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Housing (Empty Dwelling Management Orders) (Prescribed Exceptions and Requirements) (England) Order 2006

My Lords, I can be fairly brief. We continue to support empty dwelling management orders, as indeed we did when the Housing Act 2004 was passing through the House. I am delighted that my noble friend Lady Maddock is in her place today. I am sure that she will have something to say on a matter for which she fought very hard during the passage of the Act. With around 700,000 empty dwellings in this country, we have an enormous waste of assets at a time when housing shortages are very clear. In addition, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, mentioned, there is the awful situation of blight. If your property was next to such a property, the idea that someone might be able to get something done would be an enormous relief. From that point of view we do not share many of the concerns expressed by the noble Baroness. Indeed, I take issue with her use of language. Using words such as ““deprivation”” is not very helpful when one is describing properties which are clearly unneeded at that point—otherwise they would not be standing empty for such a long time. I do not think it is particularly helpful to give an impression that rapacious local authorities are just watching the clock ticking for six months and will then leap in and take the house from you. Lots of safeguards are built into the legislation, including a tribunal process. So we do not share those concerns. I have a couple of questions for the Minister. Does she have any information on how prepared local authorities are for the introduction of EDMOs? With regard to other aspects of the Housing Act, such as HMO licensing, there is quite a mixed picture of preparedness. I should be interested to know what the Minister knows about local authorities. Following on from that—this is the one point where I would be in agreement with the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham—I should like to understand a little more about the process for monitoring how these orders will be used and what sort of effect they will have. My final point is to remind the Minister that by far the largest number of empty dwellings belongs to the public sector. I urge her to do all she can to ensure that local authorities receive the investment they need in order to bring that element of housing stock back into public use.