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Housing and Regeneration Bill

I would be delighted to do so. Of course, it is hard to prove in some ways, because if tenants have voted to transfer, how can we prove why they did so? In one case, the district auditor examining such a ballot said:"““I find the publicity material in question was unbalanced, one sided and misleading. I find as a fact that the publicity material constituted persuasion and was issued for the improper purpose of persuading the recipient to a particular viewpoint.””" In another case, a judge came to much the same conclusions about how misleading and unfair was the result of the public money spent by the council on the ballot. He said that although it contradicted what the Department said should be good practice, there was not actually any law to make councils follow good practice, so they could continue to carry out one-sided shotgun ballots. New clause 1 is intended simply to establish a fair, open, democratic ballot in which people who oppose transfer get an equal say. We should have no more one-sided ballots and no more lack of money to support tenants against councils and housing associations that spend £500,000 or £1 million, using DVDs, videos, roadshows, sandwiches and all the rest, trying to persuade people how wonderful it would be to switch. There should be some equality. Public money should not be spent in such a one-sided way, as the district auditor and the judge to whom I referred agreed. We have heard about snap ballots suddenly being brought forward to pre-empt planned publicity by people who were going to campaign against an opt-out. We do not have ballots on arm's length management organisations, and why not? Because once there is an ALMO, there is no going back to direct management and direct council responsibility. We have heard about tenants being barred from meetings at which the only people allowed to speak were those in favour of opt-outs. Tenants' posters campaigning against opt-out, for example in blocks of flats, have been ripped down by council employees, while posters in favour of opt-out have been left up on the same notice board. There is a huge catalogue of such things. If we end all that, will it prevent stock transfer? If free democracy, fair play and free speech prevent stock transfer, that is the democratic decision of the tenants, and we should respect it. As I said on Second Reading and in other debates, I am not wedded to the idea that everything must be provided by councils. If people want to buy their house, I have no objection so long as the money goes to providing replacements, which it has not over the past 20 years. That has caused a large part of the problem that we now face. If tenants vote to change their landlord, I have no objection. I have the sneaking feeling that, as Members have said, at least if people vote to switch from one political party to another as their landlord, they can vote to switch back later. That is called democracy. Once they are with a registered social landlord such as a housing association, it is a one-way route. The only way to go from there is into bigger and more remote housing associations, through amalgamations and mergers. That is not democracy.