Localism Bill

I wish to discuss amendments 13 and 271, and in doing so to draw on my experience of serving for 10 years as a local councillor in the city of Hull in east Yorkshire. I represented a large council estate, including the house in which my dad grew up, as well as the three-bedroom house in which my grandma lived until the day she died because it was her home. I have no problem with the concept of flexible tenancies, and I think that councils should be given tools enabling them to offer some form of flexibility. However, although I broadly support the Bill—an odd feature of this place is that Members tend to get to their feet when they are unhappy rather than happy about something, but I assure Ministers that there are plenty of provisions in the Bill about which I am perfectly happy—I should like to be given a few more details. The Bill states that local authorities may offer flexible tenancies, but I should like to see more commitment in regard to the proportion that they should offer, and also an absolute guarantee that they will continue to offer secure tenancies. The Bricknell estate, which I used to represent, illustrated the importance of mixed tenure. We had some problems. People lived in three-bedroom houses long after their children had left. The worst experience that I used to have at my surgeries was being asked by people after someone had died, ““May we please have their house?”” People were literally on death watch trying to obtain homes. I do not pretend that there is not a problem with people living in homes that are too big for them. However, they should not be forced out of their homes, to which they have a sentimental attachment. I do not want some official from the local authority to turn up all of a sudden and tell people whose children happen to have left home that under the terms of their flexible tenancies their time is up, and they must move on and make a home somewhere else.