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Housing Corporation (Delegation) etc. Bill

My Lords, I declare an interest as a vice-president of the National Housing Federation, which represents most of the registered social landlords. This is probably one of the shortest Second Reading debates that I am ever likely to take part in. It was interesting to read what had happened at the other end of the Corridor, where the debate was fairly short. Its Members are not known for their brevity, whereas we are. As the Minister said, we are all concerned about safeguarding social housing, which is probably more important than it has ever been. When the Housing Corporation was established, its role in providing social housing was nothing like as extensive as it is now. Indeed, some people would like local authorities to have a little more freedom to provide social housing. Some rather mixed messages have been coming out of the newly designated department—someone called it ““DCLoG””, which is how I try to remember what it is called—the Department for Communities and Local Government. It is very confusing. During my time in this House there have been at least four names for the department. Social housing is very important and the Housing Corporation is its main provider. We have seen in recent years much less money being spent on social housing, and if was not for the urgency of this matter some of us might take the opportunity to debate what we might do about social housing. One of the issues I raised during Questions in the House recently was that the Government are now in receipt of £1 billion every month from stamp duty. This is not something that they envisaged they would be getting when they came into power in 1997, and I strongly believe that some of this money, which is a tax on building, should be put back into it. I know the Government argue that it is not only a matter of money but of finding the sites but the fact is that we are building fewer houses now than we have for many years, although the figure has increased a little. One of the other issues I would like to raise about the Housing Corporation is that, in the race to try to get the very best value for money, the corporation has looked much more at bigger bids. There was a Question last week about the Rural Housing Commission. I am aware that in my neck of the woods, if you are trying to bid to the Housing Corporation for housing in small villages and for very small schemes, it is quite difficult in this day and age because it is looking at much larger schemes. Tonight is not the time for discussing that, but I could not resist mentioning it. One of my questions was about how we discovered the issue. The Minister explained rather carefully how what she described as the administrative oversight was discovered. It is quite extraordinary; it was even more extraordinary that none of the people in the housing field who had been lending money on this basis picked this up. But as the Minister explained, it was an understanding and nobody thought to look at the detail in the legislation. It is unfortunate that this has happened. I sincerely hope that what the Government have put in place will rectify the situation. The fact that people have been co-operative, lending money and not making unnecessary waves bodes well. It is a very short Bill—22 lines long—and if it is not passed the consequences will be rather grave. As my colleague in another place said, we hope that the Bill goes through speedily—the sooner the better.