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Housing and Regeneration Bill

In this Room, the phrase comes to me, "““O ye of little faith””." In this Committee, we are setting out to put some flesh on the bones of a noble and worthwhile exercise. It is always dangerous to start at a certain date and say that is when something happened because these things evolve, but after a period of time, the Government have decided that we need to refashion the major tool that we hope will regenerate the housing situation in this country. Amendment No. 2 is perfectly sensible; as I see it, it seeks assurances from the Minister about the broad brush that will be applied to ensure that the HCA reflects housing experience. It would be unthinkable and unforgivable if it did not. Last week, with some noble Lords who are in this Committee, I attended a meeting at which we heard the prospective chief executive. He left behind a document that stated, among other things, that the objectives of the HCA are: "““To improve the supply and quality of housing … To secure the regeneration of land or infrastructure … To support in other ways the creation, regeneration or development of communities in England or their continued well-being””." No one can object to those. The fourth major objective is: "““To contribute to the achievement of sustainable development””." I would hope that Members of this Committee are as one in subscribing to those objectives. I can well understand noble Lords wanting assurances from the Minister and her colleagues that the intention is to put flesh on the bones of those ideas in personnel and strategy to achieve those objectives. I hope that these are genuine probing amendments to get assurances from the Minister rather than a way of beginning the debate on this stage of the Bill by trying to chop off the head of the HCA, which is the kernel of the strategy, because otherwise we are in for a rough time. I have every confidence that the Minister has come to this Committee with answers to questions that have been raised, but I hope that the thrust of what we are going to do over the next period is to try to achieve the objectives of the HCA, which we heard about from the prospective chief last week.