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Housing and Regeneration Bill

I thank the Minister for taking on board some of the concerns that were raised in Committee and on Report. First, the design-and-build concept behind the Homes and Communities Agency is important. We had quite a long discussion about that in Committee. It is absolutely appropriate that the quality of house-build, rather than a simple goal of building X million homes by Y, should be a fundamental principle. Houses have to be built to a quality that is of use to their inhabitants. I remember speaking in Committee about the concerns in my constituency about the 10,000 new houses being built, 2,000 of which have already been delivered, whose design quality sometimes lets the new inhabitants down dramatically. Some of the problems that we have already seen in those new communities have become clear. I am delighted that the Minister has taken on board some of those concerns and designed an entirely new objective for the Homes and Communities Agency—the so-called fourth objective—which turns out to be design and build. I welcome that development. Also to be welcomed is Lords amendment No. 2, which deals with provision for elderly and disabled people. Again, I remember the contributions that my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) made in Committee to a very good-natured discussion on the issue that, at the time, lead to no great result. Everyone agreed that something needed to be done, but nothing was going to be added to the Bill to ensure that objective. I am therefore delighted that it has returned from the other place, a note having been made about design for the elderly and disabled. That is a crucial part of the now amended Bill that is to be welcomed. The powers of the Homes and Communities Agency were the subject of discussion not just once or twice, but all the way through the previous stages of the Bill. The agency will clearly be a phenomenally powerful body, with the ability to take on powers from local authorities, to build, to provide planning permission to build, to become the landlord or the managing agent—in fact, to do everything. One wonders why we will even need local authorities or developers in the future if the Homes and Communities Agency ever exercises its powers in that manner. I am therefore pleased that there are some measures in the amendments that assist in at least reassuring the House that that is not the intention of the Bill. The Minister assured us in Committee that the Bill was not designed to create a super agency that would use those powers. However, no concessions were made at all in Committee, which suggested that that would be written into the Bill. I am therefore pleased that the Bill has come back from the other place with those amendments. It is right that we should all be concerned not to have an agency out there with powers that overstep the mark so that in future, if not today, a chief executive and a Secretary of State or a Housing Minister—perhaps the Minister himself—might use them in a way counter-productive to local democracy. That is the point around which the greatest disagreements still revolve. It is clear to people on the ground that establishing a strong powerful agency, with the capacity, which the HCA still has under the Bill, to build against the wishes of local people and, if it so desires, to fail to take into account local concerns, will, albeit perhaps unintentionally, set the power of the agency against the power of local communities. As the Minister knows, that has been the Opposition's overriding concern throughout the passage of the Bill. If we are not careful, we are in danger of passing a Bill that provides too many centralised powers. Some of the amendments address some of those concerns, as did a meeting that I held last week with the new chief executive of the Homes and Communities Agency, Sir Bob Kerslake. He is clear that his remit should be to work in conjunction with local authorities and other bodies in providing housing. Again, my concern is with what happens not today or over the next few years, but beyond that. The Bill is still too slanted towards the presumption that powers can be, if not necessarily exercised, then perhaps threatened under the clauses that remain, creating an imbalance between local authorities, other bodies and registered social landlords, and the Homes and Communities Agency. However, I am pleased to see that the Secretary of State must now specifically endorse decisions made by the Homes and Communities Agency, where powers are intended to be taken by the agency. That, too, is a welcome development. There are simply too many amendments in the Bill—and even in this group—for me to be able to do them all justice. This brings us to the central concern behind the way in which the amendments have been tabled. The Minister might describe them as ““minor”” and ““technical””, and in many cases he might be right, but certainly not in all. The Government have tabled 715 amendments to the Bill since Second Reading—