---

Housing Corporation (Delegation) etc. Bill

If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that if we had longer time to scrutinise the Bill we would not pick up such errors, I disagree. We should have more time to debate Bills and make proper decisions. Another question is whether the House should debate unnecessary Bills. All Bills that come before us should be relevant and take all necessary objectives into account, but consideration of this Bill should be postponed. The fear of retrospective problems could be removed by the method of general consent, and in the future it will be quite acceptable for the board of directors to meet once a month to decide the matter. Why is this Bill being brought forward now? On 19 May, the consultation on the proposal to merge the Housing Corporation and English Partnerships will end. Given that that process is so near to conclusion, why did the Government not wait until the summer, when they could have brought before the House a full Bill covering all the relevant issues? What are we talking about with this Bill? A picture has been built up that the poor, underpaid directors of the Housing Corporation have a massive amount of work, but it seems to me that they have to deal with only 100 bits of paper a year. Anyway, they already meet five times a month, on average. I do not think that there is much of a problem, and in any case these matters can be handled retrospectively. However, another question arises: why on earth does the Housing Corporation bother to approve disposals? It never rejects any, and all the work is done by the housing associations. The Bill would do better to remove the necessity for the Housing Corporation to approve individual disposals, while retaining its power to regulate housing associations. This may be the wrong Bill at the wrong time, and I hope that substantial numbers of improving amendments are tabled in Committee. The Bill could be changed to take account of the performance and effectiveness of housing associations. For example, an index that has just been published shows that seven of the 10 most efficient housing associations deal with fewer than 1,000 properties. I have to declare an interest, in that Rockingham Forest is the 18th most efficient housing association in the country. I fear that we may be wasting time today debating a Bill whose introduction could have been deferred, and whose contents could have been presented in a better format. I hope that the Bill will be looked at carefully in Committee.