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Housing and Regeneration Bill

For my part, I thank my right hon. Friend for all the personal assistance that he has given me on the amendments. His work and experience have been invaluable to me. The amendments that we tabled address the sector's concerns. We are reinforcing the view that the Secretary of State's role should be limited to strategic directions, with direct influence only on key issues such as rent, physical maintenance and tenant empowerment, which is right. The regulator's standards should be outcome focused wherever possible, should not threaten the status of charitable providers and, crucially, should take account of the desirability of registered social landlord boards managing their own business and setting their own corporate direction. Finally, an important group of amendments ensure that the regulator should be able fully to intervene to address tenants' concerns only where there is a material breach of standards, including on a single estate. You might rule me out of order for mentioning this, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but that will for ever be known as the ““Emily Thornberry test””, after my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), who on Second Reading rightly mentioned the rat-infested estates and the lack of co-operation that housing associations have to deal with in her constituency. That group of amendments and the powers of the regulator allow it to intervene on those points, but not on minor or trivial points. We have improved the Bill. I pay tribute to the hon. Members for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) and for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) for their fantastic work in scrutinising the Bill. It has been a pleasure to serve with them. I particularly want to thank those titans, the Privy Councillors on the Committee, the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford), who, as former housing Ministers, provided genuine expertise. Their help, co-operation and, at times, criticism have helped to improve the Bill. I want other hon. Members to participate in this Third Reading debate, so I conclude my remarks by saying that the Bill is an important piece of legislation. It sets in statute two new housing bodies: the Homes and Communities Agency, which will invest in regeneration and new housing supply and play a key role in achieving our ambition of delivering 3 million homes; and the new social housing regulator Oftenant, which will place tenants at the heart of social housing, driving improvements in standards. I am pleased by the wide consensus on the benefits of establishing of those organisations, which was clear from our Committee deliberations and the oral evidence that we took from stakeholders. We have been challenged on the details, but not the principles. The Bill leaves this place in a much better state than when it first started.