moved Amendment No. 96:
96: Clause 49, page 23, line 2, leave out ““general or””
The noble Viscount said: This is a probing amendment. I chose directions because people must comply with directions. I always understood that directions were either for administrative matters or moments of crisis when time is of the essence and things need to be put straight as quickly as possible. In Chapter 5 of the Bill, the heading to the section that includes Clause 49 is headed ““Certain supervisory powers of the Secretary of State””. I may be wrong to be unfamiliar with that heading, but it does not strike a chord with me. I wonder about the precedent for such an encompassing heading.
We have been told that some of the powers in the Housing Association Act 1985, which introduced the Housing Corporation, and the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 were followed as a model for the Bill, but in neither of those Bills are the powers as extensive or phrased in the same way. To someone who has worked under Acts of Parliament, they read very differently.
We are also facing a circumstance in which Chapter 5 includes arrangements for the merger between the Housing Corporation and English Partnerships. Mergers can be, and often are, complicated and disruptive, particularly if they take place between unlike bodies. Indeed, the Housing Corporation, losing its powers of regulation to Oftenant, is left essentially as a facilitator, historically, with a great deal of money and the ability to make significant grants. It is also the larger body of the two. However, it does not have a balance sheet and is entirely dependent on cash flow, the incoming of public money and the provision of grants. English Partnerships, already itself the result of a merger, is a more executive agency, albeit much smaller. It has significant income and a significant balance sheet, with assets approaching £1 billion, I believe. It is used to dealing on both sides of an expenditure and an income account.
The HCA appears to be designed to achieve the best of both worlds—the world of the facilitator and the executive agency—and it is to be strong and independent. Everyone in the social housing sector will be watching to see whether the HCA will be able to become, and remain, strong and independent. That is even more relevant at a time of housing market difficulties. Yet the powers—guidance in Clause 48, directions in Clause 49 and consents in Clause 50—confer the power on the Secretary of State to exercise the closest form of control that any of us could imagine.
The question arising out of my amendment to leave out the words ““general or”” in front of ““directions”” and to retain, at least for the time being, ““specific””, is: what is the Government’s intention towards their supervision of the HCA? What is the historical evidence of their use, under the existing legislation, of powers of direction? Indeed, what directions have been given to the Housing Corporation? There is none in its latest reports and accounts other than the standard direction about the preparation of the accounts themselves. What directions have been given to English Partnerships in its annual report and accounts? There is none, other than the directions to do with the formal administrative matter of the preparation of accounts. Do the Government have any other circumstances in mind already that might require the use of the power of direction? If so, what might they be? In short, the general question that arises is: is the regime under which the HCA will be supervised intended to be light-touch or, right at the other end of the scale, heavy-handed—or somewhere in between?
I have a strong preference for a light-touch regime, and I shall explain why. New towns—indeed, the Commission for the New Towns is part of English Partnerships and is to disappear—and eco-towns are the subject of much discussion. That discussion takes me back to Middlesbrough, which came up in another part of our Committee proceedings. In 1820, Middlesbrough was a hermit’s chapel on the bank of the River Tees. There was nothing else. There were some surrounding villages such as Linthorpe. Then coal was found in County Durham—coking coal, which was suitable for smelting iron—and iron ore was found to the south in the Cleveland hills. The two came together on the River Tees and created the iron industry, and subsequently the steel industry, of Teesside. Middlesbrough grew apace as a massive housing estate and there was a great deal of housing management to handle the expansion of the coal-mining and iron ore industries and the subsequent metal-making industry. Therefore, there were very strong economic reasons why that town and many others were in particular places.
Now, the advance of technology is making it much less certain that there will be strong economic reasons for a town being in a particular place. In addition, much of the brown-land regeneration that followed the drastic change in the structure of our industrial economy, in particular, has been done. We have already had examples of that, such as Docklands, Teesside and Gateshead.
Therefore, in my view, the way forward will consist of a multitude of smaller schemes, some of them very small. If they are to produce the answer of 240,000 houses a year—or should I say more accurately the HCA’s contribution to that 240,000 houses a year—imagination and decentralised partnerships are bound to be the way forward, not a route closely supervised by central government. That is not a party-political point but an absolutely general point. I do not think that any Government could possibly successfully control the creation of enough partnerships and deals in order to create the kind of flow of housing, and particularly social housing, that we need. Therefore, there does not seem to be any strong argument for being able to send down the line to the HCA general directions on top of guidance and alongside consent. I beg to move.
Housing and Regeneration Bill
Proceeding contribution from
Viscount Eccles
(Conservative)
in the House of Lords on Tuesday, 10 June 2008.
It occurred during Debate on bills
and
Committee proceeding on Housing and Regeneration Bill.
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Proceeding contribution
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702 c180-2GC 
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2007-08
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House of Lords Grand Committee
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