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Housing and Regeneration Bill

I am grateful for that intervention from my noble friend. We might have had a bit more argument in Committee if we had come back with a greatly inflated attempt to borrow. As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, says, £3 billion is an awful lot of money, however you describe it—for example, £3,000 million. In answer to the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, I say that the borrowing limits seem to us to be sufficient. Our assessment is based on the experience of the past 20 years, and there is no need to change the limits; they are proportionate and right. The arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, were very sensible in that context. But accountability is built in, not only in how we inherited powers from previous organisations and how they operate but in the set of relationships that we have between the Secretary of State, the corporation and the new agency. Indeed, if the HCA wants to borrow on a long-term basis, it can borrow only from the Secretary of State or the European Investment Bank. Short-term borrowing can come from any person if it should be needed, but it is short-term borrowing only. So we have checks and balances in the borrowing arrangements there, which are very sensible.