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Housing Corporation (Delegation) etc. Bill

I was carried away, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so let us return to the Hightown Praetorian housing association. It alone has 2,500 homes that are managed in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. It employs 350 staff and has an annual turnover of £15 million; clearly it is a large enterprise. It has a comprehensive set of development proposals for 450 extra houses. I am concerned that all that will be thrown into doubt if we do not resolve the matter today. Uncertainty about the funding will be damaging. The plans apply for the next three years and the association wants to know where it stands. The homes that Hightown Praetorian provides serve a diverse range of needs; it offers homes under shared ownership, key worker and sheltered accommodation, a woman’s refuge and a 24-hour support service. Other hon. Members have already questioned whether all the demands should be met by the local authority. I suggest, as my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps) said, that we need the diverse approach that the housing association offers. We have a 24-hour support service, as I said, and an emergency night shelter, called Open Door, in the heart of St. Albans. I visited it only two weeks ago, Mr. Deputy Speaker. If you ever visit my constituency, I can honestly say that it is well worth dropping in; the organisation has wonderful volunteers who provide soup kitchens for the homeless. Discussions with Hightown Praetorian’s manager revealed that the housing association was already concerned about its funding stream. How much more concerned will it be if the uncertainty is not resolved today? The association has taken many decisions since 1985 and it does not want them to be open to challenge or doubt. Clause 1(2) should resolve the problem. John Rouse, the housing association’s chief executive, is very concerned and is doubtless watching our decision with great interest today. He has already written to all the housing associations and confirmed that new procedures are in place. He will advise them of any new time scales for decisions. As other hon. Members would agree, it is always worrying when any business advises its customers of new time scales; it usually means delays. I do not want my local housing association to face delays, particularly in respect of the 450 houses it is intending to build in the next three years, so I am sure that right hon. and hon. Members will appreciate that we need to try to sort the muddle out. That is what the Bill is designed to do. Concerns have been expressed, but we require assurance and clarity. I know that I am not alone—my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough has already said it—in generally abhorring retrospective legislation. Once we start going down the road of trying to tweak things that are in the past, we will face big problems. That applies to retrospective proposals for planning that seek perhaps to legitimise a building that has sprung up without permission or when the Chancellor attempts to claw back trust funds. People need to plan in the knowledge that the appropriate legal framework is in place and that no one will want to tweak it later. I repeat that I abhor retrospective proposals generally, but this Bill is not primarily about that. I agree with the Minister who said that it was a tidying-up exercise and should be viewed in that light. Once we start to revisit and re-legislate, we will be in big trouble. It is highly reprehensible to pull the rug out from under the feet of people. The Bill, however, is about giving people more certainty about the future. I maintain my general opposition to retrospection, but the Bill will legitimise the current state of affairs, remove the element of doubt and uncertainty, free up the system and allow my housing corporation and others to get on with their business; there is much business to be done. I do not give a resounding 10 out of 10 to all the dealings of the Housing Corporation—legitimate concerns about it have already been expressed today—or to all the activities of all housing associations. There are some good and some bad, and there are also some glaring inequalities in the allocation of funding, as in the case of Oxfordshire. Funding problems and inequalities also apply to various groupings. Housing associations should look more into that problem. One glaring example of inequality is the plight of our ex-service personnel. Often the Housing Corporation or housing associations do not take decisions to help such people. If these organisations could be freed up from contemplating their navels and allowed to focus on relieving some of the glaring inequalities that underpin the plight of ex-service personnel who fall foul of the complex regulations, I would welcome that. Local connections are important. Many soldiers return to their locality, after being discharged from the Army and having been moved from base to base with their families, only to find that, unless they are homeless, they are not entitled, under housing association rules, to be placed on the register. They often face that difficulty only four weeks on from discharge. It is an impossible position to be in. I know that the Minister has already been approached about that problem, but—[Interruption.]