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Housing and Regeneration Bill

This is another extremely important issue, which is closely related to the long debate that we have just had. From the outset, as part of the Cave report, Every Tenant Matters, we have signalled the inclusive listening culture that I want from the new regulator. The whole purpose of the Bill is to establish a new deal for tenants. Indeed, the second objective is to ensure that the actual or potential tenants of social housing have appropriate choice and protection. The third objective is to ensure that tenants of social housing have the opportunity to be involved in its management. Those objectives frame everything. I set out in the previous debate the arrangements for consultation and publishing information. Together, those powers and duties form a robust and transparent system so that tenants will know what they can expect from their landlord. Information will be available to them so that they know whether their landlord is meeting the standards, and they will be able to ask the regulator to take enforcement action. The spirit of the amendment is therefore aligned with what we want to see happening. It will need to be founded on a culture which takes tenants’ concerns seriously. The problem is whether the amendment would achieve its aims. As I have said, we all want to see the regulator involving tenants, but the amendment gives the regulator a statutory duty to involve tenants in its own work, which is partly the problem. The regulator has an objective to ensure that tenants have the opportunity to be involved in the management of their own homes and it may set standards for landlords on this issue. However, the amendment looks at tenant involvement in a different way: it puts an explicit duty on the regulator to involve tenants in the exercise of its functions. I wonder how it would work with all the activities in which the regulator will be engaged. I am not sure precisely what forms of engagement with tenants, which are not already covered, the noble Lord believes are necessary, where the boundaries might be or the nature of the involvement.