Clause
60
Index
of defined expressions: Part
1
Amendment
made: No. 113, in clause 60, page 27, line 24, leave
out
|
‘Social
Housing
|
Section
36(8)’
|
and
insert
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‘Social
Housing (and its
provision)
|
Section
36(8)’.
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—[Mr.
Wright.]
Clause
60, as amended,
ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
The
Chairman:
Hon. Members will have noticed that amendment
No. 134, to clause 67, appears in the wrong place on the amendment
paper. It will be reached, but not
yet.
New
Clause
3
Report
on HCA activities
‘(1) The
Secretary of State must within 12 months of the coming into force of
this Act, and afterwards annually, prepare and lay before both Houses
of Parliament a report on the activities of the
HCA.
(2) A report under this
section must, in particular, include or contain information
about—
(a) the main
activities undertaken by the HCA during the
period;
(b) a value for money
and efficiency statement in respect of such
activities;
(c) how the HCA is
achieving its objects and exercising its
powers;
(d) the management of
risk in respect of HCA
projects;
(e) how the HCA is
co-ordinating and consulting with the government departments and other
public authorities involved with its
work;
(f) details of HCA
income, expenditure and borrowing (under section 26);
and
(g) any loans made by the
Secretary of State under section 24.’.—[Alistair
Burt.]
Brought
up, and read the First
time.
Alistair
Burt (North-East Bedfordshire) (Con): I beg to move, That
the clause be read a Second
time.
It is not
uncommon for attempts to be made to ask a new agency or Government
organisation of some significance to lay an annual report to
Parliament, to give Members the opportunity to raise matters concerning
it and find time for a debate. I am keen on the new clause, even more
so following the events of last
week.
The
purpose behind the new clause is obvious. A number of the debates that
we have had have centred around the concern that the agency’s
powers will be extensive. As we have said more than once, the sum of
the parts will be rather greater than the extent of the individual
parts. An agency that combines the power to acquire, deliver and build
will be extensive. We have discussed conflicts of interest; guidance on
the extensive powers to be given; local authorities’ concerns
about the circumstances in which powers might be used to
take over their planning functions; compulsory purchase; whether the
agency will be driven by the numbers game, and whether it will
concentrate fully on wider regeneration issues. All those matters have
been raised both in the Committee and by a number of the outside bodies
that have been interested in the creation of the new agency and
beyond. On those
grounds alone, there is more than good reason for the HCA to produce a
report such as we describe in the new clause. I am tempted to think
that the Minister will be sympathetic to it, because it is not in his
nature to restrict information. From how the matter has been handled on
all sides, he will have seen a genuine interest in the agency’s
work from Members who, in many instances, have seen things in their own
constituencies that will relate to its activities. Many hon. Members
have a real interest in both housing and regeneration, and would want
the time and attention of the House directed towards those matters. I
would have thought that the Minister was sympathetic to and interested
in allowing such scrutiny, and that it might just have been missed out.
It seems to me that creating such a large body and not providing for an
annual report to Parliament is an
oversight.
I shall now
relate the clause to the written statement last week, in which for the
first time we had a chance to see how extensive the agency’s
powers would be and what new things it would take from the Department,
which the Minister for Housing was able only to hint at when she gave
us evidence. She fleshed them out in that statement. We now have an
even stronger right to demand that the Bill include a clause requiring
the production of a report on the agency’s activities. I do not
want my arguments to be too wide, but I can fairly draw attention to
two matters in the written statement for which responsibility is to be
transferred from the Department to the new agency: housing market
renewal and the Thames
Gateway.
Currently, if
things go wrong with housing market renewal—it has been
known—we can question the Minister and the matter is dealt with
in Parliament. The transfer to the agency of powers on pathfinder
schemes and housing market renewal does not negate the
Department’s ultimate responsibility, but the matter will be
handled by the agency with its extensive powers. We need a mechanism by
which the agency can inform Parliament how such a major project is
going. I will not linger on pathfinder, but the recent NAO report on
the pathfinder programme said in one of its
conclusions:
“There
is no guarantee that intervening in the housing market in this way will
address the causes rather than the symptoms of the problems experienced
in these
neighbourhoods.”
It was
not a very good report and we are talking about £2.2 billion
being spent over five years.
As I am leaving this
post—
Alistair
Burt:
Thank you, a great cry. None from my side, but a
very strong appeal from the Minister. [ Hon.
Members: “No, no.”] My hon. Friends’
development is coming on
now.
I can put on
record my views about pathfinder. I am not wholly negative about the
concept. I have seen
pathfinder areas. I have been to east Lancashire and seen Max
Steinberg’s work up there in very difficult areas such as Nelson
and Burnley. My concern about pathfinder has always been that it is a
very blunt instrument. The housing market moves very quickly, and I
think the NAO report exposed that. I do not think that the
Department’s response has been very good. But if the
responsibility goes to the agency, what chance will there be for
Members of the House to burrow into the issues that concern us, like
those exposed by the NAO, and the pathfinder and housing market renewal
programme is not showing more signs of being responsive to the housing
market and the appropriate changes are not being
made? I
am sorry to raise the Thames Gateway again, but I feel I must. I raised
it in business questions and Members of the Committee will know how
concerned I am about the handling of it. I was not best pleased with
the stage at which the written statement was produced, for reasons that
we discussed last week. This is a project for which the Department has
had responsibility and has recently received very extensive criticism.
Three conclusions from the PAC’s report were,
first:
“The
Department does not know how much the regeneration of the Thames
Gateway will cost the
taxpayer.”
Secondly:
“The
Department has not translated the vision for the programme into
comprehensive and measurable objectives, nor are there robust systems
to measure
progress.”
Thirdly:
“The
Department's management of the programme has been weak, and has not
demonstrably added value to the
programme.”
Those are
pretty damning criticisms, but now, conveniently, the whole thing is
passed, as a result of the Minister’s written statement, to the
Homes and Communities Agency. That seems to me to be a pretty big
responsibility on its own, so why not report to Parliament? Why not
take the opportunity today of saying, yes, these are big things, we
want the agency to be required to report to Parliament, we think by
statute, on matters as important as this. It would be sensible to have
the report in the terms that we have suggested. If the Minister takes
up our suggestion, I suspect that the report will be more extensive.
But we are asking specific questions through the new
clause.
Mr.
Love:
I have been listening to what the hon. Gentleman has
said about the renewal areas and the Thames Gateway. What makes him
believe that setting up the HCA will lessen the scrutiny and auditing
arrangements that he has talked about that are carried out by the NAO
or by those investigating the Thames Gateway? Surely they will continue
and if there are problems, they will be
exposed.
Alistair
Burt:
Yes, there will still be scrutiny by those bodies,
but I am troubled by how much attention is then paid to them and how
they are brought to light. We have had no response from the Department
to the two reports that I have mentioned on pathfinder and the Thames
Gateway. There has been neither a written nor an oral statement
defending the Department’s position in relation to those. If we
want information, it is difficult enough at the moment to get it from a
Department that is responsible directly to the House of
Commons. How much more difficult might it be to obtain information from
an agency? The Minister shakes his head. If he would like to commit to
a written statement from his Department about both reports as soon as
possible, I would be pleased to hear it. However, the point is that we
do not have the opportunity for scrutiny that we would really like now.
This afternoon, I asked the Leader of the House for an urgent debate
about the Thames Gateway.
The new clause is a
belt-and-braces measure, offering a report in particular terms so that
we might examine the information brought forward by the agency without
requiring the scrutiny of those bodies in order to bring information to
the House’s attention. We have not heard much from the
Department, and I doubt that we would if those bodies had not been
doing their
job.
2
pm
Mr.
Wright:
Housing market renewal is an area for which I have
ministerial responsibility, and about which I feel passionately. On the
Opposition’s scrutiny of the Government, will the hon. Gentleman
tell me how many oral questions the Opposition have tabled on
communities and local government and HMR, and how many Adjournment
debates his colleagues have requested on HMR? There are mechanisms in
place to scrutinise the Executive, and I suggest to him that they have
not been used.
Alistair
Burt:
That is not entirely fair. I have asked oral
questions on the housing market renewal initiative. I remember one
exchange with the former Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member
for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott), in which the
whole issue was swatted away. He said, first, that the Tories did not
understand the north of England, and secondly, that we had got it all
wrong. Some months later, the fallacy of his position was laid bare for
us all to see in the reports.
The response
from Ministers was extraordinarily patronising and arrogant, and it
turned out to be completely wrong. I am delighted that the hon.
Gentleman has responsibility for the issue, because I expect a complete
change of attitude in all those respects. The issue was raised, and the
concerns were dismissed as scaremongering, which was connected with
groups in towns, such as Liverpool, Salford and other parts of the
north-west that were making trouble because of demolitions. It was
suggested that that was our interest, but it was not. I have gone on
record and tried to maintain a balanced opinion about pathfinder,
saying that there are reasons for it, but that there are also places in
which it is breaking down and not working.
Some of the situations in
Liverpool are a scandal. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury, the
right hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Jane Kennedy), at a public
inquiry, described some of the practices as social cleansing. My
concern that there were problems that needed scrutiny and discussion
still stands. There are of course other mechanisms, but I am talking
about an opportunity for the HCA to recognise that up to now, the
scrutiny has not been as good as it could be. With a balanced approach
and an acceptance that some
criticism has been valid, it would be good to offer more information to
the House in order for the Government to say, “We recognise the
things that might have been wrong, and here is a way in which,
annually, we can present our view on the issues, so that there is no
reliance on people burrowing into information, finding things out and
producing them.” That is why the new clause
talks about looking for
“value for money and
efficiency...how the HCA is achieving its objects and exercising
its powers...how the HCA is co-ordinating and consulting with
government departments and other public
authorities”.
In both
areas of departmental interest that I have mentioned, there have been
complaints that such work has not been done effectively. That is my
point.
There is
nothing to lose; the work will be done. It seems admirable to bring
more information to the House rather than less, and I cannot see a good
reason against the measure. Already, there is a series of annual
reports to Parliament. Some are on massive, world-shaking events such
as climate change, some are on constitutionally important issues such
as judicial appointments, some are on socially important issues, such
as the annual report of the Commission for Social Care Inspection, and
some are on rather more obscure issues such as the pharmaceutical price
regulation regime. I cannot see that the work of the HCA does not fit
somewhere into that spectrum as also requiring a report to be presented
to Parliament and I humbly ask the Committee to support the new
clause.
Mr.
Robert Syms (Poole) (Con): I support my hon. Friend, who
is as eloquent as usual.
If this agency is to do all
that the Government say they want it to do, there are some issues about
which Parliament is going to have a view. One such issue would be
equity. How fairly are the resources of the HCA being spread across
England? The hon. Member for St. Ives asked about rural areas and the
balance of resources going in. Will the agency be centred on our
cities, or will it pay a lot more regard to the real problems of
homelessness and the provision of homes facing people in rural areas?
So I do think that there are issues on which Members might like to
contribute, and I think that that is
relevant.
Also—value
for money and efficiency was mentioned earlier—one of the issues
raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire was
not only who was going to run the agency, but where it was going to be
based. We know that the Housing Corporation is in Tottenham Court road.
It is as if we are saying to the agency, “Here is an envelope
with £2,300 million to spend on doing the very worthy things
that you are going to do”. There may well be an argument that it
could be more efficient to put this agency somewhere else, not
necessarily in central London—maybe on the outskirts of
London.
Mr.
Syms:
That is the first bid. Denton and Reddish is an
excellent place as is Poole or Montgomeryshire. This is of value
because the thrust of policy over the past few years has been to try to
ensure that there is equitable distribution of public bodies across the
UK.
Much of the BBC, for example, has moved to Manchester. Therefore, where
the agency is based is an issue. Hon. Members might also wish to debate
the general issue of how the delivery agency resources are spent across
the UK. As with any kind of large scale regeneration scheme,
particularly if we get into eco terms, I am sure that there are plenty
of Members who will have a view.
New clause 3 may not be the
right vehicle, but our point is that there has to be some vehicle for
Parliamentary input and scrutiny on what should be a very important
organisation for our
constituents.
Mr.
Wright:
May I just put on the record how saddened I am to
see that the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire is moving away
from his current post. I think that the whole Committee will agree that
his skill and expertise on regeneration is high, and the thoughtfulness
and manner in which he projects himself is held in sincere
regard.
Mr.
Love:
Can the Committee have a vote on
it?
Mr.
Wright:
I absolutely agree. With the greatest respect to
his Front-Bench colleagues, the fact that he is leaving the Communities
and Local Government team considerably reduces the average in terms of
the calibre of the Tory Front Bench. I will miss him because of that.
He is a real asset to the Tory Front Bench. I reiterate the point I
made last week—he is more than welcome to cross the Floor. He
would be most
welcome.
Alistair
Burt:
I beg your indulgence Mr. Gale. That is
extremely sweet of the hon. Gentlemen and I do appreciate his comments.
However, I am not sure that I am tall enough to reach the sinking ship
quickly enough with my feet if I were to seek to cross the Floor.
Mr.
Wright:
I do not wish to try your patience, Mr.
Gale, but I have to say—and this is not something that I can say
very often—that I actually think that I am taller than the hon.
Gentleman. That is quite a feather in my
cap.
Mr.
Raynsford:
Many Labour Members are somewhat puzzled by the
presence of the apple sitting by the hon. Member for North-East
Bedfordshire and are wondering whether a fate akin to that of William
Tell’s son awaits
him?
The
Chairman:
Order. I can help the right hon.
Gentleman. The wife of the hon. Member for North-East
Bedfordshire is called
Eve.
Alistair
Burt:
I shall tell her about
that.
Mr.
Wright:
Having said all that, I cannot let his comments
about housing market renewal and the National Audit Office report go
unchallenged. The National Audit Office report says that in pathfinder
areas prices have increased faster than comparable areas that did not
have housing market renewal initiatives. It has been a success but it
has been difficult
to quantify. That is entirely understandable, given the massive amount
of regeneration that has gone into these areas over the past decade or
so—with Sure Start and so on. It is entirely reasonable that
that work has gone on.
I have spent the past couple of
months visiting these areas. East Lancashire was mentioned earlier, and
I am going there on Friday to have a look at Burnley and the Elevate
scheme, just to see what needs to be done before I make a decision on
the specific allocation of that £1 billion for the next three
years. There has been real success in these pathfinder areas. More
needs to be done because we are suffering from generations of decline,
so I take issue with what was said.
The views of the hon. Member
for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) are sincere. He gave early
warning that he would introduce a new clause dealing with the annual
reporting of the agency. I told him at the time that I did not think it
was necessary. I feel quite strongly that the reporting requirements in
the Bill are perfectly adequate. I draw the Committee’s
attention to paragraph 11 to schedule 1, which
says:
“(1) For
each financial year, the HCA
must—
(a)
prepare an annual report on how it has exercised its functions during
the year, and
(b) send
a copy of the report to the Secretary of State within such period as
the Secretary of State may
direct.
(2) The
Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a copy of each report
received under sub-paragraph
(1).”
There is a real
requirement to provide an annual report on how the agency has exercised
its functions and to prepare a detailed statement of accounts in
respect of that financial year. The Secretary of State must lay both
before Parliament and if, for whatever reason, the Secretary of State
considers it appropriate, she can require the Homes and Communities
Agency to provide any other information she requests about the exercise
and its functions.
A
short time ago we agreed that clause 49, entitled “Directions by
the Secretary of State”, would stand part of the Bill. Again,
the Secretary of State can direct what information is required. The new
clause sets out a number of specific areas that the report must cover.
However, I reiterate that it is quite unnecessary because the strong
expectation is that the agency will cover each and every one of those
areas in its report without the need to spell them out in the Bill. It
is that dreaded principle again. Indeed, specifying particular
areas—as the debate we have had about the list principle
shows—risks the omission of others.
The provision is deliberately
unspecific in order to allow maximum flexibility and to enable the
agency to respond to changing circumstances, such as those that have
been mentioned—housing market renewal and the Thames Gateway.
The detail of what we would expect reports to cover would be set out in
the tasking framework for the agency. As I have said before, the
tasking framework is an administrative tool that will set out many of
Ministers’ expectations regarding the way in which the Homes and
Communities Agency will conduct itself.
Although I understand the view
of the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire and accept that he is
sincere, I strongly urge the Committee to agree that the new clause is
not necessary and I ask that it be
withdrawn.
Alistair
Burt:
In view of the reassurances that the hon. Gentleman
has given about his intentions for the agency report—that it
will cover the matters that we have raised—and the generosity of
his remarks and because my mood is very high owing to the very kind
reference to my wife made by the chairman and the fact that Bury
dispatched Norwich 2-1 in the cup the other night and because I have
got a nice apple sitting here, the ley lines coming through the
Committee at the moment mean that I shall model this withdrawal on
previous withdrawals. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
motion.
Motion and
clause, by leave,
withdrawn.
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