My Lords, I should confess that this amendment is not well drafted—I blame my noble friend for that—because the intention is not clear from the terms of the amendment. It would add a fourth provision to Clause 62 in relation to grants by the Secretary of State, the effect of which would be, allegedly, to prevent property sold under right to buy being converted into buy-to-let dwellings for a period of 10 years. I do not think that the way it is worded achieves that objective. The objective is clearly to avoid a situation in which properties bought under right to buy are sold within 10 years for buy-to-let purposes. The wording does not achieve that. If we revert to this on Report, it will have to be revised.
I suppose a better way of putting it would be that if such a house were sold the grant made in respect of the original purchase should then be repaid—in other words, putting it the other way round. The noble Lord, Lord Young, is nodding, so that must be right. The reality is that we are talking about potentially very large rents being charged for properties of this kind. I can illustrate the situation. I have referred to Islington before. My daughter now lives there and my son used to live there. The flat that he occupied was all of 286 square feet and is now on the market at a rent of £1,500 a month. It is quite extraordinary. So unless there is some sort of provision for preventing the maximisation of rents by private landlords ultimately moving in on properties acquired from housing associations under rights to buy, this economic cleansing, as I think we might reasonably describe it, will continue and we will have precisely the hollowing out of parts of the city to which others have referred, both here and abroad. I hope that some consideration will be given to preventing the situation advancing by this recoupment suggestion, even if it has not been properly expressed in the terms of the amendment as tabled. I beg to move.