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Housing Corporation (Delegation) etc. Bill

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. This is a short, two-clause Bill, which is designed to deal with technical problems that have arisen due to an omission in the legislation governing the powers of the Housing Corporation. Those difficulties arose following recent legal advice to the Housing Corporation, which has subsequently been confirmed to the Government. The advice makes it clear that the Housing Corporation board does not have any express power in legislation to delegate statutory functions below board level and that such a power cannot be implied by the terms of the statute. Prior to that advice, the Housing Corporation and everyone else believed that the board had an implied power to delegate its functions. Indeed, since its inception over 40 years ago, the corporation has been acting on that basis in good faith. That means that the Bill needs to fulfil two functions. First, the Housing Corporation needs to be put on the same footing as other non-departmental public bodies and given the explicit power to delegate functions below board level. Secondly, the Bill needs to deal with any uncertainty about historic decisions made by the Housing Corporation to ensure that no problems about past decisions arise inadvertently either for the corporation or for housing associations and lenders. The Bill gives the Housing Corporation board the express power to delegate its functions to members, committees and employees and it will have retrospective effect in deeming the corporation always to have had such a power. The effect will be to restore the status quo, bringing the corporation and other interested parties back to the position that they believed they were in before the problem was discovered. The Bill does not confer any new powers or functions on the Housing Corporation. I had a bet with the Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), who will reply to the debate on the Bill, about the number of hon. Members who would remain in the Chamber at the point when I concluded my speech. On the current count, I am still winning the bet, but I concede that this is not the sexiest piece of legislation that the House has had to debate. Nevertheless, it is important for the Housing Corporation and those tenants who live in registered social landlord properties across the country. I hope that the Bill will have widespread support from hon. Members across the House. I thank the Opposition spokesman for meeting the Housing Corporation and the Council of Mortgage Lenders to be briefed on the Bill. I know that they will understand that while this is a minor legislative change with technical effect, it is important for the operations of the corporation and for the decisions made by housing associations and lenders. There are areas of housing policy on which there are strong differences of opinion between the parties, and I am always keen for an opportunity to debate those dividing lines, but on this occasion I hope that the whole House will support the measures. They are sensible measures that remedy problems with previous legislation for the Housing Corporation. It is important that the Housing Corporation can conduct its business effectively. The corporation is a non-departmental public body of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, and was established under the Housing Act 1964 to oversee the housing association sector. Its legislative provisions, role and functions were updated and amended in the Housing Associations Act 1985 and in the Housing Act 1996. Today the Corporation plays a crucial role in regulating nearly 1,800 housing associations that own or manage more than 2 million units of social housing and provide a range of other services to the broader community. The corporation also delivers the funding allocations for new social housing and shared equity homes in England through the national affordable housing programme, which for 2006 to 2008 involves £3.9 billion of investment to deliver an estimated 84,000 affordable homes.