Housing and Regeneration Bill

I am enormously grateful to colleagues on all sides for their support. The only word of dissent revolves around the use of enabling powers. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, for preceding the meeting by finding out exactly what the processes and procedures may be in that regard. If an enabling power is being used confined to an issue on which there is cross-party support for the outcome and in which the potential protagonists, both landlords and tenants, are in full agreement, one is not extending one’s enabling power very far. If there is the chance to debate draft regulations, one really gets the best of all worlds. The question of culture, which the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, raised, seems quite an important one. Even if it is only two years before these council tenants are brought within the fold—this is, after all, the successor of a body that confined itself entirely to the tenants of housing associations—people will not have the time and energy to take account of the slightly different ways of working that would be appropriate if council tenants were within the fold. I feel that that is an important and useful additional point. As the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, said, the Minister, however well meaning, is not able to deliver the legislative timetable. One is acting on faith if one walks away from this opportunity now to secure something that can be used when the moment is right. As to the timing, I cannot believe that consultation on the details of this would take very long. Following Professor Martin Cave’s work, Professor Ian Cole’s work has included the people who would be at the core of the consultation. They have worked very hard and very speedily to bring the matter to a point where an agreed report is going to the Minister for Housing this week. We know that the residents within council housing would find this a more than acceptable extension to the protections that they already have and that the landlord bodies already are in agreement. So the consultative process is able to be extremely speedy. We are ready to go. It seems an awful shame to miss this golden opportunity. The next Bill will, I am sure, be important and useful, but it will not be specifically about regulation of this sector. This Bill is about the Tenant Services Authority and this seems to be the time when we should be making it as good as it can be. With a promise of returning to this matter, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendment No. 97PB not moved.] Clause 62 agreed to. Clause 63 [Restriction of ““registered social landlord”” system to Wales]: