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Housing and Regeneration Bill

I shall be extremely brief. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, referred to Amendment No. 70 as being benign; I suggest, for a particular reason, that the intention of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, to eliminate Clause 15 from the Bill might be described as malign. I regard Clause 15 as the Lord Beaumont of Whitley memorial clause. He was a very distant cousin of mine. I cannot refer to him as either my late noble kinsman or my late noble relative because in my maiden speech I said that that was how I was going to describe my late noble father and my late noble mother. I cannot, therefore, use it for anyone else because I would simply confuse the Hansard writer. At least once a quarter, Lord Beaumont of Whitley produced a Question on the Floor of the House as to what was going to be done about the 40,000 unadopted roads in the country and it seems to me that it is quite likely their adoption will be accelerated by the amendment rather than the opposite. Therefore, on behalf of my late noble distant collateral, I oppose the noble Lord, Lord Greaves.