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Housing: Home Information Packs

My Lords, the convention is that short debates of this sort are phrased in the form of a question. If I may say so to the noble Baroness, this is a very good Question. The ““I told you so””s may be irresistible to some Members of your Lordships' House, but what really matters is: where now and how do we get there? On how we get there, there are both legal and practical aspects. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, once paid me the compliment of saying that I was not a real lawyer—I think that he meant that I was not a barrister and did not wear a striped suit—but I think that it is the lawyer in me that has been unable to understand in technical terms how the Government are dealing with this. Are we to get new regulations? Will the Secretary of State use his power to suspend part of the Act, or what? I asked someone to phone the Department for Communities and Local Government to inquire about that. Understandably, the first contact did not know, but was going to phone back, but has not. If the department does not know, I do not know how the public can. Perhaps a more important point is what the Government will do now to boost confidence in home information packs. I must say that those who have been in sympathy for a long time with what the Government have been trying to do—if not all the detail and mechanisms—are finding that position hard to sustain. It has been a long time. The noble Lord, Lord Graham, said so. When I saw the publications in the Printed Paper Office with the DETR logo on them, I felt quite nostalgic. According to the Observer in July, the personal financial industry is believed to have spent £225 million on HIPs to date. The article stated: "““While you may not be too bothered about lenders, lawyers and estate agents losing money, I’m sure you are under no illusion about the fact that it will be the consumer who ends up paying””." My noble friend Lord Addington spoke vividly about the trainees who have paid. I hope that the Minister can be clear about how they will be treated in future. She has been asked about the trials, the dry runs, which are being undertaken and planned. I am sure that the House will be especially interested to hear what are the criteria for judging their success. In June, I read a comment from HBOS that said that lenders had been insufficiently involved in the dry run, that key elements would be tested too late and not tested at volume. That has been touched on. Home information packs are not the biggest issue in housing. To me, the issue is the supply. If a local authority got into such a pickle, the district auditor and the Audit Commission would come down on it like a ton of bricks. I wonder whether the National Audit Office will take a look at this. In conclusion, all those in property—there are several in the Chamber tonight—know the dangers of misrepresentation. With that thought, I urge the Government to be entirely clear about their intentions from now on. They represented in a technical fashion to potential trainees that these schemes were going ahead to a timetable, and those trainees need to be compensated. The Government cannot afford another stumble; they need to be clear in order to recover confidence.