Housing and Regeneration Bill

If the HCA and the statutory undertaker come to an agreement, then there is no need to involve the Secretary of State in either of these sections. What would be the present situation if the HCA and the statutory undertaker did not come to an agreement? How would they now resolve the matter? Can they go for a court order? What would they do now? Is the Secretary of State needed to intervene in this? The worry that I have is that as you pile responsibilities on the HCA—of course, always leaving the door open for the Secretary of State to intervene directly—the top-down nature of the Bill is becoming clearer and clearer. We shall come to some later amendments but perhaps I may go back a step to footpaths. I remember very well that when the right-to-roam Act was passed we were promised a strengthening of the footpath system. This Bill does not go to the aspect of what has been promised in the past in any way at all. Time after time, as we discuss these amendments, we are setting up local disputes of a serious nature, and any time the people involved in a local dispute get the feeling that it will be settled by the Secretary of State, that dispute will get worse and continue for longer.