Housing and Regeneration Bill

My noble friend Lord Filkin said that anyone who believes in tenant empowerment will support this amendment. I believe in tenant empowerment; I tried to practise it when I was chair of the Housing Corporation. The noble Lord, Lord Best, talked about the Willow Park Housing Trust in Wythenshawe. I remember it well. I remember it being very badly managed by the local authority. It wanted to have a governance structure that was different from the structure the Housing Corporation normally went for. With the support of the tenants, that is what we went for, and we have seen the outcome in good tenant involvement. The noble Lord, Lord Best, said that the devil is not in the detail, but these amendments present real practical difficulties. We all want to ensure that tenants have real involvement in their homes but, frankly, most of them are more concerned with getting the jobs done—for example, getting the windows replaced—than with knowing who is the chief executive of the housing association. It is a complex issue. A matter which has not been mentioned so far is the £35 billion of private sector funding that goes directly into housing associations. It does not go to the regulator or the Government but to individual associations. There are real practical difficulties in these three amendments. I shall not deal with the words, as I accept that these are probing amendments, and the noble Lord probably accepts that these words are inappropriate for the Bill. However, what does he mean by ““tenants””? Does he mean the tenants’ association, the majority of tenants or a handful of tenants? Then there is the issue of bypassing the regulator, which the regulations permit, in order to change the management of the housing stock. That brings other issues with it. It is the responsibility of the regulator, not of individual tenants who could not guarantee delivering the combined view of the tenants. There are a number of other issues. One of the reasons why there is £35 billion of private sector funding in this sector is the stability that the regulator has created. I have seen it operate. I have seen failing housing associations being merged into other housing associations without anyone losing his home, and if we are talking about financial failure, that is what we could be talking about. We do not need examples; we can see it in the market at the moment. My noble friend referred to changing the manager of a block of flats. There is not just the manager but the mortgage holder as well. With all due respect, I suggest to my noble friend that he probably has a mortgage and his next-door neighbour has a mortgage with someone else. In a block of flats, the manager is just the manager. In housing associations, the manager is also the owner of the property and is responsible for funding the mortgage. I have difficulty with the term ““poor management””. If you asked 100 tenants, 99.9 per cent of them would say, ““My management is poor””, because there are always areas where housing management can fall down. Mismanagement is another matter. I have difficulty with these three amendments and would like to hear what the Minister has to say.