Localism Bill

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point that I entirely endorse. It shows that the Minister's claim was entirely incorrect, and he should be ashamed of making it. The first amendment in my name, amendment 361, is about security of tenure. It is not the wrecking amendment that the Minister tried to pretend it is. It simply states:"““In preparing its tenancy strategy a local authority must ensure that to the greatest extent possible, tenancies granted in its area provide security of tenure so as to support and develop stable and confident communities.””" That is absolutely in keeping with the intelligent comments of the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on how there is a place for flexible tenancies, but they should not take over, and to the greatest extent possible we should try to support security and help to build stable communities. That is the purpose of the amendment, and I cannot understand why the Government are reluctant to accept it. I give the Minister one last chance. If he wants to be held to have any real credibility on the issue, he should accept it, because it would indicate that he is not simply performing a sleight of hand that will deny tenants security, but is genuinely interested in maximising the number of tenants who enjoy security of tenure. That would at least be a step in the right direction, and I hope that the Government will change their mind. I note, however, that he did not bother to respond to my question about why they have not accepted the amendment on a minimum of five years, so perhaps I might do a little better on this second try. Amendment 362 is designed to safeguard the Government against embarrassment. As the Minister will know, because we debated it in Committee, this is about the incompatibility of the phrasing of the Bill with article 8 of the European convention on human rights, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in two recent judgments. The Supreme Court indicated that where tenants make representations against a possession action, the courts must have the discretion to be able to consider whether it is proportionate to grant possession in the circumstances. That is clearly incompatible with the passage in the Bill that says that the courts must grant possession in all cases, without any doubt at all. I do not see how it is possible for the Secretary of State to have signed the statement saying that the wording of the Bill is compatible with article 8 when clearly it is not—or perhaps compatibility can apply only if it is put aside when cases come before the courts. It would be a rather odd position for a Minister to take if he was expecting the courts to ignore the wording of a Bill that he was putting before Parliament. In the interests of avoiding embarrassment for the Government, I hope that they will accept the amendment, which the Minister will know I have slightly amended to take account of one of the objections that he put up in Committee. The Minister entirely misinterpreted my purpose in tabling amendment 363, which was not to weaken tenancy standards but to safeguard housing associations from the risk of reclassification as public sector bodies. This is a long and complex story, and I will not go into it, but it was debated at length when the legislation creating the Tenant Services Authority was going through Parliament. I took a similar line then, from the Government side of the House, which is that while we want to see frameworks in place that ensure proper safeguards for standards, we should be very careful about creating a chain that goes directly from a ministerial fiat to an instruction to a housing association which could lead to the view being formed that they are no longer independent bodies that can be classified as being in the private sector, or not in the public sector. If such a change were to take place and housing associations were to become classified as public sector bodies, they could no longer borrow from the private sector without that counting against public expenditure. That would, at a stroke, wholly undermine the programme of housing association investment, and it would cause considerable financial embarrassment to the Government. I hope that the Government will think carefully about this. The individual, particular reference to standards would not necessarily, of itself, constitute sufficient grounds for the classification to be changed, but cumulatively the impact of an ever-increasing number of instances where the Secretary of State was able to instruct the Tenant Services Authority, or whatever body, to then instruct a housing association on how to act could lead to the view being formed that these are no longer bodies that are independent of the public sector. That is a very dangerous step. I tabled the amendment simply to advise the Government that this is a dangerous area that they need to think about carefully, because it could seriously undermine the whole funding of social housing in this country. Now that I have explained my amendments, I hope that the Government will be more thoughtful and reasonable in responding to them than was evident in the line that the Minister adopted earlier. If there is no change, I sincerely hope that all Members of this House who care about the future of social housing will vote to safeguard the interests of the public, users of the service, tenants and homeless people rather than those of the providers.