Housing and Regeneration Bill

I have considerable sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is saying. This is a classic example of the increasing and increasingly detailed interference that has occurred for local authorities over the past decade in particular; in fact, it began before that. I do not like the term ““council housing”” in the modern context—it is discriminatory—but the issue behind all this is that of whether council housing is social housing. It is, and there is no getting away from that. In other respects, we will look later in the Bill at creating what is called the single domain, under which housing, whether owned and managed by councils, ALMOs or housing associations, will all be subject to the same regulatory regime and we will get some unification. I well understand that that is complicated because the basis of funding for local authorities is dramatically different from anything else. However, we are talking about social housing and there is a case for having all social housing treated in the same way, with regard not just to regulation but to access for funding. There is a quid pro quo to that argument, which is that some of the privileged positions that council houses might enjoy—there have been such constraints that they no longer enjoy them—would have to go, even if they are only theoretical advantages. I am not sure whether the amendment would get us to where we probably need to be, but it is certainly a subject worthy of further exploration.