My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have participated in the debate on Amendment 2. I will try to deal with the various points that have, understandably, been raised on this. The amendment aims to ensure that the requirement to offer a lifetime tenancy would apply where the victim of domestic abuse applies to be rehoused in another local authority district.
Before I come on to that specific issue, I will deal with the housing association point that was made. I agree with the summary of where we are at the moment that was provided by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and I take the point he made about the gap. My noble friend Lord Porter also addressed this issue and asked me—kindly exaggerating my powers and talking them up—to come up with a form of words on housing associations. We covered this point to some extent at Second Reading, when I said that housing associations are of course now bodies that we cannot give directions to without compromising the position of being off balance sheet and that therefore the legislation has been designed with that very much in mind. That said, of course the Government are totally sympathetic to that position. If I may, I would like to come back on Report and say something in relation to this issue, but I do not want to hold out the hope of being able to do anything other than possibly indicating what we think is a morally defensible position.
I move on to the very specific and fair point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, in relation to the legislation. My background is as a lawyer and I think I can say without fear of contradiction that this drafting provides for moving from, for example, Luton to Leicester. That is very much the intention and the reality of this legislation. We recognise that in many, although not all, cases that is exactly what somebody will seek to do—they will not want to remain in their local authority area because of the nature of the domestic abuse and the possibility of the perpetrator being in that area, there being difficult memories and so on. Therefore, this proposed provision is totally unnecessary —I will not say ineffective—because that is what the legislation provides for. I want to nail that down and, on that basis, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, to withdraw his amendment.