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Housing Corporation (Delegation) etc. Bill

The availability of affordable housing is certainly an issue in the local council election campaigns in London, although I hope—as I am sure the hon. Gentleman does—that it will not prove successful in boosting the level of support for a party that has no role to play in a proper democratic society. There is certainly no evidence where I live that it is going to make inroads, and we shall be doing everything that we can, along with the other major parties, to ensure that it does not. As Members will know, the Housing Corporation is a non-departmental public body that was established more than 40 years ago in 1964. Its function is to promote, finance and supervise the voluntary housing movement in England, and it has wide discretionary powers. As the Minister has explained, the need for the Bill arises from a failure to make it sufficiently clear in earlier legislation that the Housing Corporation had the power to delegate the exercise of its functions. The necessary objectives of this short—indeed, diminutive—Bill are therefore clear: to give the Housing Corporation those powers, as the Minister has said, and to validate retrospectively decisions taken by the Housing Corporation’s committees, officers and employees. The necessity for such legislative change is self-evident, and the Liberal Democrats intend to allow the Bill a swift passage. Before we allow it to proceed, however, we have a small number of questions, which I hope that the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), will be able to answer. Can the Minister explain the likely impact of rejecting this Bill? The official Opposition’s spokesman has done a good job in describing some of the possible impact, but perhaps the Minister will have identified other concerns, which he might or might not want to share with the House and put on record. The Bill confirms what every Member of this House knows—that the legislative process is prone to, if not hesitation, certainly repetition, deviation and omission. Can the Minister confirm whether the need for the Bill has prompted the Government to undertake a review of all non-departmental public bodies? It has been explained that, more than 40 years ago, such a body appeared to be the norm. More recent non-departmental public bodies have been established in a different way with different powers. I hope that an alarm bell might have rung in Government as to whether a review is needed to consider if such action needs to be taken in relation to other bodies. Can the Minister confirm whether such a review has been undertaken and whether the Government have identified other bodies that, retrospectively, require similar legislation to be implemented? This Bill, although a mere 22 lines long, performs an important function. To say that we welcome it would be overstating the case, but we do see the need for it, and the Minister is clearly getting us out of a fine mess. We will therefore support the Bill on Second Reading.