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Housing Corporation (Delegation) etc. Bill

I begin by drawing the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests, and to the fact that I am an unremunerated member of Rockingham Forest housing association. Housing associations play an extremely important role in our society. They provide housing for some of the most vulnerable people, and have grown in importance year by year. The Housing Corporation, which is the Government’s governing body of registered social landlords and housing associations, regulates and funds RSLs. Housing associations were created some 42 years ago, in 1964. Since that time, the Housing Corporation has funded almost 1 million new homes, and it has helped thousands of homeless people and others living in poor housing conditions. It regulates some 2,000 housing associations across the country, which, in turn, manage more than 2 million homes. It also administers the national affordable housing programme to build and renovate homes, in which it will have invested £3.3 billion by the time it ends. By no means, therefore, can the Housing Corporation and housing associations be considered insignificant; they play a crucial role in our society. The Government claim that the Bill merely tidies what everyone already accepts as the current situation, but I have a number of concerns. Indeed, I am not entirely sure that I could support the Bill if it were pushed to a vote tonight. The Housing Act 1964 gives no indication whatsoever that board members should be allowed to delegate their responsibilities in respect of disposals to sub-committees and officers. All the work relating to disposals is performed by housing associations. None of it is done by the Housing Corporation, which simply rubber-stamps applications from housing associations, of which there are only some 100 a year. The Housing Corporation’s board of directors comprises 15 members, who take home more than £250,000 a year, plus pensions. Board members are required to work five days a month, on average—which is at least one day a week—and the chairman, who is paid more than £50,000 a year, is asked to work two days a week. The 1964 Act requires the board to approve disposals; why are we being asked to change that arrangement through retrospective legislation? Anyone who looked at the original Act would conclude that the board must consider disposals. The directors are not underpaid and it is not as though they do not have the time to do the job. Although they meet only once a week, the board meetings are, I understand, very short. The Housing Corporation is not doing any of the work and has never refused a disposal from a housing association, so perhaps Parliament was correct originally and we should not pass retrospective legislation when there is no indication that Parliament wanted that delegation. I understand the concerns that have been expressed, especially by lawyers, about charges, which are regarded as disposals under the Act, but section 9 of the 1964 Act provides for a general consent. The general waiver, as proposed only on 17 March by the Housing Corporation, would remove the need for retrospective legislation. That is not new, because that general consent has been used in the past. I am therefore very concerned about whether we need retrospective legislation, and I hope that the Committee will consider that issue in detail. I had expected that the Government would suggest that the omission was just a drafting error and that this was an ultra vires matter that should have been in the original Bill. I could understand that, because since I have been an MP I have seen numerous examples of bad drafting, which have to be corrected. I sit on the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and each week we have four, five or six statutory instruments that have defective drafting and have to go back to be changed.