Housing and Regeneration Bill

I hesitate to intervene, but we are raking over old coals, if one can put it that way, to a certain extent. We covered this ground fairly thoroughly last week. There is no easy meeting of minds. I am always fascinated by legislation and the words that are used and their meaning. One might logically assume that as the agency is the creation of the Government, if it failed a Minister might resign. However, I make no political points when I say that in recent years the old culture of ministerial responsibility being represented by a resignation was last honourably applied by a Member of this House when he was Foreign Secretary and he missed a point in the southern Atlantic. Unfortunately, since then we have not seen such an honourable tradition repeated. We will not resolve the issue today and I am sure that it will be the source of future debate on the Bill. Again, I shall listen with interest to what the noble Baroness says and study it with great care, because it will set the tone for future discussion.