Housing and Regeneration Bill

I am glad that I am in a Committee with the noble Lord, Lord Best, and my noble friend Lady Dean. Coming into this debate and genuinely wanting to learn, I call to mind a time when some friends who live in York invited me to their home and showed me an arrangement in the kitchen to allow someone who is less able-bodied to use the sink. The equipment helped them to lift themselves up and down. My noble friend Lady Dean came to visit the house in her capacity as chair of the Housing Corporation after I drew her attention to it. It was fantastic for able-bodied people to see how far the provision of aids had advanced for those who need them. It was a Quaker development, and it was very much appreciated. The other instance that I draw to the Committee’s attention is that my wife and two boys had a condition called myotonic dystrophy. Dystrophy, as the Committee knows, is a disease of the muscles that weakens the body. We had never thought that we would need a stairlift and an aid to use the bath. Cost did not come into it when it was a question of our family’s needs but, on making inquiries, we found that under the existing provisions these kinds of aids are available subject to examination and scrutiny through the council’s social services. While I do not disagree with anything that has been said about desirability and the needs of people who are in search of easement, we have to recognise that there are finite resources. The Minister and her colleagues, in a macro way, will have had to decide on the thrust and the imperative of the legislation and what kind of burdens are to be placed upon it. Not that they are not desirable; they are. However, it is a question of attainment. We are talking not necessarily about the greatest good for the greatest number but about trying to ensure that the legislation is sufficiently robust that it will stand up in a court of law or withstand public scrutiny, and about going as far as one can in laying down in the Bill responsibilities that have to be carried out by an industry, councils and the voluntary sector. To what extent should resources be devoted down one path, bringing much needed easement? By doing that, how far do we inhibit the overall strategy? I have no knowledge about this, but I imagine that almost any aspect of improving the Bill in the way that the amendment suggests will have been thought of inside the department by the Minister and her colleagues. The fact that it does not appear in the Bill indicates that it has been thought of and been found unable to be acceded to. To accede to all these things in the Bill may well improve the Bill to the satisfaction of those pressing the amendments, but if at the end of the day—that is, not very far down the road—we are in difficulty because of the industry or the Exchequer, or the public will is such that it fails to make progress, we will not be providing a very good service. Like the rest of the Committee, I await what the Minister has to say, not about whether she thinks the objectives of the amendments are laudable but about whether they are attainable and strategically desirable in the context of the overall strategy of the Bill.