Housing and Regeneration Bill

We also have concerns, in particular with Amendment No. 91. If the Homes and Communities Agency is planning to take part in enhanced values, presumably it is planning to pay the increased subscription if the values go down. That might be rather interesting in the present circumstances. You cannot have one without the other. If there is to be a system of grant which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, is fixed and finite at the point it is agreed, that is fine, but if a grant is subsequently variable if values are enhanced in one direction, there has to be variability if the values happen to go the other way, and that is certainly not written into this provision. That situation would be very dangerous and I do not think that we should go down that road. So far as I can see, it would create a whole new architecture for grants in this field. We know that if housing associations find themselves with surpluses, those surpluses are reinvested in more housing, which is surely what one wants. If there were a threat of some of the value being creamed off and being put back into the middle again, that would destroy any incentive that associations might have to try to produce a surplus for more housing. Therefore, we cannot agree to this group of amendments and to Amendment No. 91 in particular.