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Housing and Regeneration Bill

I hope to make the shortest speech on this group of amendments. When the Minister opened the debate, he was kind enough to say that my speech on one of the first amendments had made a major impact on him. His demeanour at the time concealed that, and the amendment was dismissed. However, I am glad that it had a delayed impact and the point about design was taken on board. The bulk of the debate has been about the so-called nuclear option, when the Secretary of State makes a designation order and the HCA takes over the planning powers of the local authority. Clearly, there is tension between the political imperatives of Ministers and the HCA, who want things done and development achieved, and the legitimate local interests of the local authority. One must make a judgment. When the Conservatives were in power, we set up development corporations, and I took some of the orders through the House. I therefore strongly defend Ministers' ability to intervene. I want to press the Minister on when he will intervene and the circumstances set out in his helpful letter to those who served on the Committee. He wrote:"““However in some, admittedly rare, circumstances the regeneration challenges faced by some local authorities means that they need additional help and support.””" I hope that he will confirm that that is the case, and that it will not be a question of money. Intervention should not take place simply because the HCA has resources that the local authority does not have. The issue should be genuinely one of capacity to develop, rather than of access to resources. If resources alone were holding the matter up, one could simply argue that they should be given to the local authority. There should be some reason other than lack of access to resources for the power to be activated. Will the Minister confirm what has been virtually taken for granted—that, as far as he knows, his Secretary of State is not hatching any plans to make a designation order in respect of any part of England in the relatively near future? At the beginning and end of his speech, the Minister said rightly that the climate had changed. There was an implication that the amendments under consideration were a response to that change, but I hope that he will not make that case. The climate has changed, and if he is to respond to that, he will need a much more dramatic response than that suggested in the many amendments under consideration. I hope that his Department is considering a range of initiatives that will help to address that change, because, welcome though the amendments are, they are not an adequate response to it.