 House of Commons |
Session 2007 - 08 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Housing and Regeneration Bill |
Housing and Regeneration Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Hannah Weston, Committee
Clerk
† attended the
Committee
Public Bill CommitteeThursday 10 January 2008(Morning)[Mr. Joe Benton in the Chair]Housing and Regeneration BillFurther written evidence to be reported to the HouseH&R 9 Mayor of
London
9
am
Clause 1Establishment
and
constitution
Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local
Government (Mr. Iain Wright):
May I say,
Mr. Benton, what a pleasure it is to see you in the Chair? I
wish you a happy new year—a peaceful and prosperous
one—and I extend my wishes to all members of the Committee and
to officials.
We now
come to the traditional clause-by-clause deliberations after our
excursion into oral evidence, which is still a recent thing for the
House. I have been a member of various Public Bill Committees over the
years, especially in this Committee Room. I particularly remember
Committee deliberations on the Gambling Act 2005 and various Finance
Acts, but only now do I wish that I had taken note of Committee
procedure. However, Mr. Benton, I am sure that you will keep
me in order.
I wish
to spend a little time on clause 1. I do not want to reiterate what was
said on Second Reading, but it is important to give the Committee an
idea of the reasons behind the establishment of the Homes and
Communities Agency, which will help us in subsequent discussions and
argument. The HCA will be the Government’s housing and
regeneration agency for England. It will join up the delivery of
housing and regeneration, and it will bring together, in one place, the
functions of English Partnerships, the investment functions of the
Housing Corporation, and a range of work carried out by the Department
for Communities and Local Government.
That policy direction was
prompted by the outcome of a housing and regeneration review conducted
by the DCLG in 2006. That is not to say that the existing organisations
failed over the past 10 years—far from it. Indeed, the impact
assessment
states:
“Since
1997 the Government and its delivery agencies have made substantial
progress”.
It says that
we now have
“77 per cent.
of new homes being build on brownfield land compared to just 56 per
cent. in 1997.”
It also states
that
“English
Partnerships has reclaimed over 6,000 hectares of land and has levered
in £5.5 billion of private-sector investment into regeneration
projects”,
and
that
“between 2006-08,
the Housing Corporation is building 33 per cent. more homes for only 15
per cent. more
resources.”
It
is important that we build on those changes. The housing and
regeneration review was undertaken to consider the institutional
structures for delivering the Government’s housing and
regeneration objectives and to make recommendations for improvement. It
set out to review the delivery chain for realising Government
objectives, and to ensure that the delivery chain would be sufficiently
robust to deliver future
policies.
I alluded to
the fact that the review was prompted by recognition
of various features of the existing housing and regeneration delivery
structures that would limit our ability to achieve policy ambitions and
which would act as barriers or obstacles. Several specific features
were identified, including fragmentation and complexity, with funding
streams delivered in silos, often to differing time scales and with
overlapping remits and products. Indeed, the review found that about
two thirds of spending by EP and the Housing Corporation and the
relevant departmental spending targets on common objectives, such as
the state of regeneration, mixed-use regeneration, strategic growth and
low-cost home ownership, showed a lot of duplication.
The review also noted timing
and sequencing issues, a scarcity of key skills sets, particularly
those necessary to lever in private investment and, to be frank, the
over-involvement of the Department in delivery. It also found
information asymmetries between different public sector providers and
the private sector that increase the costs to the taxpayer, and the
need for an updated set of powers to match new and modern methods of
delivery.
We were
convinced that those features led to the
under-exploitation of market opportunities and publicly funded assets,
co-ordination failures and frictional costs and raised land costs due
to competition within the public sector. As a result, we recognised
that, over the longer term, the existing arrangements would not
continue to deliver the Government’s ambitions for housing and
regeneration.
Significant
progress has been made towards improved housing and regeneration
outcomes in the past 10 years, but looking ahead to the next decade,
the Government’s ambition is to deliver 3 million new homes by
2020, mixed sustainable communities and social mobility. Creating the
HCA is a key part of delivering the necessary step change and driving
forward the delivery of homes and
communities.
In
our oral evidence sessions, Sarah Webb of the
Chartered Institute of Housing acknowledged the potential of the agency
to deliver the needed step
change:
“From
the very start of this process, we have been supportive of the concept
of a national housing agency, now called the Homes and Communities
Agency, and of a regulator that is based on customers. The agency has
the potential to create a step change in housing supply, which we need,
and which will have an impact on
customers.”——[Official Report, Housing and
Regeneration Public Bill Committee, 11 December 2007; c. 17,
Q25.]
The HCA will
be a national solution to our current national housing
challenge—growing demand and rising aspirations for affordable
decent homes. It is an opportunity recognised by a wide range of
stakeholders, including the Local Government Association, the National
Housing Federation and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, to
name but a few. We cannot afford to miss that
opportunity.
Even
those who were sceptical of the need to create the HCA or the benefits
of doing so are coming round to the idea. For example, in his good
evidence to the Committee in December, Lord Best
said:
“I
have come to the view that this is the moment for a change. Joining up
the different parts of government that deal with the delivery of new
homes and the regeneration of old places is an enormous task...It is
better that they are in one place.”——[Official
Report, Housing and Regeneration Public Bill Committee, 13 December
2007; c.
107.]
That
brings out an important point. The HCA is about delivering new homes
and the regeneration of old places, both of which are essential to the
creation of integrated sustainable communities with viable regenerative
and economic bases. The agency is about not only delivering housing
numbers, but regenerating and reinvigorating the communities in which
those houses are built. It is not about imposing solutions on
communities. We share the view of the Campaign to Protect Rural
England, which has
stated:
“We
think that meeting housing needs and increasing housing supply is best
achieved by working with communities, rather than imposing particular
solutions or actions on them.”——[Official
Report, Housing and Regeneration Public Bill Committee, 13 December
2007; c. 79, Q126.]
Where
possible, we expect the HCA to work with communities and their
representatives to deliver solutions that are appropriate to those
localities and the needs of their
people.
The
CPRE also acknowledged the need for the HCA. In evidence to the
Committee, it
said:
“CPRE
recognises that we need to supply more homes to house a growing number
of households. We believe that the new agency and the provisions in the
Bill should help considerably in achieving that
objective.”——[Official Report, Housing and
Regeneration Public Bill Committee, 13 December 2007; c.
77.]
It also said
that
“we welcome the
potential that the new agency brings to tackle some of the very
difficult problems that are inevitably associated with
difficult-to-redevelop sites in certain
locations.”——[Official Report, Housing and
Regeneration Public Bill Committee, 13 December 2007; c. 83,
Q133.]
This
is our aim. We intend the agency to be a generator of new investment.
That was picked up in the evidence sessions by the National Housing
Federation, which said
that
“we strongly welcome
this Bill, particularly the part relating to the creation of the Homes
and Communities Agency. We have been supportive of that concept and
think that the objectives for and the powers of the new agency are
sufficiently broadly drawn for it to be potentially a real generator
for new investment. That is
welcome.”——[Official Report, Housing and
Regeneration Public Bill Committee, 11 December 2007; c.
33.]
We
recognise that the creation of the HCA presents us with an opportunity
to achieve sustainable benefits for the long term. As the CPRE said in
oral evidence to the Committee:
“There
is a good opportunity when dealing with publicly owned land, or an
authority with planning powers, to achieve a broader outcome in the
long term, such as homes and communities’ interests and better
environmental standards.”——[Official Report,
Housing and Regeneration Public Bill Committee, 13 December 2007;
c. 79, Q126.]
We do not intend
to miss that opportunity. Part of not missing it is ensuring that the
right administrative and governance arrangements are in place to secure
an effective
organisation.
Schedule
1, which clause 1 introduces, sets out requirements regarding the
make-up of the board, including how members will be appointed, resign,
be removed and be paid. It sets out arrangements for the appointment,
terms and conditions and pay and pensions of staff, including the chief
executive. The Secretary of State, instead of the HCA, will appoint the
first chief executive. We consider that essential for the chief
executive to help to shape and structure the new agency at the earliest
opportunity. Schedule 1 includes provisions on how the HCA organises
its committees, including delegation of the agency’s functions
to committees. It includes arrangements on how members of committees
can declare
interests.
The
detailed arrangements for how the HCA will report on its performance,
including its accounts, are set out in the schedule. The agency must
prepare an annual report on how it has exercised its functions during
the year, and it must also prepare a statement of financial accounts
for each financial year. Should the Secretary of State consider it
necessary, she can direct the agency to provide any other information
she requires on its property or the exercise, or proposed exercise, of
its functions. Alongside that, other parts of the Bill provide that the
Secretary of State can issue directions to the agency, which could
prescribe further reporting requirements to Government, although we
recognise that as a non-departmental public body, the agency will be
independent and should not be unduly directed by
Government.
Finally,
a tasking framework will be drafted, defining the strategic priorities
and objectives of the agency. A financial memorandum, sitting alongside
the management statement, will be drafted to set out in detail aspects
of the financial framework within which the HCA is required to
operate.
I
welcome your indulgence, Mr. Benton, in allowing me to set
out the position at length, and I hope that I have not been out of
order in reiterating what was said on Second Reading—if I were,
I am sure that you would have told me quickly. It is important to set
the tone of the debate for this and future sittings by making clear the
intention behind the
agency.
Alistair
Burt (North-East Bedfordshire) (Con): I echo the welcome
that the Minister gave you, Mr. Benton, and your colleagues
and officials who will look after us in the next few weeks as we get to
grips with the Bill following our evidence sessions. I also echo his
welcome to all members of the Committee, which is pretty knowledgeable
about the subjects that we shall discuss. We have those who have held
significant ministerial positions on the subject and Back Benchers who
know their way around it well, so the quality of debate and discussion
should be high. I
hope that that will benefit those who observe the proceedings or who
pick up on them in Hansard and various special
journals.
I
wish to indicate to the Minister our general approach to the clause
following the debate on Second Reading. As he knows, we are not
necessarily against the establishment of the HCA. The concerns that we
mentioned on Second Reading, which will be echoed in Committee, were
raised to query and scrutinise the plans and to ensure that the plans
achieve the objectives that have been set out. We are not convinced
that the background and the Government’s record are as rosy as
the Minister has
said.
My
experience in this place is reasonably extensive, and when there is too
much consensus on something there is a danger that the eye is taken off
the ball. My life and career are scarred for ever by the experience of
the Child Support Agency. As colleagues will know, the plans for it
went through the House many years ago with great consensus and perhaps
not enough scrutiny of what would actually happen. When the parcel was
left in my lap—I hasten to add that it was not my
idea—and I became the Minister with responsibility for setting
up the CSA in 1992, the problems became obvious after a year or so and
I began to wonder about the House’s scrutiny
process.
It
was interesting to listen to the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member
for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), my Front-Bench colleague
who speaks on home affairs, at the conclusion of yesterday’s
debate on the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill. He expressed
concern that we are not spending enough time on really important
issues. We are concerned to use a generally consensual attitude to
scrutinise carefully what is being
done.
I
say that in relation to the establishment of the HCA, because I am not
necessarily convinced that the spur for it comes from a great raft of
success in the Government’s housing and regeneration policy.
Yes, there are intentions, but we are not so sure about delivery.
Accordingly, it is essential to ensure that the agency is designed to
solve the problems that have occurred, rather than bringing together an
already well functioning, well oiled unit that will continue to roll
out and deliver on the Government’s
objectives.
As
the Minister knows, the Government’s house building record is
not particularly good. An average of 173,000 units a year were built in
the Thatcher and Major years, but the average has been 145,000 a year
under the present Government. The agency is designed to clear out the
glitches and make things happen, so we must ensure that the problems
associated with the failure to deliver the required supply of housing
are tackled. In creating the agency, we must give consideration to the
way in which it will work, its objectives and the values that drive it,
rather than just crossing our fingers and hoping that yet another
reorganisation will do the
job.
9.15
am
The
Opposition do not query the Government’s good intentions on
regeneration. As I expressed on Second Reading—I shall come back
to this during the early part of our considerations of the
Bill—city and urban
regeneration has received a tremendous boost in modern times. The work
of Michael Heseltine and the city challenge initiative have been
continued and developed by this Government. People outside this
Committee want political parties to work together on this matter and to
acknowledge good work.
It is not
true that 1997 was year zero for everything, and it was certainly not
year zero for urban regeneration. The Government have carried out some
good work, but real holes, gaps and problems remain. There have been a
plethora of initiatives on regeneration and a huge number of schemes,
such as the neighbourhood management, neighbourhood renewal and
neighbourhood support initiatives, the coalfield scheme, the community
champions fund, the new deal for communities, the
crime reduction initiative, the playing fields
initiative and the community green spaces initiative—I could
go
on.
Some
10 years after the election of a Labour Government, however, and
despite the collective impact of those initiatives on society,
questions and concerns remain about social mobility and about whether
the problems of deep deprivation in areas of extreme poverty have been
turned round. We are not querying the good intentions, which we
share—we would like credit for doing so—but we are not
convinced that the approach has worked. Accordingly, to what extent
will the HCA’s regeneration remit help us to meet the objectives
behind those initiatives and the large amounts of money that have been
spent in so many places? Current analyses of the money spent and
results gained do not come down particularly strongly in the
Government’s favour. We shall, therefore, query and test out
precisely why the agency should deliver any
better.
I
do not want to dwell too long on clause 1. However, we will also test
out the remit of the agency on related matters, such as disability,
accessibility, sustainability, design quality and the powers of the
agency, which are extensive. Also, will the Minister tell us what
guidance will be produced on how the various powers and objectives will
work, if that cannot be put in the legislation, in order to ensure
that, right from the start, we do not gloss over anything and that we
understand what it is
about?
In
conclusion, we will be as constructive as possible during the course of
our consideration of the Bill, which is quite natural because we expect
to inherit a lot of what is being discussed relatively soon, so we
might as well make it good. However, as always, we have concerns: if
this is a top-down solution to problems that would benefit more from a
bottom-up analysis and delivery, we are not content to let it go. The
Government are very strong on plans, 10-year programmes and
initiatives, but not so good on delivery. If the HCA is just another
attempt to snow over the problems by saying, “Don’t
worry, everything will be all right. We have done this, but you will
have to wait a few years for it to settle down before there is any
delivery”, it will not be good
enough.
That
is our approach to clause 1, which provides for the establishment of
the HCA. With the caveats that I have mentioned, we accept clause 1 and
are ready to proceed from
there.
Mr.
Robert Syms (Poole) (Con): It is a pleasure to serve under
your chairmanship again, Mr. Benton. First, I apologise
because I have a cough and a cold,
although I do not suppose that I am the only one. I want to take the
opportunity provided by this clause stand part debate to declare an
interest: I am a director of a family building and property company.
There may be a perception of interest, because the Bill is
wide-ranging, and I hope that hon. Members will bear that in mind. My
interest should stand on the record of the Bill’s
proceedings.
I welcome the
Minister to his first major Bill, and my hon. Friend the Member for
Welwyn Hatfield, who now speaks on housing for the Conservative party.
I have always found that Committee proceedings involve a lot of work,
but that one is put on top of one’s brief and taken into areas
where one would not necessarily go, so it is a useful experience. I
should like to welcome the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member
for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik), and I shall—on another
occasion. No doubt there are organisational problems, which will be
ironed out in due course as part of the Liberal Democrats’
aspiration to double their representation in Parliament.
Question
put and agreed to.
Clause 1 ordered to stand
part of the Bill.
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