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Housing and Regeneration Bill

I repeat, over £600 million. In many cases the estates are in need of complete remodelling and rebuilding, with a fresh look at how scarce land is being used, but there is now no resource to make that happen. It might be argued that the association takes a known risk, one that it does not have to take. It is also argued that the ballot box gives residents an opportunity to speak. If they have spoken against a scheme, they must live with that choice. If they do not accept a scheme, they will pay the price. That is fine as far as it goes, but it is not the whole story. The voters in a transfer ballot are not the only stakeholders, and the consequences for a wider group of stakeholders must be acknowledged. Hands cannot be washed just because a particular result emerges from the ballot box. There will be a broader impact on the surrounding neighbourhoods where an estate or neighbourhood rejects an investment opportunity. The impact will be wider than the local constituency of voters. We must also consider the even greater impact on welfare costs and taxation—the deprivation tariff. If neighbourhood regeneration does not take place and immovable pockets of deprivation remain, it has an inevitable social cost in terms of lower education attainment, poorer health and higher levels of worklessness. These in themselves are unhappy human outcomes, so the wider cost needs to be understood and taken into account. While independent ballots are rightly seen as important, the voters are not the only stakeholders. Their views are important, but in the longer term they may not turn out to be the most vital. This is not to disparage democratic processes, but to emphasise that there are unignorable wider consequences where no investment takes place and higher social costs are sustained. These overall consequences cannot be avoided and need to be weighed when judgments, sometimes quite difficult political judgments, have to be made. A ballot may seem to be a simple way to test local opinion, but experience shows that it may not tell the whole story, or even enough of the story, about an area. The Government need to reserve a wider range of instruments to ensure that change can take place in circumstances where the cost of no change is too high. Such decisions cannot be taken centrally; they have to be taken in the local context by people who are aware of all the complex needs and realities of an area. The amendments seek to leave the power of decision with local people; I commend them to noble Lords. Finally, the amendments seek to alert the Government to the practical consequences of their present approach; while it is apparently laudable, that restricted approach will, if our experience in east London is anything to go by, ensure that the Government's policy aspirations will not in many cases be carried through in practice. The budget that they have set aside for improved housing provision will not be spent. I hope that I am wrong, but history may prove otherwise. It might be good in a few years for us all to return to this Room and look at what the practical aspirations were and what actually happened to some of the poorest families in this country.