---

Housing and Regeneration Bill

My Lords, when I was fairly new in this House, Lord Longford stood back to let me go through a Division Lobby first and then apologised and said, ““I am sorry, we do not do things that way now, do we?””. I, too, should like to add my thanks. I apologise for lowering the tone, but I have a question. Under the new clause proposed in Amendment No. 15, subsection (2) allows registration of, "““a specified local authority, or … a specified class of local authority””." That puzzles me. I had not anticipated that it might be necessary to differentiate between authorities. I gave the noble Baroness almost no notice of this question and I do not know whether she is able to explain why that is necessary.