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Housing and Regeneration Bill

If your market share is falling, you are likely to move to the area where the market share is increasing. Over the past 10 years—I am not taking into account the increase in the number of dwellings from about 20.5 million to 22 million—the private sector market share has risen from 78.7 to 82.5 per cent. That is slightly out of date, but it starts in 1997 and the latest figures include 2006. The local government and social sectors have fallen from 21.3 to 17.5 per cent of the total. That is a clear inducement for people who are involved in a related profession to make a move. To have a completely different set of planning authority powers within the two sectors is quite risky. I remind the Committee of the Teesside Development Corporation—not quite Milton Keynes. The development corporation was made a planning department, although not by this Administration. It was successful in the sense that it was accepted, broadly speaking, by Stockton-on-Tees and Thornaby-on-Tees. I am sure the Minister knows the story of the Teesside Development Corporation. It was never accepted by Middlesbrough. I do not want to go into the rights and wrongs of whether it should have been accepted or whether Middlesbrough was right not to accept it. All I can say is that the local bad feeling, disruption and confusion that followed from the failed relationship between the corporation and Middlesbrough were something that you did not want to watch. Immediately after the present Administration came in, not only was the corporation coming to the end of its life because there was a sunset clause in the original legislation, but there was a serious row, an investigation and goodness knows what. The more that we put back into the hands of the Secretary of State, the more likely it is that we will get disputes at local level and people will simply block each other. If everything could be benign, which I think was what the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, said, and if agreement could always be reached, that would be wonderful. I am afraid, however, that the history of some of these matters shows that when people locally understand the powers that the Bill confers upon the Secretary of State, they will find it difficult to remain benign.