Housing and Regeneration Bill

The poor noble Lord, Lord Bassam, is having a very hard time because we are all suspecting his motives before he has had a chance to defend himself. I, too, support this group of amendments. This subject has been hanging around for a long time. My noble friend Lord Cathcart made a particular plea for rural areas and housing earlier in this Bill. In many rural communities, there are people who would make land available for way below the commercial value of development land on the basis of a community land trust, so that houses would be available to the local community and would remain so in perpetuity. This would help rural areas very much; so, on that basis, I support this group. It is interesting that the proposed system would be available to all communities where land was in the ownership of people who might make it available on this basis. However, this does not overcome all the obstacles. This is only one technical lacuna—if I can put it that way. The land would still have to go through the dreaded planning system. This does not remove that obstacle at all, as the Government have found when their eco-towns are considered, which seem to have raised a battery of negative sentiment. Going back to rural areas, this would be on such a scale that most communities would welcome it. Whether it would fit with the detailed village envelope as it existed would always be a matter of contention. It may be a matter of time before one can do something about that, because that is the planning system. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, will say, ““We will take this away, look at it and produce a better form of words””, if he does not think that the wording is adequate. If a better form of words cannot be found before Third Reading, I suggest that he does the honourable thing and accepts this form of words. It is a fairly modest challenge. If the Government do not like this form of words because there is some insuperable obstacle in them, they should produce a form of words which would make it work. This is the opportunity. The time is now. I am very much with the noble Lord, Lord Graham, on this. Heaven help us, we are all getting older and we would like to see it happen.