Housing and Regeneration Bill

I shall confine myself to Amendment No. 13—the one that I proposed—in winding up this discussion. I am very grateful to all those who supported the sentiment of my amendment if not absolutely every word. The noble Lord, Lord Best, summed it up extremely well. Is he still here? He was hiding behind the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, so I could not see him for a moment. In one sentence he said that it would send a powerful signal to local government throughout the country if we put something like this in the Bill. In winding up, the Minister did not disappoint or indeed surprise me. She would have surprised me if she had done what I suggested and said ““yes””. I might have had a heart attack and spared everyone a lot of further trouble if that had happened. However, she is asking for more. In a way, I was slightly sorry that she did not offer to pick up the baton and see whether she could find a form of words that achieved what everyone appeared to wish to do. We will have another shot to see if we can come up with something a little less restrictive. When she argued that the agency might occasionally want to go outside what I would call the box of co-operation, it occurred to me that that might be a good thing, but there might also be good reasons why it should not, which is a very two-sided argument. We do not want to get into that at the moment. The noble Lord, Lord Graham, who has left, mentioned quite rightly the dichotomy between local and national government. He knows as well as I do how tense and intense that can be. It will always be there. It is what I call dynamic tension and it works extremely well for national government and local government. If it did not exist and all were sweetness and light, I guess that we would make very little progress. This is an important issue. I am grateful for the psychological support for what I intended to be a psychological amendment, but, for now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.