Housing and Regeneration Bill

My Lords, I am grateful for the welcome that the amendment has received. One of the first things that Sir Bob Kerslake should do when setting up the committee, or Joint Committee—perhaps with CABE—is to read your Lordships’ debate. He will find an agenda for his first meeting and some important principles for how he and the agency should best proceed to make a success of this challenging new agenda. It is a new agenda: it is the first time that we have ever required a public agency to address design issues in this way. That is important and quite radical. The HCA is a new organisation. I cannot second guess how it will work, nor would I want to. I can only pledge that it will work as closely as possible with CLG and CABE. We look forward to the inspiration that it will offer the department in raising our own already high standards in the attention and priority we give design in all our work, whether it is new build, new development or regeneration. If the noble Lord will forgive me, I will not answer his detailed questions this evening, although I could. It would be better to write to him and set out the full responses his questions deserve. They are complex, and cross more than just my department; for example, on education and training. I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me, but I assure him that yet another letter is coming his way. On Question, amendment agreed to.