Housing and Regeneration Bill

Before the noble Lord replies, the Minister said a lot of interesting things. Given the time this evening, some of them can be put on one side because they will come out later as we go through the Bill. To pick up the last point, my amendments are not intended to stop the HCA doing these things, but would ensure that they would be done only in exceptional circumstances and if the Secretary of State agreed. I am not talking about housing targets at all. I do not envisage—perhaps this is something we can pick up later—the HCA itself providing large quantities of housing and becoming a landlord. Surely, the HCA will be working either through local authorities or registered providers, as we must learn to call them in future—RSLs and so forth. The last point made by the Minister was not what I intended by the amendments, which were designed to be probing. The Minister said some interesting things about the presence in the regions, but we can pick those up later on. The fundamental point is the question of assurances. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, said that they had complete confidence in the Minister, the Secretary of State, Sir Bob Kerslake and everyone else involved. It may be that the Secretary of State, the Minister and Sir Bob Kerslake are all thoroughly good eggs and will agree with this, but the idea is that assurances can be given in a short-term ad hominem way and we are legislating for whoever may be in power in five or 10 years’ time. We need to look beyond the individuals concerned at the moment, who we may all have total faith in. Who knows who might be there in the future? Things might be different and people might have different attitudes. It is just possible—I would not put it further than that—that the present Government may lose the next general election and then who knows what catastrophe might descend on the country? Perhaps that will never happen—who knows? Perhaps the Liberal Democrats will take over and everything will be full of roses and sunsets for ever—or not; we shall see. Lots of issues have been raised. The debate has been extremely useful and the Conservatives, ourselves and others may want to see a more robust amendment that does what we are looking for at a later stage, but we can discuss that later.