I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in the debate and to the Minister for her reply. I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for detecting an error of judgment in the amendment in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Kennedy. He is absolutely right that it would be a mistake to require the replacement homes to be built in the same locality. Were this a matter that the Government were going to take back and consider, I would invite them to take that into account. Clearly, however, they are not going to take it back to be considered.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, rather airily dismissed concerns about the nature of this process on the grounds that it is, after all, voluntary. On paper, it looks as though it is voluntary; however, I return to the issues which I raised. In that event, why is it necessary to create a presumption as to the process, which the Bill does? Why is it necessary to declare that primary legislation is required to monitor how those opportunities are being adopted? The Minister talked about figures being available but this is a legislative provision. If it is simply a question of collating material, it would hardly be necessary to include it in legislation. Nevertheless, it is to be included and there is this worrying presumption that housing associations will agree to tenants’ applications and monitoring will take place to see that those associations are held to account by potential home owners. That is a rather threatening background to what is allegedly an entirely voluntary scheme. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, will forgive me but I remain sceptical about the long-term nature of that voluntary claim. I hope to be disproved on that.
I would be tempted to test the opinion of the House, were it not for the fact that the sector has largely accepted the agreement—mistakenly, in my view, but nevertheless it has. In those circumstances, I hope that I am proved wrong but I will not seek to press the amendment and I beg leave to withdraw it.