Housing and Regeneration Bill

I also support these amendments. Will my noble friend the Minister take this away and have a look at current practice in both the Housing Corporation and English Partnerships? These clauses are a step back from how those organisations currently operate. A couple of examples may be of assistance. When we were trying to pilot community land trusts over the past 18 months, it transpired that the Housing Corporation could have gifted land to the community land trust in question but the Housing Corporation had no land. English Partnerships had land, but could not gift it to the organisations. We were in a really ridiculous situation. A case study made us think about bringing both the land and the funding together. We had hoped that the new organisation would then have the ability to do what neither of us could do for perverse reasons. The second thing that strikes me about this clause is that English Partnerships disposes of land at less then the best price, and for good reasons. Sometimes, when we— I am sorry; I should not say ““we””. I have not been with that organisation for six months, but after six years I keep saying ““we””. When English Partnerships takes land to the market and evaluates the bids for it, it takes explicit account of the quality of those bids. It does not just sell for top dollar so that any old tat is built on land, taking no account of environmental quality standards, space standards or whatever. It takes that land to the market with a clear development brief, and developers know that they have two hurdles to leap. They first have to leap the quality hurdle, and people will look at the best price thereafter. It is not simply a case of writing the biggest cheque to be able to acquire surplus or EP land. This clause does not currently take account of, first, current practice and, secondly, what we were trying to do in bringing the organisations together. Will my noble friend consider having another look at this? I am now confused about the intent of these clauses.