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Housing and Regeneration Bill

I support the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, although by the time I finish I am not sure he will think that my support is exactly the sort that he would like. But I shall do my best. My noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith gave the example of shareholders, who have an arm’s-length relationship. In particular, if you are small shareholder, you only have to phone whoever and sell the shares. You do not have to say a word to the company with which you are dissatisfied. In my view, that is not really the same sort of relationship. Do we really want to aspire to wherever the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, would like us to go? Do we want to do it? If all tenants were fully empowered there would be no need for a regulator. Like the noble Lord, I live as a tenant. For the time being, rather worryingly, I am also the chairman of the tenants. Some of them are very vocal and insist on things being said to the manager, and sometimes they are not so easy to say. The noble Lord is privileged, but the long-term question is whether we intend to make everyone similarly privileged. There can be two schools of thought that do not think that that can be aspired to, and one of them is the practical school of thought. The noble Lord, Lord Best, is not supported, I think, by the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, who would like to have social innovation, which would go very well with the thrust of the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Filkin. It is right that there are huge practical problems. What do we do? We start by talking about market failure. We move on to choice and empowerment. Does everyone want to see the end of market failure? There are an awful lot of people with an interest in market failure and in the lack of choice and dependency. This is a two-way street because the dependency can come, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, indicated, from the top down. But it can also come from the bottom up in the sense of people saying, ““If that’s the way they want it, then I’m going to stay dependent””. This is a long-term political issue about our society and it has been extremely valuable for the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, to raise it today. My belief is that we should try to get there. We should never give up on the basis that it is too difficult.