people were concerned, it was not their priority to build affordable houses. I hope the Minister will tell us that that is one of the priorities over the next period. There will be resistance but I hope that the record of the agency, as it grows in stature, will show to the people of an area that we are on their side and their council is not. A Member of the Committee has said that if a council does not achieve what the local people desire and wrongly defines what they want, it will be thrown out. It is the same for the Government and for the authority that we are establishing. If it is seen in time—the great mystery is how long we will have to demonstrate its usefulness—to make sensible decisions, wield influence and have people who are respected and authorised speak on its behalf, I have great hopes for it. But I do not underestimate the damage that can be done, and no doubt will be done, in the nexus between local and central government. However, the Government are entitled to get what is set out in their pre-publicity and in the Bill, and I wish it well.