Housing and Regeneration Bill

Amendment No. 105 in my name covers a rather different subject; I should perhaps have pointed that out. It is about the disappearance of the Treasury syndrome. The Minister said that she would write to my noble friend Lord Brooke, who is not in his place. That letter will no doubt come and Members of the Committee will receive copies of it. His point was that not having the Treasury appearing with great regularity in the Bill is a major change from predecessor legislation. If I take two or three predecessor Acts, the Treasury makes about 20 appearances in each. In this Bill, the Treasury appears once, in Clause 97(4), in brackets, "““(given with the approval of the Treasury)””." I wonder what the brackets are for. Perhaps it is not really meant to be there because it is an exceptional entry. My amendment only goes to accounts. At the moment, the Housing Corporation and the Urban Regeneration Agency get an annual direction from the Treasury about their accounts. It is detailed and is repeated in their reports and accounts. In answer to the question about why the Treasury is no longer necessary, the Minister said it was okay because accountability was still ensured. I am not certain that accountability is the issue. As I understand it, when Secretaries of State are going to disburse moneys under an Act of Parliament, they do not have any money, so they have to go to the Treasury because the Treasury holds all the funds in its Consolidated Fund. Therefore, the Secretary of State needs to make a call on the Treasury for funds. I would have thought that that should be acknowledged in the Bill, if nothing else is acknowledged. I speculated about why this change of practice has come about. I wondered whether it was something to do with ultimate control and whether there was some issue whereby if you put the Treasury in too often, you would have to conclude that the ultimate control of the body concerned, the HCA and the regulator in this case, would lie with the Treasury. I wondered whether there was some problem attached to ultimate control. We need an explanation about why this change of practice has come about and why it is all right.