Housing and Regeneration Bill

I thank the noble Baroness for her helpful intervention. I was coming to that point. We are very conscious of the need to take account of current practice. To summarise, Members of the Committee should be reassured by the points that I have made about how wider benefits can be taken into account. To pick up on the point of my noble friend Lady Ford, we have a commitment to draw up a general consent regime which is determined to satisfy and to safeguard public assets. We should reflect on the need to protect best practice in this field and take account of the need to ensure that we do not leave a gap that does not help us at all. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, asked a question about charity law that I ought to be able to answer, because I remember some debate and discussion about it when we did the Charities Bill twice. That is a slightly more complex question, and it is wide of the debate today, but the position would probably be that it would depend on what the trustees were trying to do in their particular charity. However, if we can find an answer for the noble Lord in due course, we will, and I will write to him on that. I think I have covered most of the issues. If I have not, I am sure Members of the Committee will remind me; we have already committed ourselves to providing some answers in writing. This has been a useful debate and discussion. I have tried to suggest in my response that there is more flexibility there, and that we can use the general consent approach to provide for that and take into account the issues that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, have rightly raised about the right conditions for disposing of land and assets at a lower-than-best consideration.