Housing Bill

Public Bill Committee, 24 February 2004.

Standing Committee E

Clause 166 - Additional power to give grants for social housing

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I beg to move amendment No. 277, in

clause 166, page 117, line 34, leave out 'companies' and insert 'organisations'.

Derek Conway (Conservative, Old Bexley and Sidcup)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:

No. 278, in

clause 166, page 118, line 37, at end insert—

'(e) any conditions necessary to ensure equivalence of regulation between recipients of grant under this section and registered social landlords.

(f) any conditions necessary to ensure equivalence of standards between recipients of grant under this section and registered social landlords.'.

No. 279, in

clause 166, page 118, line 38, leave out 'company' and insert 'organisation'.

No. 280, in

clause 166, page 118, line 40, leave out 'company' and insert 'organisation'.

No. 282, in

clause 166, page 118, line 40, at end insert—

'(6A) Conditions specified under subsection (6) will include those necessary to ensure equivalence of regulation between recipients of grant under this section and registered social landlords.'.

No. 442, in

clause 166, page 118, line 40, at end insert—

'(6A) The conditions in (6) will include provisions relating to accountability and the provision of information that are not less rigorous than those which registered social landlords must comply with.'.

No. 283, in

clause 166, page 118, line 47, leave out from 'section' to the end of line 7 on page 119.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

We will all agree that it is good to be back to work after our brief sojourn, and I have no doubt that we will be in good heart and spirits as a result of that rest. I noticed that the Minister was getting a little irascible before the holiday—although I will not say that we were all on holiday. Personally, of course, I was dedicated to the welfare of my constituency in Lincolnshire. It was, at least, a break from our consideration of the Bill, which although important and, by and large, enjoyable, is beginning to come to an end. Our life together will be different following today, Mr. Conway, as we will not be blessed with your benevolent presence.

I move to the clause under consideration, and specifically the Conservative amendments to it. It is an important part of the Bill, and although it is towards the end of the text, we should not underestimate its significance. The business of providing new money for social housing is something that we all have concerns about. There is a demand for additional resources to be invested in social house building. I do not want to embarrass the Minister at an early stage in our considerations but it is fair to say that the Government's record in the field is—and I put this as mildly as possible—lamentable. He must bear a reasonable share of the responsibility for that. The number of social houses being built is very small. There is no real sign of a change in that, and when I asked the Deputy Prime Minister specifically about the subject the last time I had the opportunity to do so, he, unsurprisingly, avoided my question.

I imagine that that is a concern that penetrates the whole of Government, and may have been the stimulus for this part of the Bill, because the Government recognise that they are failing and are considering ways to bring new money in and looking for new initiatives to boost the amount of social house building. One might think that that was fine, except that the lack of constraints imposed by the clause on those who will be commissioned to build such houses is dramatic.

The Government are proposing to make payments of social housing grant to builders and developers for the purposes of bringing forward more social housing. The funding route is proposed as an alternative, or at least to run in parallel with, funded housing through registered social landlords. Basically, builders and developers claim to be able to provide homes more cheaply. That would bring extra money in, as I described.

There are, however, real concerns. Our first amendment deals with the definition of organisations that might be eligible for such grants. The Bill mentions companies. I assume that that would effectively rule out arm's length management organisations, although the Minister may wish to correct me. The Minister shakes his head, but the Bill does say companies. It does not specify whether we are talking about public companies, organisations limited by guarantee or private businesses. The Bill is distinctly unclear about precisely which companies will be allowed to be involved in the process.

We are even more uncertain about the constraints that will affect those organisations. Housing associations and RSLs are subject to a raft of regulatory controls, extending to rent, activity, product and service controls. All that is policed by the Housing Corporation under statutory powers that include the effective ability to appoint persons to the board, or even, in extremis, to assume control of a housing association and force a merger with—or transfer to—another organisation, if that is deemed to be in the public interest. Many people would regard those controls—that due diligence—as quite proper.

Will such controls be applied to any of the private organisations that will now be given substantial sums of public money in a mission to build social housing?

I have no problem in principle with the proposal. As I said at the outset, I believe that we all share a determination to get extra money into the sector. However, surely it must be paid on the basis of equal consideration of risks, constraints and the accountability of the organisations, regardless of whether they are RSLs or private organisations.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

The hon. Gentleman makes some very valid points. Is not part of the problem the fact that the Committee has been asked to debate the clause and the policy proposal before the Government have published anything about how they expect the new power to operate? Does he agree that there is a complete lack of detail? It appears that the policy has not been thought through, and we are right to ask these questions.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Yes, there is a lack of detail. I said earlier that there was a lack of clarity. The hon. Gentleman has gone further and said that there is a lack of detail. Between us, we have got it right—there is a lack of both. Many organisations, individuals and local authorities, not simply Conservative and other Opposition Members in this Committee, have expressed concern.

For example, when the Government consulted on the proposal, Westminster city council, one of the Minister's favourite local authorities, gave a detailed response and raised some of the issues that I have begun to explore. Its points were about the role of arm's length management organisations—ALMOs. I am not sure that the council is yet convinced that the Government have got that right in the Bill. One of its strategists suggested to me this morning that the Bill was imperfect in that respect. The council has taken legal advice. Perhaps the Minister can assure us that his own research contradicts what I have been told by Westminster city council; I wait to hear what he has to say.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field), who is an outstanding servant of that part of the city, shares his local authority's concerns and my own. He is ever diligent about such matters, and he is particularly concerned about the provision of social housing and the welfare of his most vulnerable constituents—he will be able to put that in a local newsletter, will he not?

There are specific concerns about what will happen if the grant system is extended without the very strict regulatory regime. Inevitably, various kinds of organisation will be brought into the process. The Minister will know the history of some private organisations that have built social housing and got into difficulties. I believe that that subject was raised in an earlier sitting of the Committee. One thinks of some of the construction difficulties that arose when people who were not subject to strict controls built social

housing, and of some of the buildings of the 1960s and 1970s that were subsequently demolished. A Labour Member raised that very point in an earlier sitting.

Similarly, one must consider the industry's record of business failure and the possible vulnerability of public funds in such circumstances. Against that background, we must also properly consider the record of housing associations and other RSLs, which has been extremely good. The tight rules that govern those organisations have had two effects. The first is that quality has been consistently high. Of course there are less strong housing associations—I do not make an unqualified case in their favour—but, for the most part it is true to say that housing associations have delivered good-quality housing. Some of the best social housing in recent years has been developed by innovative housing associations.

Secondly, there has not been much leakage of public funds. By and large the controls, and the powers vested in Government to intervene as and when necessary, have meant that public funds have been pretty secure. The effect of those two points has been a great deal of investment in the sector by banks, venture capitalists and others, supporting the activities of RSLs, because they know that their investment is relatively secure, given the legal framework in which those organisations operate.

The amendments are designed to tease out many of those points. We do not say that we disagree with the idea of bringing in the private sector carte blanche—but I do not want to lapse into French, because I cannot compete with the Minister on that front, as he will be able to tell from my rather imperfect accent. We need to know that if that happens, public funds will be protected, the product delivered will be of high quality, and the investment that the Minister seeks will follow through, in terms of the confidence of the financial institutions and others. Those are the reasons for the amendments.

Housing associations have concerns. Last week, while others might have been on holiday, I had a meeting with people from the Longhurst Group, an organisation with its headquarters in Boston in Lincolnshire, which builds very well in my constituency and in other parts of the country. They speculated that the result of this part of the Bill might be:

''That schemes will be developed to different standards, probably smaller space standards as a minimum; Rent regulation will be impossible to implement; Tenants and customers will have little involvement in the running of the companies procuring or developing the housing assets; Surpluses or profits generated from the management of the assets will not be used for the benefit of the community but will be paid to shareholders; Developers/builders will undoubtedly pick the easiest developments and customer groups''.

That is important, because if we look at the vertical market activities of housing associations, we see that one of their great strengths has been the building of houses for disabled people, and accommodation adapted specifically for a range of people with special needs—one thinks of housing associations that specialise in providing homes for elderly people, for example. Finally, the Longhurst Group says:

''Housing associations will be left to develop in the most difficult areas and with the most difficult customer groups, costing more and making the comparison between them and developers look even worse.''

There are other points to make, but I will reserve judgment until the Minister has had the opportunity to answer those that I have already tried, in a humble and imperfect way, to articulate—it is well at least to start the day modestly.

The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) is right. One of the reasons why those many questions have arisen is that the Government have not been entirely clear. I know that there is a seething discontent on the Minister's own Benches on this subject. Labour Members are perfectly able to see that vulnerable people may be put at risk if this part of the Bill is not dealt with in a thorough and measured way. The Minister has not only failed to convince me about this part of the Bill and my amendments, he has clearly not yet convinced the Liberal Democrat Members either. He must convince the wider community, who are very concerned indeed about the wider implications of the Bill, and are enthusiastic about my amendments. On the tide of that enthusiasm, I urge members of the Committee to give their fullest consideration to the amendments, which are proposed in the public interest.

Matthew Green (Liberal Democrat, Ludlow)

Good morning, Mr. Conway. One of the reassuring things about coming back after a week's break and seeing the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) on his feet first is knowing that I have another 15 minutes to read my notes.

Our amendment No. 442, which is in this group, is a probing amendment. The clause can be summed up in two of its subsections. Subsection (3) says:

''The Secretary of State may by order make such provision in connection with the making of grants under this section as he considers appropriate.''

That is pretty broad. Then subsection (6) says:

''In making a grant to a company under this section the Relevant Authority may provide that the grant is conditional on compliance by the company with such conditions as the Authority may specify.''

I wonder why the Government bothered with the rest of the clause.

Part of the problem is that we do not know what those two broad regulation-making provisions will do. Therefore, our amendment to subsection (6) insists that the standards expected of private companies should be no lower than those expected of RSLs. We do not take a dogmatic approach to the question of who provides public services, but we want to see equity and fairness across the board; we do not want some tenants to be exploited and others protected. I am sure that the Minister is not suggesting that tenants will be exploited or will receive a lower standard of provision. We want him to put it strongly on the record that the standards that will apply to private companies that build and manage social housing will at least equal those for RSLs. If not, we shall be extremely cautious about supporting the Government on the clause, and I hazard the idea that we would not do so.

I am sure that the Minister will provide reassurance. We tabled amendment No. 442 because the clause is as about as detailed as a Conservative policy proposal. As we did not want to leave the Minister in a difficult position, we have given him an opportunity to flesh it out in greater detail.

Vera Baird (Labour, Redcar)

I am grateful to the Tees Valley housing association, which apprised me of its concerns about this part of the Bill, and specifically this clause, so that I could raise them with my right hon. Friend the Minister, who I am sure can help me to assuage them.

The Tees Valley housing association asks whether the proposal to allow social housing grant to be paid to companies and private developers will help to create more affordable housing more efficiently or will reduce the number of affordable homes. That is the crux of its concern. This housing association is a key mover in housing provision and development in the Tees valley, where the Redcar constituency is situated. As I think my right hon. Friend is aware, it has set up an organisation called Tees Valley Living, which is intent on large-scale market renewal and housing redevelopment, so it is a central player.

As has been said, housing associations have a strong record in delivering high-quality and cost-effective homes, and they respond to emerging good practice and to Government objectives. Sustainability is central to their objectives and culture. They reinvest in the neighbourhoods that they serve through housing improvement, regeneration and community service, and they therefore offer value for money not only to the taxpayer but to the local community. If private businesses are to receive subsidies, it seems clear that surpluses should likewise be reinvested for social purposes; otherwise the long-term effectiveness of subsidies will be diminished even if initial value might seem to have improved.

It is likely that private developers will be interested in homes for low-cost home ownership, but unless much needed rented homes are provided on the same site, we shall fail to deliver mixed communities of the kind that we need in my constituency. Developers cherry-pick the attractive key worker developments—it has been suggested that it is inevitable—and then it will no longer be possible for housing associations to make new rented homes viable through cross-subsidy.

It is only fair that housing associations and private developers compete for public grant on a level playing field, but that will not be achieved if the Government impose different regulations. I see that the Minister is nodding vigorously in agreement with me. He has already supplied some information about the regulation backing up the grant system, and I am sure that he will be able to assuage our concerns.

I have a list of the risks that attached to the proposal to fund unregulated organisations. First, grant could be diverted from more complex regeneration. Secondly, subsidy to private developers is likely to increase land values; if not it will increase profits. Thirdly, inadequate regulation will reduce the

confidence of lenders and consumers in the low-cost home ownership market. Fourthly, long-term surpluses might be distributed as profits to investors instead of being reinvested in neighbourhoods. Fifthly, the supply of more costly but vital housing, such as sheltered housing, could be correspondingly reduced.

Those are the series of concerns that I raise on behalf of my very active local housing association. I am perfectly satisfied that the Minister will be able to answer all of them.

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

It is great to be back, Mr. Conway. I have listened very carefully to the contributions of colleagues. In response to their speeches I hope to be able to assist with definitions, and about the use of grant, the standards of new build, which have been raised, equities and fairness, which have been mentioned by the hon. Member for Ludlow (Matthew Green), and propriety in the conduct of companies, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings.

I hope to be able to address the basic issue raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar (Vera Baird). The issue of whether there will be a level playing field between RSLs and non-RSLs in the grant-making process underlies our entire debate. I hope to offer some reassurance to the Committee and to make an actual offer at the conclusion of my remarks.

Clause 166 is a value for money measure. It is designed to give us more affordable housing more quickly, with the best value for money, and with the same safeguards and protection currently afforded the public purse as well as occupiers and prospective occupiers of properties. We want a more cost-effective and transparent approach. We intend to bring innovation and flexibility, as well as new skills and expertise, to the delivery of affordable housing, and thereby increase supply quickly and creatively and improve value for money.

The relevant authorities—the Housing Corporation in England and its counterpart under the National Assembly for Wales—have a strong record of delivering affordable housing to meet needs. They have developed new affordable housing products, such as Homebuy, shared ownership and key worker schemes. In the last few years, although more money has been available through grant, this has not been sufficient to keep pace with rising build costs. In other words, we are spending more but building less. Given that demand is outstripping supply, the time is now right to test whether the commercial sector can deliver better value for money. We want to see whether that can be done, and encourage it if it can.

Let me be clear: the Housing Corporation will continue to devise and invite bids in to grant schemes just as it does now. The objectives and the standards to be met will—as now—be set out in the scheme. Those important facts must be defined at the start. It will be open to RSLs and non-RSLs to bid for grant and

deliver the specified products. We are considering delivery of essentially the same products in better and more cost-effective ways. In other words, we want to meet the urgent needs of real people more quickly.

As things stand, grants under section 18 of the Housing Act 1996 can be made only to registered social landlords. New section 27A, which clause 166 will add to the 1996 Act, empowers the relevant authorities to make grants to companies that are not registered social landlords. New section 27A(1), together with the definition in new section 27A(9), makes it clear that such a company must be either a company registered under the Companies Act 1985, which can include a charitable company, or—I come to the question raised by the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings—an unregistered company established by a local housing authority under section 27 of the Housing Act 1985—in other words, an ALMO. New section 27A(2) defines the purposes for which grant may be given.

Those purposes, which mirror the purposes for which grant can be made to RSLs under section 18, are as follows: first, the provision of homes for would-be purchasers that would be for sale under either low-cost home ownership arrangements, otherwise known as equity percentage arrangements, or on shared ownership terms; secondly, the construction, acquisition, repair, improvement or conversion of homes suitable for this purpose; thirdly, the position of loans to be secured by mortgages to help people acquire properties for their own occupation; fourthly, the provision of homes for rent, including schemes where the long-term management of the homes is undertaken by an RSL; and fifthly, other purposes provided they are specified in an order made by the Secretary of State under new section 27A(4)(d). I shall speak later about the means that the Housing Corporation will use to control and manage the relationship with non-RSLs. The Committee will see that there are a number of issues to address.

Matthew Green (Liberal Democrat, Ludlow)

The fifth point on that list would allow the Minister to expand the range of the provisions. Would he consider expanding that range into the section 106 price-capped housing as used in south Shropshire? I know that the Minister is considering the use of that measure elsewhere in the country. Those are privately built, price-capped, affordable-to-buy homes. That might be a useful route by which to encourage the process in other parts of the country, and the Minister has left it open for himself should he wish to follow it.

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

This Minister and the present Government are always open to constructive and creative solutions to housing issues. I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman: no one could be more assiduous in promoting a scheme from their own constituency than he has done in the case of south Shropshire. I begin to feel that when I die, ''the section 106 scheme in south Shropshire'' will be found inscribed on my heart. We shall look at all sensible and reasonable proposals—even, I might add in a fit of generosity, Liberal

Democrat proposals—in a spirit of openness and readiness to take on board a good idea, should one be demonstrated.

I return to my main thesis. As for the way in which the grants will be allocated, we envisage that both RSLs and non-RSLs will be able to bid for grant under the schemes developed by the relevant authority. We consider it worth proceeding with this approach, because we know that the commercial sector is interested in exploring the opportunities that the provision will open up.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Will the Minister give way?

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman in a moment. Let me complete my thought.

The commercial sector's ability to provide affordable housing directly has already been demonstrated through, for example, section 106 agreements, but we believe that with grant support, it can deliver more units. Perhaps I can develop that thought a little further before giving way to the hon. Gentleman.

At present only RSLs can receive social housing grants. The measure will open them up to a range of organisations, and the skills, experience and knowledge that they possess. I do not want to detract from the outstanding contributions that RSLs have made to new house building and to the affordable and social housing sector, not least the Tees Valley housing association, to which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar referred. She and I have talked about its role in the past. However, there is inevitably a limit to the incentive for RSLs, as not-for-profit organisations, to seek measures to reduce costs. Organisations motivated by profit may, therefore, be able to secure greater efficiencies, which can be reflected in the price paid by the grant-making bodies. The Housing Corporation's 2000 review noted that the incentives for the centre were weak, and that this was therefore a role to be addressed by regulation.

I shall now give way to the hon. Gentleman.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

In his last point the Minister made a valid argument for the propensity of not-for-profit organisations to be less than diligent on occasions about burgeoning costs. He has talked about the purposes for which grants will be given, and he suggested equivalence of purpose. He also talked about the means by which they will be given, and equal accessibility, but he has not said anything about any of the restraints implicit in the 1996 Act, which I have a copy of here. The Bill would make grants available to different organisations but with different constraints, unless the Minister intends simultaneously, or very soon, to amend the 1996 Act. He tells us only that different types of organisation will access the same kind of grant and that the purposes for which they must access that grant would be equivalent, so none of the other constraints would apply, unless he intends to amend the 1996 Act. If he does, will he tell us now?

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

The hon. Gentleman should allow me to develop my argument a little, and I shall come to his point that the constraints that will apply to RSLs will also apply to non-RSLs. I intend to cover that in some detail.

I hope that the Committee will forgive me for speaking at some length on this subject, but as it is a new area, the Government must clarify their intentions, and I am aware of the anxiety felt by the social house building community. We expect the commercial sector's role to evolve and emerge over time. We think it likely that in the early days it will be most interested in the new-build Homebuy model. I shall outline the details. A non-RSL might bid for grant to provide developments where purchasers pay 75 per cent. of the market value of the property and the non-RSL holds the remaining 25 per cent. share. The purchaser pays no interest on that 25 per cent., but when he sells the property, 25 per cent. of the sale price is paid back to the developer. The grant conditions may stipulate that the 25 per cent., or a portion of it, must in turn be refunded to the relevant authority or reinvested in a new scheme approved by the relevant authority. That is, in principle, the same as the current Homebuy option offered by some RSLs, and it has freed up social units for rent by enabling people to move into home ownership.

The other products—shared ownership and homes to rent on the basis of assured tenancies or assured shorthold tenancies—will be more complex and more difficult to establish because they involve a long-term landlord relationship with tenants or shared owners. We think that those relationships might best be managed by RSLs. That might be achieved by an RSL managing or taking over the properties from the non-RSL. The relevant authority will clearly need to listen to the views of the commercial sector to test that.

Matthew Green (Liberal Democrat, Ludlow)

Government new clause 35, which will be discussed later, is about disclosure of information to RSLs for purposes of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. Given that the Minister is making provision for RSLs that are acting in their capacity as landlords to be given information under the 1998 Act, I am intrigued to know whether the same would apply to a private company that is landlord to social tenants. There is a slight danger that later Government amendments will shift the position again.

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

We shall deal with that later. The hon. Gentleman raises a perfectly fair point that will need to be taken into consideration, and I am grateful to him for raising it. At this stage, there is no obvious simple answer to his question, but I emphasise that we think it unlikely, at least in the short term, that the provision that we are debating will lead to that social landlord function on the part of non-RSLs. If it did, we would need to take the sort of consideration that he raises into account.

New section 27A(3) is an enabling power that allows the Secretary of State to make such provision as he considers appropriate in connection with the making of grants; the power will be exercisable by the National

Assembly for Wales in relation to Wales. The order-making provision specifies that an order may, in particular, define the equity percentage arrangements that will apply, specify the bodies from which mortgages may be obtained for homes provided under the powers, establish the priority to be given to mortgages when an equity loan is used to purchase the property, and set out any additional purposes for which a grant may be given to non-RSLs. I emphasise that that provides the appropriate national authority with the same powers in relation to grants to non-RSLs as are currently in place for grants under section 18 to RSLs.

New section 27A(5) places a duty on the relevant authority to specify the procedure in relation to applications for a grant; the circumstances in which the grant is or is not payable; the method of calculation and any limits on the amount of the grant; and the manner and timing of the payment of the grant. That provision also mirrors the current arrangements for grants to RSLs. New section 27A(6) gives the relevant authority the power to make payment of the grant conditional upon compliance with conditions that it may specify. New section 27A(7) enables the relevant authority to apply, in certain circumstances, conditions requiring payment to that relevant authority of sums of money, with or without interest.

As the Committee will appreciate, when drafting the clause we intended to create, as far as possible, a level playing field for all bidders for grants for these purposes. New providers will not be able to receive a grant unless their scheme proposals can match or exceed RSL performance both in terms of the number of homes to be delivered and in terms of quality. I hope that that bold statement goes some way towards reassuring my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar. I hope to offer more reassurance as I continue my remarks.

I shall deal with the grouped amendments in two parts. I shall deal first with those amendments that relate to the bodies eligible to receive grants, and secondly with those that relate to grant conditions.

The first sub-group of amendments, Nos. 277, 279, 280 and 283, which were tabled by the official Opposition, deal with the bodies that should be eligible to receive grants. Amendment No. 277 would remove the restriction whereby only companies are able to bid for and receive grants by extending eligibility to organisations not otherwise specified. Amendments Nos. 279, 280 and 283 are consequential on amendment No. 277. Amendments Nos. 279 and 280 would replace references to ''company'' with ''organisation'', and amendment No. 283 would remove the definition of ''company'' from new section 27A(9).

In supporting the provision of affordable housing through the grant system, we have established, through the relevant authorities, a system that safeguards both the public money that is invested, and the interests of tenants and prospective tenants. The range of organisations that can apply to the relevant

authority to become RSLs is already wide, encompassing charities, industrial and provident societies, and not-for-profit companies, each of which operates in a specific regulatory framework.

We consider it inappropriate to extend the opportunity to bid for grants to any organisation, bearing in mind that the purpose of the measure is to improve the provision of affordable housing. There are several reasons for that. First, there is no evidence to suggest that the proposed system will exclude any significant potential entrants to the affordable housing sector. I emphasise that our objective is to provide opportunities to bodies that are capable of making a real difference to the availability of affordable housing. We believe that, realistically, such bodies can only be registered companies or ALMOs. Secondly, companies, as defined under new section 27A(9), operate in an existing statutory framework that gives relevant authorities ready access to key information and provides other regulators with opportunities to scrutinise their conduct and apply sanctions if necessary. As members of the Committee know, companies are obliged to file information, including audited accounts, with Companies House. The roles and responsibilities of company directors in respect of governance and financial viability are defined, and the system is transparent to public scrutiny. Well established procedures exist in the event that a limited company becomes insolvent or ceases to trade.

The costs and difficulties for the relevant authorities that would arise from attempting to devise a robust contract and ongoing monitoring arrangements to cater for organisations that are not companies would far outweigh the contribution that other organisations are likely to make to the overall objective. For those reasons I cannot support the proposed amendments.

The second sub-group of amendments, standing in the names of both Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members, relates to the powers of the relevant authority in respect of conditions of grant. Amendments Nos. 278 and 279 would impose a duty on the relevant authority to specify what conditions it will be necessary to impose on a grant to a non-RSL to ensure that there is a system of regulation equivalent to that exercised over RSLs, and that there are equivalent standards between RSLs and non-RSLs that receive grants under the 1996 Act. Amendment No. 282 would require the relevant authority to include in its conditions of grant any condition specified by the relevant authority as one that ensures the equivalence of regulations between recipients of grants under new section 27A and registered social landlords.

New subsection (6) enables the relevant authority to make the grant conditional upon the non-RSL's compliance with such conditions as that relevant authority has seen fit to impose. The regulation of RSLs is not limited to grants: it is a comprehensive system that examines all of their affairs to ensure that they are, and remain, financially viable and that they are properly governed and managed because, as not-for-profit organisations, they have no equity. In contrast, public money—paving grants to non-RSLs—will be protected by different means, probably

a charge on the land and other grant conditions. The relevant authority's objective will therefore be to secure the viability of the development, rather than of the company itself. That can be achieved with conditions of grant expressed in, monitored and enforced through the contract.

It is unclear what standards the amendment refers to. Is it standards of workmanship or construction? Standards are, and will continue to be, set in respect of the grant funding. The relevant authority will define funding schemes for which RSLs and non-RSLs will be able to bid. Many matters relating to standards are defined in the schemes. Grants are subsequently given subject to those standards being attained. If a non-RSL is successful in winning funding, we envisage that the standards that the relevant authority deems appropriate will be set out in the contract between them. As I said about the equivalence of regulation question, compliance with the conditions will be ensured through normal contract monitoring and enforcement by the relevant authority.

Matthew Green (Liberal Democrat, Ludlow)

Clearly, there will be a difference in the standards expected when a private developer builds a home for a shared equity and when it builds on a given site its percentage of affordable housing, which is expanded through a grant and then handed over to an RSL. It is relatively easy to prescribe conditions and quality of build. The Minister has already said that it is unlikely, but if one of those private companies became the landlord and therefore accepted tenants from the local authority housing list, that could be a long-term arrangement and something that the Housing Corporation, which is the grant-making body, is not going to be adept at regulating. It would probably fall to local councils to regulate. We are into a much more complex area and I wonder whether the Minister could say something about it. Although he has described it as unlikely, he has not ruled out such a possibility, so I wonder whether he could set out how he envisages that situation working. It seems to me potentially complex, and it would need a lot of regulation of the private company.

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

I do not deny that, again, the hon. Gentleman has raised a perfectly reasonable point even if, as we both recognise, it is an extremely unlikely scenario.

As we have debated, there is already a large body of public law that relates to the standards and protection of tenants in rented accommodation. We would certainly expect that body of law to apply to the management of properties. At the same time, I concede to the hon. Gentleman that we are talking about a situation in which a non-RSL is undertaking a function traditionally undertaken by RSLs. In those circumstances, we would have to reflect on the nature of the landlord-tenant regime that should apply.

I am trying to draw from my recollection a case where already, interestingly enough, a private developer has engaged in a development of affordable and social housing. That developer has created out of itself, for the administration of those properties, an RSL: it has become an RSL for the purposes of

administering them. That might serve as the precedent we seek, but only time can tell. None the less, the hon. Gentleman raises a good, what-iffery point.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Two points arise from the Minister's comments. First, the involvement of private developers in RSLs is often in mixed developments, where there is a cross-subsidy—in other words, the private developer develops market housing that it can sell and funds social housing out of that. RSLs are prohibited from doing that—they are not allowed to build houses for sale on the open market. It is highly unreasonable to put one set of conditions in place for one group of people who will be eligible for grants, and another set for a different group.

Secondly, will the Minister confirm that section 27 of the 1996 Act makes clear that grants can only be recovered from RSLs? Therefore, if public money were in jeopardy, unless that legislation was amended, it would be difficult to recover funds if an agreement with a private developer went pear-shaped. Perhaps the Minister will elucidate.

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

I meant to discuss recovery of grants before the conclusion of my remarks on the earlier point about what is permissible. We envisage that, in terms of the grants, non-RSLs and RSLs will be building the same kind of provision, including for Homebuy, shared ownership and renting. I have said that we intend to deliver, as far as possible, a level playing field between RSLs and non-RSLs. However, it is not appropriate to do that by means that could restrict unnecessarily the relevant authority's flexibility by being too prescriptive, or that could become unnecessarily burdensome to either party. It will be for the relevant authority to determine the conditions of grant to be imposed through any particular contract. In so doing, the Housing Corporation will work closely with my Department.

Amendment No. 442 is intended to require the relevant authority to impose conditions regarding accountability and the provision of information, so that the result is not less rigorous than those with which RSLs must comply. The amendment is unworkable for two reasons. First, it tries to place a requirement on a regulator in a discretionary situation—in other words, it requires the relevant authority to do something, but only if it chooses to exercise the power in subsection (6). Secondly, the scope of the words ''accountability'' and ''provision of information'' are not defined and could be far too wide ranging. I have explained that we cannot and will not try to replicate a regulatory relationship through a contractual one. However, that does not mean, that in the context of a contract, the relevant authority would not place appropriate reporting and information conditions upon the RSL.

I have explained why it is inappropriate to try to create by means of a contract a pseudo-regulatory relationship between the relevant authority and the non-RSL that replicates the relationship between the relevant authority and an RSL. I have shown that the amendments are not necessary to protect either the

public purse, or the interests of prospective or actual occupiers of properties. Nevertheless, that does not mean that I believe that the Secretary of State should not be able to influence the conditions of grant that are expressed in the contracts. For that reason, I am considering whether the clause should be amended to give the Secretary of State power to exercise some further control over those conditions. If I conclude that he should, subject to clearance, I expect to table an amendment on Report. I hope that that reassures the Committee on the concerns that it has expressed, and I urge the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings to withdraw the amendment.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

This has been a fascinating debate. I have been moved to speak because the Minister has provided more information. In particular his last statement suggests that the Government are beginning to think through their policy, using a suck-it-and-see approach as the legislation passes through the House. The Government are dipping their toe in to see whether they want the water hotter or colder. However, we cannot work out whether this is a modest measure to promote low-cost home ownership or shared-equity schemes, or whether it will be much wider and the Government want the private sector to go full throttle into the affordable housing sector.

In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow, the Minister said that it is extremely unlikely that companies receiving the grants will go on to manage the letting of those properties. That is a significant statement, which raises further questions. If the developers are to be given a public subsidy to build more homes on the basis that that provides better value for money—which seems reasonable—how does the Minister envisage RSLs, which will be given the properties to manage, being able to influence the design process? Many RSLs' experience of managing and running properties determines the way in which they like properties to be designed and built. I am concerned that, in being given large chunks of property built by public subsidy, landlords have some way of ensuring that a quality standard is met so that they can do their job as landlords properly.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The hon. Gentleman makes a useful point about the relationship between construction and subsequent management. Design is not the only element affected, although he is right to raise that. Other elements include the market sector in which the RSL is operating and the location of the properties in relation to other properties. I hope that he and the Minister reflect that it might be better to introduce legislation that encourages partnership between the private sector and RSLs, rather than legislation that says nothing about that, except what the Minister has said—under duress—in Committee.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

The hon. Gentleman is being rather hard on the Minister. Many partnerships exist between private developers and RSLs, but he makes a fair point that that needs to be encouraged further. I hope that the Minister responds to that.

As for the wider points that the Minister raised, there seems to be a suspicion in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister that the RSL sector is becoming flabby and inefficient, and has not been able to respond to demand in the way that the Government wanted. The Treasury has huge house building targets and money is being poured in, but it is not going as far as Ministers would like. That is the argument, but is that the fault of the RSL sector or of something else? Rising land prices are probably the main reason.

Ministers have little evidence on which to base their feeling that the RSL sector has become inefficient. There may be issues to do with accountability and other aspects of the sector's operation, but efficiency is not necessarily one of those issues. If it is, perhaps the Government should consider other aspects. Rather than say, ''Right, we'll take all this public subsidy and give it to someone else,'' they should consider how to review incentives within the housing association sector. Perhaps we should consider whether RSLs could be developed into more mutual organisations, in which tenants are more involved so they have an incentive to ensure that their housing association operates. The incentive comes from the actual users.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The hon. Gentleman makes another good point. He really is on exceptional form this morning—one might say untypical form, if one were being less kind.

In a sense RSLs are already closer than many private companies are to the type of collaborative, consultative model that he described. There has been no suggestion, either on the face of the Bill or from the Minister, that private companies would be any more likely to have that sort of relationship with their clients. I am sure that he will acknowledge that some RSLs already have very good relationships.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

Absolutely. If there is a concern about efficiency, the policy issue is how to improve performance. The Government so often take away subsidy and give it to someone else, but perhaps they should address issues within the sector to see whether there are other models and developments. Another way is to look at the section of the Act that sets out how not-for-profit organisations have to operate in terms of salaries and rewards to their executives and senior management, which is important to maintaining the not-for-profit ethos. Perhaps the Government should examine the governance of RSLs. Remuneration options may offer a way to create incentives within the model.

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

What?

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

The Minister asks what I mean by that. I was thinking about performance-related pay, for example, although I believe that that is not allowed under current legislation. As long as they do not conflict with the not-for-profit ethos of the sector, incentives could be built in.

Matthew Green (Liberal Democrat, Ludlow)

I suspect that the Minister will not be very helpful regarding performance-related pay, because he will be very worried that were he to allow it

in the RSL sector, there might be demands that to relate Ministers' pay to the building of new social homes.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

My hon. Friend is unusually tart with the Minister. I was trying to get him on our side, so that was not a terribly helpful intervention.

I hope that the Minister will take a much wider view of the housing development sector. Getting it right is important. Taking money away from RSLs and giving it to someone else may be the solution—we are not against it on any ideological grounds. However, the thinking behind such a move has to be deeper and better. At the moment, the impression is that policy has been made on the hoof and not well thought through. That is why it causes such concern and why hon. Members must keep asking the right questions.

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

I fully concede that we want to build more social housing. The problem is that the Government are pouring huge investment into the housing sector—the Housing Corporation's approved development programme this year contains increases of 50 per cent., or £500 million—but we face a dilemma. We pour money into new social and affordable housing where the demand is at its greatest—notably, in London and the south-east, where land prices, construction costs and labour costs are all very high, so we are simply not getting the bang for the buck that we want. To achieve that is the purpose of the provisions of the Bill.

I totally understand the point that has been made by all members of the Committee about quality of design and new build. There appears to be anxiety, perhaps born of experience, that we are paving the way for inadequate standards of new build. However, I have made it clear that we are talking about a level playing field and the imposition of the same standards via grants to non-RSLs as we apply to RSLs. I have no expectation that there will be any decline in the quality of new build as a result of the provisions—on the contrary, the Government have dealt with design and housing standards in a way that this country has not witnessed for a generation or more.

The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton asked about building and management by RSLs in the same context—the question whether the quality and design would be appropriate. As I said, any developer operating on the basis of a grant under the terms of the clause would almost certainly build only when there were clear arrangements for the future of the development. It is also open to the Housing Corporation to encourage the partnership working that he mentioned through the detail of the schemes that it sanctions under the arrangements. It is also possible for arrangements to be proposed in the bids by non-RSLs.

I am fascinated by the hon. Gentleman's proposals for what he called remuneration options, which turned out to be performance-related pay. I am sure that that suggestion will be examined with great interest by the housing associations, and it is an interesting development of Lib Dem policy. I am teasing him on

that point, but I want to make it clear that I reject totally his uncharacteristic scaremongering about the Government's attitude towards housing associations. The Government do not believe that the Housing Corporation and housing associations are flabby and inefficient, and there is no hidden agenda in the Bill to eliminate their role, which we cherish, endorse and are further validating. The changes are not a matter of fault on the part of the Housing Association; as I have made clear, they are about injecting an element of competition into the house-building process.

I was surprised that a member of the party of Bright and Cobden, who were great advocates of the market, should apparently resist that element of competition. We have seen the Conservative party change its tack on several issues—not least the equivalence of rights between same-sex and heterosexual couples—within days of pronouncements from an apparently made-over Michael Howard. This is another instance in which an historic renunciation has been made. I can indulge the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton a little, as Bright and Cobden expressed their views 150 years rather than a few days ago, but there has obviously been a movement away from the grand days of the free market and laissez faire on the part of the Liberal Democrats, and it appears that they are opposed to competition. This Government think that a mite of competition in this area can only serve to do good, and we hope that it will lead to the construction of more affordable housing for those of our citizens who desperately need it.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

The Minister is in danger of misleading the Committee. The Liberal Democrats are not opposed to competition or even to the measure. We are trying to find out what the Government meant by introducing this provision because they have not been terribly clear, but we think that it is good and we have not opposed it in the slightest.

I want to help the Minister in his slight leg pulling of the Conservatives. Did he notice the impact of the Conservative shadow Chancellor's spending proposals? Did he calculate that there would be a £1.9 billion cut under the Conservatives?

Keith Hill rose—

Derek Conway (Conservative, Old Bexley and Sidcup)

Order. I understood that the Minister had concluded.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

We have had an interesting debate. John Bright has risen again like a phoenix from the ashes, and the Minister has given an interesting display of the new Labour commitment to free enterprise and competition. However, those of us who have some background in business understand that competition in this sector must be fair competition, and I am not convinced that the Bill lays out a set of statutory arrangements that are fair and reasonable.

I am surprised that the Minister did not deal with the EU. The part of the Bill that we are considering might cut across EU competition rules. EU regulations stipulate that when this kind of grants are issued on an unequal basis they are illegal. Those words are not mine, but those of the National Housing Federation,

and as he has been so supportive—in his later remarks at least—of housing associations and their representatives, I know that he will take them very seriously.

What advice has the Minister sought about the proposals' impact on the future of housing associations under EU competition rules? If the Government award public grants to private developers, the current agreement between the EU and the UK Government to exempt social housing grants from EU competition requirements may cease to exist. Even if that does not happen at once, it will do so very quickly. Has he considered that it may be unlawful for a social housing grant to be paid to a developer under different terms and conditions from those that apply to housing associations?

I imagined that the Minister would anticipate those questions, so I did not ask them initially because I thought that it would be slightly patronising of me to do so. However, as he has not dealt with them, it is important to ask them now. I know that he will have an answer to hand, and that he will probably offer it to us in any one of a number of European languages.

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

It has been a wonderful source of entertainment during this Committee's proceedings that the hon. Gentleman rises in every debate to raise an entirely new issue based on the extent to which he has managed to scrabble through his documents on the matter under discussion. I am grateful that he has raised the issue of European legislation now. It is very important, and I am in a position to announce that we are aware of EU state aids matters and will properly take them into account.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

That response typifies both the strange mix of charm and lack of clarity for which the Minister has become legendary during our proceedings and the Government's approach to this part of the Bill. The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton is right: there is a lack of detail. More detail has emerged as we have debated matters in Committee, but I am still not satisfied that, given the day-to-day practice of involving private organisations in the building of social housing, we have received proper clarity from the Minister about what circumstances will prevail.

Matthew Green (Liberal Democrat, Ludlow)

The hon. Gentleman is enjoying himself at the expense of the Minister to some extent, but I am confused. We made it clear that we have nothing in principle against the private sector taking such action, provided that there is a level playing field. The Minister seems to concur with that, although at times in a confused way, but the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings is beating about the bush. Will he come to the point and say whether thinks that such a proposal is okay in principle or whether he is against it? I have listened to him extensively and I do not understand his party's position.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

To hear a Liberal Democrat test any other party in the House on an issue of principle has a smack of irony. If the hon. Member for Teignbridge were on performance-related pay, he would be paying us—he has been in Committee so rarely.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

Teignbridge?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Before the Liberal Democrat party advocates bizarre policies about performance-related pay of RSLs, it should consider the principal points that concern us in Committee.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Before I do so, I want to answer the hon. Gentleman's point fairly and squarely. At the outset, I said that we had no problem with the idea of involving the private sector in the provision of social housing. If he checks the record, he will see that I expressed that view, but said that I supported such involvement only on the basis that the competition is fair and that there is equivalence in the constraints within which the organisations work. We are anxious to ensure that public money is protected, that high-quality social housing is built and that practices are responsible and deliver quality management for the tenants in social houses.

We do not want housing associations to be singularly disadvantaged under the Bill. We want equivalence, and if the hon. Gentleman had taken the trouble to read our amendments, he would know that. Amendment No. 278 refers to

''conditions necessary to ensure equivalence of regulation between recipients of grants under this section''.

We do not argue that recipients should not be allowed to have grants, but if they are to have public access to public money, we believe that that should be on the same basis that currently applies to registered social landlords under the terms of the 1996 Act. It is a matter of consistency.

The Government could have taken a different approach. I shall be frank with the hon. Gentleman and the Committee. The Government could have done one of two other things, or indeed both of them, rather than draft the clause. They could have loosened the constraints under the 1996 Act and allowed existing registered social landlords more scope to become involved in mixed developments and/or facilitated better collaborative arrangements between the private sector and existing social landlords.

The Minister is right to say that there are problems with the number of social houses being built. He will have the figures, and he has apologised implicitly for the Government's failure in that respect. I congratulate and thank him for doing so. He will know that almost 40,000 social houses a year were being built in 1993-94, and the figure is now about 20,000. He has acknowledged that there is a major problem. He is right to say that part of it is caused by land prices and may concern some existing registered social landlords. I do not defend the record of all housing associations in building the number of houses that we or the Government would like, but that is not sufficient ground for taking such a radical step without putting

in place the necessary control mechanisms and accountability. That is our concern, and it is a concern that has permeated the debate and lies behind our measured amendments.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

I have to correct the hon. Gentleman on two points. First, my hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge (Richard Younger-Ross) is serving on the Committee considering the Fire and Rescue Services Bill. The hon. Gentleman should know that and acknowledge it, and therefore apologise to my hon. Friend.

I also have to correct the hon. Gentleman on the real issue that the Government must address with respect to the involvement of RSLs in mixed developments. RSLs can be involved in mixed developments now. The problem arises only when they are charities. The real policy issue relates to a dispute between Customs and Excise and Inland Revenue with respect to VAT shelters that were agreed to enable tax-efficient planning for housing associations post stock transfer. The crack that emerged between that Customs and Excise proposal and a new ruling by the Inland Revenue on the corporation tax liabilities of RSLs post transfer is the issue in respect of mixed development, and not some of the things that he mentioned.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The hon. Gentleman must be careful. The effect of the constraint in the 1996 Act is that housing associations are not permitted to develop housing for outright sale. That would not be true of the sort of companies that will be involved in the new process, which will simultaneously receive Government funding. It would have been possible to loosen the constraints of the 1996 Act to allow RSLs to play a different role in housing provision from the one that they play now. I should have thought that that would at least have been worthy of serious consideration, given their track record of providing social housing, their experience of managing it and, as the Minister rightly acknowledged, their reputation for providing, in large part, high-quality housing.

As the Minister said, the housing associations do some excellent work, and I endorse that view. Given that that is the case, it might have been better to work more closely with them and to expand social housing provision by facilitating more innovative partnerships. I accept that there are already opportunities, as the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton said, and the Government could have chosen to take that route to achieve an increase in the number of social houses being built, rather than the route that they seem to have taken—a parallel structure in which they say to private organisations ''We will give you the grants and we will continue to support RSLs.'' Yes, there will be some opportunity for management overlap, but there is no great clarity about that.

The Minister said that it seemed to him unlikely that private developers would construct houses unless they put in place appropriate arrangements for their subsequent management. I am not sure that that is true. I do not think that most private organisations

would be terribly concerned about what might happen 10 or 20 years down the line. They will be most concerned about the profit opportunity of initial construction and the return to their shareholders. That is not an unreasonable position for them to take, but I am not sure that they would be terribly worried about ongoing management responsibilities if there were no statutory requirement for them to be so. That seems to be what we are being told, however—that it will all be dealt with by an informal agreement and a chat round the fireside between local housing associations and private companies. I do not share the Minister's faith in that view. I believe that there will at the very least be a need for guidance and possibly statutory change to provide the equivalence that I called for in my amendment.

In conclusion, I ask the Minister to reflect on a few ideas that have been put to me by the housing association sector. He has generously said that he will perhaps come back on Report with further thoughts on this issue, so I hope that these remarks will be useful in that process. First, he could choose to amend the 1996 Act to enable RSLs to compete to build for outright sale, generating profits to be used in their businesses for other purposes.

Secondly, the Minister could require developers to pass on developed schemes to existing registered social landlords for management in the long term. That would enable the project to be brought within the regulatory controls, enabling tenants to enjoy protection and involvement. The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton was right to say that there are issues concerning the protection of tenants in the process, not only at the development stage but on an ongoing basis. They are best guaranteed by RSLs having a key role in the process, either by statute or guidance.

Thirdly, as well as the sites that they choose to develop, developers could be required to develop for difficult customer groups and in difficult areas. I expressed the concern earlier and amplify it now that businesses will be likely to go to where they believe that they can minimise costs and maximise profits—not an unreasonable assumption from a commercial point of view. However, I am worried that existing RSLs will be left with the difficult sites and client groups. That is not desirable, as I know the Minister will agree. We must be careful about the constraints that we put in place so as to avoid that becoming likely.

The Minister could also encourage developers to seek partner RSLs with which to work and provide housing schemes specified by their customers, so that the necessary space and other standards can be achieved in the development. We discussed earlier the consultative approach at construction stage that would allow the client groups a role in defining the quality standards that the Minister rightly said that he was anxious to maintain.

Essentially, the changes must be backed up by careful consideration of the requirements of the 1996 Act. The Minister implied that that would be part of his further consideration, and I hope that it will be. I hear what he says, and his tone this morning has been

helpful and reasonable. He has acknowledged what he and I described as ''anxiety'' among people outside this place about the provisions. He has said—with his typical wisdom—that he will consider that anxiety, listen carefully to what has been said today and perhaps take some of it on board. On that basis, I shall ask to withdraw amendment No. 277, because the Minister has made it absolutely clear that the companies that will be involved in this include ALMOs—that was one of my concerns. He is anxious not to open it up to other organisations that, by definition, would be less accountable and less open to scrutiny. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I beg to move amendment No. 454, in

clause 166, page 118, line 33, after 'payable', insert

'including that where the grant is for a building built using modern methods of construction the method must conform with an accreditation scheme approved by the Secretary of State'.

One of the areas in which RSLs are regulated is standards. I have a strong view about the quality and aesthetics of housing. It has been unfashionable among Governments of all parties to consider such matters, and problems have become especially profound at the affordable and the social end of the market. We as a nation must not fall in to the trap of allowing affordable housing for sale or social housing to be of low quality.

Derek Conway (Conservative, Old Bexley and Sidcup)

Order. Before the hon. Gentleman develops his argument further, I suggest that he may have wandered on to debating amendment No. 278, whereas he should be moving amendment No. 454.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

No, I am moving amendment No. 454.

Derek Conway (Conservative, Old Bexley and Sidcup)

Are you? Because when we come to amendment No. 278—

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I am discussing amendment No. 454.

Derek Conway (Conservative, Old Bexley and Sidcup)

I must have misunderstood.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

It is indicative of my inability to make my case as cogently as I should that, even with your acumen, Mr. Conway, you were not able to follow it and thought I was moving a different amendment. I take the full blame, as I cannot have been making my case with the necessary clarity or force. Let me therefore make it absolutely clear that my aim is to ensure that the methods of build, the quality of construction, the standards and the aesthetics of the new houses that will be built if the clause becomes law should be the best possible.

The Minister has acknowledged those considerations in his remarks and noted that there have been bad experiences. One thinks of the concrete houses mentioned in earlier debates, many of which have been condemned and some of which have been demolished, even though they were built only during my short lifetime. There are bad memories of some of

the housing built in the 1960s and 1970s, and we are concerned that the provisions of the Bill could create that situation again. I shall clarify what I mean by that.

The Minister said that the Government are anxious that they are getting too little for their money: they are putting a lot of money into social housing and are not getting enough product out at the other end. The easy solution is to build lower-quality housing to cheaper standards of construction, and thus get more for their money. The Minister has made it clear that he does not want that to happen, and I congratulate him on that, but the first instinct of some of the less scrupulous companies that might become involved in the process might be to do precisely that. That is of particular concern because it seems that such companies will be lightly constrained in future.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

Might the hon. Gentleman be thinking of some of the prefabricated buildings used for short-term housing, where the issue is not so much cost as it is speed?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I was not specifically thinking of that, but the hon. Lady is right to raise it. There has been a lot of discussion of the need for prefabricated building and off-site building to meet demand because of the number of houses that we will need to construct in the next decade or two, but there are problems: the industry says that it does not have the capacity to develop off-site building to the extent that will be necessary to meet demand.

I was not specifically thinking of prefabricated buildings, although they would be affected by the amendment, which contains an implicit guarantee that would protect tenants from poor construction of prefabricated buildings. I was thinking of concrete buildings and the kind of timber-framed buildings with a fairly short life that can be constructed easily. I am concerned that housing will be built that is not up to the standard that the hon. Lady, the Minister and I want everyone to enjoy.

Chris Mole (Labour, Ipswich)

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that there are new developments in off-site fabrication and that we should not paint a picture that takes us back to the 1960s and 1970s? The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning and Local Government Committee was cautious, yet it welcomed the potential importance of off-site fabrication in increasing the rate of construction and addressing many of the quality issues that arise from a shortage of many trade skills that cannot be found and deployed on building sites.

Many issues relating to higher quality, such as improved noise and thermal insulation, can be addressed through off-site fabrication. It is important that we do not constrain developments in off-site fabrication by imposing a standards requirement such as the amendment sets out. We should not hold back developments in off-site fabrication, because such developments could help to alleviate the housing problem by increasing the volume and quality of new housing supply.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Although the hon. Gentleman's intervention could never be described as pithy, it was certainly well informed. He is right to say that methods of prefabricated building have changed a great deal in recent years. In other European countries, for example, prefabricated building is already a well-established means of providing a large number of houses. Such methods are worthy of consideration—indeed, I think that the Select Committee considered some of them.

A number of years ago in Donington in my constituency, some European-style wooden buildings were constructed as social houses. Those well-designed buildings of high quality conform to many of the standards mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. They have the support of the local community and, I understand, have been a great success. He is right to say that we should not take a crude, simplistic view of prefabricated building, but I repeat that industry representatives say that there is not yet the manufacturing capacity to build such houses in very large numbers.

My vision of the future is one of mixed developments in which social houses blend with market houses. We must move away from the idea of estate developments of social housing, which identify particular client groups and place them in one part of a village, town or city, isolating them from people living in other kinds of housing. I want a strategy and policy framework that facilitates such mixed developments, which might include prefabricated housing. However, large concentrations of prefabricated housing, easily identifiable by their style and construction and targeted at particular client groups, are not something that I would have thought the hon. Gentleman wants in his ideal future.

Chris Mole (Labour, Ipswich)

It is important to understand that methods such as off-site fabrication are equally applicable to all forms of tenure. It is true that many businesses have sought to use the volume of demand from the RSL sector to initiate their business. To their frustration, they have been unable to get a sufficiently consistent stream of demand to create capacity that becomes self-sustaining and can be deployed in other sectors. Unfortunately, for all those reasons, off-site fabrication in my constituency has now ceased, but if the hon. Gentleman wants to see mixed development, he should visit an excellent mixed development in which one cannot tell what form of tenure is held in neighbouring properties. The significant precondition for achieving that development was public ownership of the land, which enabled the partnership with the developer to specify the approach that would be taken. The developers were sceptical and did not take that approach in the first phase of development, but they have done so in the second and are now thoroughly converted to the notion of mixed development.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The hon. Gentleman has not been in the House long, but what a good impression he is making. What a fine representative of the people of Ipswich, even though he is rather too devoted to Hayek and

Friedman for my taste. He is a free marketeer, hook, line and sinker, with no suggestion of compassionate conservatism, or compassionate anything, about him. He is certainly very good at articulating the interests of his constituents. I accept his invitation: I will visit his constituency and that development with him. At the same time, I will organise a small function with the Ipswich Conservatives—

Chris Mole (Labour, Ipswich)

What have I let myself in for?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The hon. Gentleman may expect me to do so. I will contact his office after today's sittings and make a date in my diary as soon as I can manage it. It is kind of him to invite me—indeed, he has made the invitation impossible to decline.

We should consider all options that lead to the cost-effective construction of good-quality housing, given the problem with the number of houses being built. My anxiety, which is widely shared outside this place, is that large numbers of prefabricated houses will be built in estates. Most people have childhood memories of prefabs, usually concentrated in one part of a town or a suburb, easily identifiable and perhaps easy to stigmatise. Many prefabs were built after the bombing of the last war, and although the building methods of 50 years ago do not come up to today's standards—there were all kinds of problems with insulation, damp and so on—some people who still live in such properties today are pleased to do so. One occasionally hears cases of people resisting the demolition of their prefab, in which they have lived happily and brought up their family.

Although I do not want to be too negative about prefabs, I know that the hon. Gentleman will agree that they should not be the future. That is not the utopia of which I dream. He is right to say that we should not rule out different construction methods, and the amendment does not do that. It talks about ''modern methods of construction'', such as he has described. All we ask is that those methods conform to some kind of quality accreditation scheme. I do not think that that is too controversial. The amendment was designed to probe the issue. If we had intended to press it, we would have fleshed out the detail. We want the Minister to be aware of the risk that lies at the heart of his concern about numbers and cost effectiveness. He is worried that too much money is being spent to too little effect. The easy solution would be to lower standards and build more houses for the same amount of money.

Without the constraints that I have called for, that nightmare vision may become a startling reality—one suffered by vulnerable people in the social housing sector. I move this probing amendment on that basis. I will be interested to hear the Minister's response, and I am grateful for the interventions of two extremely diligent Labour Members who have made the debate so well informed.

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

Speaking of nightmare visions, my own personal nightmare vision is trying to explain to my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister the headline, ''Labour MP for Ipswich hosts visit of Tory

Shadow Housing Minister''. That might be a nightmare vision for my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Mole) as well.

The debate has ranged somewhat wider than our interpretation of the amendments. I share the priority given by the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings to the aesthetics of every type of housing development. That passion for better design is felt strongly by the Deputy Prime Minister, who has actively promoted higher design standards. It is a matter of the culture in the house building community. In my capacity as Minister for Housing and Planning, let me say that we have sought to draw planners' attention to the fact that design should be considered in planning applications, and we expect them to make judgments about the quality of design of proposed developments.

Another theme of the hon. Gentleman's remarks was the quality of new build. We expect the highest standards in quality of new build, which I made clear in my earlier remarks. The Housing Corporation will set the quality of new build as part of its grant-making function, and we expect it to keep to the already high standards applied in the housing association sector.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned ''modern methods of construction''—the phrase used in his amendment. That expression has a precise, technical connotation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich said, it relates to the possibility of extensive off-site manufacture. The Government's commitment to off-site and modern methods of manufacture is not to increase supply by lowering standards of provision. We are committed to off-site manufacture and modern methods of construction because we believe that they can contribute to raising quality and that, when developed on a sufficient scale, they can certainly lead to a reduction in costs and improvements in health and safety on site and speed of delivery. We are committed in principle to modern methods of construction.

I shall now deal in precise terms with the wording of the amendment. We recognise that some lenders and insurers may have concerns about the mortgageability and durability of buildings constructed using modern methods. However, all new buildings must conform to the minimum standards set out in the building regulations, and we do not propose to set standards above those required by the building regulations for buildings built using modern methods of construction. The regulations set standards of performance that are cost-effective and practicable for industry in ordinary situations. Higher standards would place unacceptable burdens on the industry.

If a greater degree of assurance about the mortgageability and durability of a building is required, there are many independent accreditation and certification schemes available with which the relevant authority could specify that the development was required to conform if it was felt that that was an appropriate grant condition. Manufacturers of building products and systems could also use those schemes. It is preferable that accreditation schemes

remain independent, provided by professional bodies, and available to the relevant authority. We do not propose that the Secretary of State should be required to approve such schemes in advance. In the light of that explanation, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The case has been well made that although it would be undesirable to prohibit modern methods of construction in proposals for social housing, enabling and encouraging those methods necessitates an appropriate concern about standards and quality. The Minister made a useful point about the Government's commitment to quality standards of construction and design, which relates to my earlier point about housing aesthetics.

I suspect that the hon. Gentleman shares my view about the concentration of development and the need to mix developments to facilitate appropriate social cohesion, which he would acknowledge is, in itself, an aesthetic consideration. Given the Minister's appropriate response, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendment proposed: No. 278, in

clause 166, page 118, line 37, at end insert—

'(e) any conditions necessary to ensure equivalence of regulation between recipients of grant under this section and registered social landlords.

(f) any conditions necessary to ensure equivalence of standards between recipients of grant under this section and registered social landlords.'.—[Mr. Hayes.]

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 3, Noes 12.

Clause 167 - Disabled facilities grant: caravans

Sir Sydney Chapman (Conservative, Chipping Barnet)

As ever, I shall attempt to be brief, but I wish to raise one or two matters. There was talk earlier about Bright and Cobden; it may help the Committee to know that

I come from the party of Churchill, Chatham and Chapman—and caravans, which are the subject of clause 167. As I understand it, the clause extends eligibility for disabled facilities grant to all those who occupy caravans. A caravan is defined essentially as a structure designed or adapted for human habitation that is capable of being moved.

The guts of the clause are reflected in Government new clauses 44 to 48. I will not anticipate them, but I hope that I am in order in referring to them at least tangentially. New clause 44 would make changes and it refers to a mobile home, which is not surprising as it states:

''For section 1 of the Mobile Homes Act 1983 (c.34) . . . substitute''.

In using the terminology in clause 167, the Government are abiding by the definition of ''caravan'' presumably as defined in the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960. I want the Minister's assurance beyond doubt that the definition of a mobile home would be the same as the definition of a caravan. If it were not, the Government could find themselves subject to unforeseen consequences.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Owing to the way in which they have developed, a wide variety of mobile homes could not reasonably be said to be caravans. My hon. Friend is right; at one time, this may have been a simple affair, but now there are a multitude of different types of home that are mobile, but might not be caravans. They may technically be static, and mobile only by means of a trailer. They are certainly not caravans in the traditional sense.

Sir Sydney Chapman (Conservative, Chipping Barnet)

I am sure that my hon. Friend, as ever, is right. Perhaps the only difference between the definition of a mobile home and a caravan is that mobile homes could include houseboats, for example. My central point is that the Government might find themselves in what could best be described as legislative trouble if there are different definitions.

My second point refers to Government new clause 44, Mr. Conway, but I am sure that you will accept that it is also central to clause 167. Government new clause 44 states that, to be eligible for a disabled facilities grant, the mobile home should be on land forming part of a ''protected site''. What is a protected site? Is it a site designated as a caravan site under the 1960 Act, or is it something else?

Another qualification for extending the disabled facilities grant to caravans is that as well as being on a ''protected site'', the mobile home should be someone's ''only or main residence''. I do not want to complicate matters or to confuse the Committee, although I have almost confused myself. However, someone who had a caravan parked outside their house—an environmental eyesore that irritated the neighbours—could argue under the Government's proposals that it was part of their main home.

Is the disabled facilities grant mandatory or discretionary? I think that they are mandatory, but they are discretionary in effect. I am sure that people have written to both Government and Opposition Members to say that they applied for a disabled

facilities grant for a handrail or a bath support, and that the process was long. It is usually years before they get what they want, even if the local housing authority accepts that they are entitled to a grant. I fear that disabled facilities grants are discretionary in effect because local authorities have limited budgets and supply cannot meet the demand. I raise the point because, although I am fully behind the clause, if mobile homes or caravans as defined qualify for such grants—as they should do—in practice, they will come at the end of the queue. If the Minister could give assurances or suggest any initiatives on how to deal with the problem, the Committee would be grateful.

On the wider issue of the definition of a caravan and a mobile home, we must remember that the word ''caravan'' in clause 167 is a substitute for the phrase ''qualifying park home''. I do not want to confuse the Committee but that is the purpose of clause 167. It underlines how essential it is to get the definitions correct. I am not necessarily asking for a reply today, but I hope that the Minister will look at the definitions because they might bring the Government a great deal of trouble.

This is not the first time that I have said this, but when the dust has settled and the Bill is on the statute book, the Government may feel that a consolidation Bill is necessary to deal with park homes, caravan sites, mobile homes, house boats and everything else that moves that can be lived in. The legislation is getting complicated and, dare I say it, confused.

Matthew Green (Liberal Democrat, Ludlow)

I did not intend to speak but I am moved to do so by the hon. Gentleman's excellent speech. He has touched on the plethora of terms relating to mobile and semi-mobile properties. I am now going to ask the Minister some more questions about what the grants apply to.

There are a number of caravan sites in my constituency where people live 11 months of the year. They do so because it is easier to obtain planning permission for caravan sites if there is a month of the year when they are not occupied. Those people have the caravans as their main properties but have to move out for a month of the year because the landlord of the site obtained planning permission in that way. They do not qualify as park homes—they are extensive caravans and could almost be called chalets, but for a month of the year the tenants have to go on holiday. That month is usually January. Do the grants relate to those properties, which do not have the protection of being park homes but cannot necessarily be described as a caravan?

There are several wooded areas in my constituency down in the Wyre forest area and extending into the constituency of the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Dr. Taylor) in which there are wooden chalets, which might loosely be called summer chalets. They can hardly be described as moveable, as they do not have and never had wheels, and they are basically uninhabitable, although someone could sleep in them overnight. However, they are regarded as inhabitable because both local councils, Bridgnorth and Wyre Forest, charge council tax on them.

The landlords' legal arrangement is that they cannot be used—not occupied, but used—for four months of the year, but for eight months they are temporarily occupiable, for want of another word. They are chalets, not caravans— although a less polite way of describing them would be that they are little more than large garden sheds. Council tax is payable, yet I wonder whether they might come under the definition of a caravan.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The hon. Gentleman's comments are apposite. This is the point at which the definition of park homes and mobile homes comes into question. There is an overlap, one might say, and I invite him to explore it. Many homes are seasonal: people live in them only in the summer months—for six months, rather than, as he mentioned, one month or four. Some of those homes are technically moveable—they are not park homes. I think my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Sir Sydney Chapman), who, with his typical mix of sagacity and alacrity, has hit upon an important legal point that the hon. Gentleman is right to amplify in his inimitable fashion.

Matthew Green (Liberal Democrat, Ludlow)

I thank the hon. Gentleman. I am trying to get the Minister to clarify precisely to which properties clause 167 applies. If it does not apply to some of the properties that we have been talking about, why does it not do so, particularly when the property in question is occupied 11 months of the year? I echo the plea of the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet: although I welcome the forthcoming new clauses on park homes and the Government's conversion on that subject, greater clarity is needed. A number of properties that are people's main residences do not fall into the category of park home; whether they can be called caravans is questionable, and they are certainly not house boats, as they stand in the middle of woods.

I hope that the Government will clarify precisely what applies to different forms of tenure or, if ''tenure'' is not the right word, to different types of property. I receive regular correspondence on the matter, some of which I have sent on to the Under-Secretary, so she may be familiar with the one-month and four-month residencies. I should appreciate an explanation of the applicability of clause 167 and whether the Government will legislate in future to cover some of the anomalies that apply to those properties.

Robert Syms (Conservative, Poole)

The owners of mobile home parks quite often do not like people building much beyond, or putting too much around, their mobile homes. The point made by the hon. Member for Ludlow about tenure is therefore fairly important. In a park in which people are renting, what would be the situation in respect of grant if a dispute arose between owner and tenant? The owner might think that, in the longer term, he would not want bits and pieces such as ramps added on to a property. Such additions may be perfectly understandable for someone who is disabled, but not necessarily for a successor tenant.

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

Clause 167 extends to those occupying caravans eligibility for disabled facilities grants. A disabled facilities grant is a mandatory grant administered by local authorities and is available for adaptations that enable disabled occupants to live more independently in their homes. It currently applies to people living in buildings and park homes, but not to people who live in caravans, including most Gypsies and Travellers. The clause rightly extends support for people with disabilities and removes unfair discrimination, including against Gypsies and Travellers.

The clause amends part 1 of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996, under which disabled facilities grants are given. Under that Act, occupants of ''qualifying park homes'' are eligible for such grants, but it does not cover a wide range of other circumstances. The clause rectifies that by replacing the term ''qualifying park home'' with ''caravan'', and the term ''pitch'' with ''land'', in each place where they appear in the 1996 Act.

A caravan is defined with reference to the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, which contains the standard definition of ''caravan'' in various statutes dealing with caravans and caravan sites. The definition is that a caravan is a structure designed or adapted for human habitation that is capable of being moved. I am assured that the definitions of a caravan and a mobile home are the same. The definition of a mobile home in the Mobile Homes Act 1983 refers to the definition of a caravan in the 1960 Act. Both refer to the same legal definition.

The hon. Member for Chipping Barnet asked whether the disabled facilities grant would apply only to protected sites. It will not; it will apply to all caravans, irrespective of the site that they are on. The hon. Member for Ludlow asked what it meant for something to be a main residence. If someone is resident on a site for 11 months and they go on holiday, the site is clearly their main residence and they should be entitled to a disabled facilities grant. However, it is reasonable for different considerations to apply for somebody with a caravan that they visit from their main residence each weekend throughout the summer. Consideration must be based not on the way in which the site owner has got their licence, but on whether the caravan is the occupier's main residence.

A question was asked about disputes with the site owner. A disabled facilities grant can only be paid where the site owner gives consent. There were concerns about what should happen when the site owner does not give consent. In those circumstances, the local authority should consider whether the site owner is being reasonable. If they feel that he is being unreasonable, the authority can go ahead and provide the disabled facilities grant. This is an important measure. It would be unfair for somebody with disabilities to be prevented from receiving resources to which they were entitled to help them live in their home simply because the site owner was being unreasonable.

The disabled facilities grant is mandatory. It is true that there are pressures on resources in many parts of the country, but we have increased the resources available for the disabled facilities grant from £56 million in 1997 to more than £100 million for the next financial year. There are pressures in different parts of the country, which can affect waiting times, but applications for the grant must be determined by local authorities within 6 months. That is mandatory. We do not think that the inclusion of people living in caravans would lead to substantial additional pressure on resources. We should not discriminate between people, or use the property in which they reside as an arbitrary way of determining who should get the grant and who should not.

Brian Iddon (Labour, Bolton South East)

If a family has no regular pitch, which local authority will take responsibility?

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

The local authority needs to be clear that the caravan is stationed in their area. Where there are Gypsies and Travellers who move from place to place, the situation becomes difficult to handle. When they move on to another place, the obligation falls on to the next local authority. There is no simple way to resolve that, given that the disabled facilities grant is paid through local authorities and local authorities have responsibility for those within their geographical area. Local authorities can make arrangements with neighbouring local authorities, and those who are travelling around can try to find a settled place to reside while alterations are being made. We should not

pretend that there is a simple answer to this matter. We will deal later with some of the questions involving Gypsy and Traveller sites, and with the need for more sites for those who are travelling from place to place.

This provision allows local authorities to address the needs of Gypsies and Travellers who are resident in their area. It does not resolve all the problems that are created by the fact that people move from one place to another, but it overcomes an inbuilt discrimination in the current legislation that means that they cannot get any support even if they happen to be in a particular local authority area for five years at a time. That is why it is right to introduce this clause.

Sir Sydney Chapman (Conservative, Chipping Barnet)

I cannot let the occasion pass without thanking the Minister for giving a clear exposition of the relevant definitions and of the matters that I raised. To coin a phrase, I was not seeking to make a mountain out of an Ipswich hill—that needs to be worked on. It seemed that in order to qualify for a disabled facilities grant, a person had to occupy a mobile home or caravan which was not only their main home but also on a protected site. That surprised me, but the Minister has said that that is not the case.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 167 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

It being Twenty-five minutes past Eleven o'clock, The Chairman adjourned the Committee without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned till this day at half-past Two o'clock.

Standing Committee E

Housing Bill

Peter Pike (Labour, Burnley)

I believe that it will be helpful for members of the Committee if I indicate my thinking before we start. We are due to finish at 5 minutes to 7 today. I do not know whether anyone is minded to vote against pension increases, but there could, in theory, be a Division when the present debate concludes. I am told that it might come before the three hours allowed for the business are up. If there is a Division, the Committee will break then.

I am minded to run through if it appears that we will finish by 6 o'clock. However, if, as seems more likely, it appears that we will sit until 5 minutes to 7, we will break at a convenient point after 5 o'clock for a maximum of half an hour. Is that helpful to members of the Committee? I am sure that people will keep me informed on how matters progress on the Floor of the House.

Clause 168 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 169 - Social Housing Ombudsman for Wales

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

The clause contains new provisions for the social housing ombudsman for Wales. It will enable investigation of complaints made against registered social landlords to be taken independent of the regulatory function that is exercised by the National Assembly for Wales. The independent housing ombudsman in England already carries out many of those functions, and the Housing Corporation regulates RSLs. The arrangements are slightly different in Wales due to the smaller number of RSLs that need to be regulated and about which complaints need to be investigated, but the overall effect is the same.

I beg to move, that the clause stand part of the Bill.

Peter Pike (Labour, Burnley)

Order. The Minister does not need to move clause stand part, as I proposed the question, to which anyone can speak.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 169 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 8 agreed to.

New Clause 30Local authority's right of first refusal

Local authority's right of first refusal

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Peter Pike (Labour, Burnley)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Government new clause 31—Registered social landlord's right of first refusal.

Government new clause 32—Housing action trust's right of first refusal.

Robert Syms (Conservative, Poole)

The new clauses give a right of first refusal to the local authority; essentially, that is achieved by putting a covenant in the deeds for 10 years. Presumably, if someone died or wanted to sell the property, their solicitor would have to tell the local authority. A house with a covenant in the deeds could not be sold, but what would be the situation if the house was left in a will to a son, daughter, sister or brother? What would trigger the

local authority's right of first refusal? Would such a right pre-empt any rights that family members had to the property? The sister who had inherited the property from the deceased person might have a greater need for the house than someone whom the RSL or local authority wanted to put into the property. I would like a little more detail about how the provision would work. If the property were simply put on the market—or, rather, if someone wanted to sell the property—one could understand the local authority having first refusal, but if the property were left to a relative, could the local authority or the registered social landlord insist on exercising its right of first refusal and buy that property at the market rate? I would be interested in the Minister's comments. If he cannot answer I would be happy for him to write to me with any details, although I am sure he has the facts at his fingertips.

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

The facts have reached my fingertips and I am in a position to answer the hon. Gentleman's question. Under section 39 of the Housing Act 1985, section 15 of the Housing Act 1996 and paragraph 4 to schedule 11 of the Housing Act 1988, such disposals are deemed to be exempted disposals. In other words, inheritance by spouses and family members who have lived in the property for 12 months are not caught by the right of first refusal under the terms of the current Acts.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

New Clause 31 - Registered social landlord's right of first refusal

New Clause 32 - Housing action trust's right of first refusal

New Clause 34 - Amendments relating to registered social landlords

New Clause 35 - Disclosure of information to registered social landlords for the purposes of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

I rise only to address a point that raised by the hon. Member for Ludlow (Matthew Green). The new clause is about enabling RSLs to receive relevant information when dealing with antisocial behaviour orders and with existing antisocial behaviour. For example, to receive information from other bodies in order to support ASBO applications, RSLs have had to show that they are acting on behalf of a relevant authority, such as the police or the local authority implementing the local crime and disorder strategy. In fact, RSLs are unlikely to be acting on behalf of any other body when seeking ASBOs. New clause 35 removes the requirement by making RSLs themselves a relevant authority for the purposes of receiving information. The information has to be relevant information for the antisocial behaviour provisions set out in the Bill and other legislation. It does not apply to private developers or to private landlords: they do not have the power to seek ASBOs or to implement many of the measures that we have extended to RSLs to tackle antisocial behaviour. That is why we think there is a strong case for private developers working with RSLs and perhaps getting an RSL to manage their stock. Because they do not have those additional powers, the information provision would not apply to them in the same way. It would apply only to the RSLs.

Matthew Green (Liberal Democrat, Ludlow)

I welcome that clarification. The new clause will allow relatively sensitive information—people's criminal records and the like—to be given to RSLs in certain circumstances. We recognise that we need to tackle antisocial behaviour, and the new clause may aid us in that. However, I would like the Under-Secretary to confirm the safeguards on the uses of that information by the RSL, and to comment on how widely among the staff of the RSL it would be appropriate for such information to be known.

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

We should be clear: the clause does nothing to remove the requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998. That Act still applies. All the

information must be processed fairly and lawfully by the RSL, and any information that it receives must be handled appropriately and fairly according to the definition in that Act. RSLs may well be entitled to receive such information anyway if they can state that they are acting on behalf of a relevant authority, such as the police or the local authority. We are talking about information that the local authority can receive in similar circumstances, too.

The information in question is limited to information that is relevant for the purposes, so RSLs are not entitled to request irrelevant information from other organisations. The provision is appropriately constrained for the purpose of tackling antisocial behaviour. The new clause deals specifically with ASBOs, and is supported by the Social Landlords Crime and Nuisance Group, which represents local authorities and RSLs and which described the new clause as ''eminently sensible and constructive''. I am aware of the issues relating to sensitive information, but we have to ensure that RSLs can take sensible action to deal with antisocial behaviour. Unlike local authorities and other agencies, RSLs are currently prevented from doing that.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

New Clause 44 - Particulars of site agreements to be given in advance

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Peter Pike (Labour, Burnley)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Government new clause 45—Implied terms relating to termination of agreements or disposal of mobile homes.

Government new clause 46—Power to amend terms implied in site agreements.

Government new clause 47—Succession to site agreements by same sex partners.

Government new clause 48—Extension of protection from harassment for occupiers of mobile homes.

New clause 27—Amendment of Caravan Sites Act 1968—

'(1) The Caravan Sites Act 1968 is amended as follows.

(2) After section 4, there is inserted—

''4A Residents Associations

A Residents Association shall be recognised on each protected site to meet regularly with the licensee and management to review park standards and amenities and negotiate the pitch fee.''.

(3) For section 5(5) there is substituted—

''(5) The Protection from Eviction Act 1977 (c.43) (protection against harassment and eviction without due process of law) shall apply to any premises being a caravan stationed on a protected site.''.'.

New clause 28—Amendment of the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960—

'(1) The Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960 is amended as follows.

(2) After section 3(6), add—

''(7) In deciding whether a person is a fit and proper person to be the licence holder or manager of a residential park the local housing authority must have regard to the criteria set out in section 55 of the Housing Act.''.

(3) In section 9, leave out ''level 4'' and insert ''£20,000''.

(4) After section 10(1) there is inserted—

''(1A) Where the holder of a site licence in respect of any land has or intends to transfer his interest in the land to which the licence relates he shall inform the local authority and provide them with the name and address of the transferee.''.

(5) After section 10, there is inserted—

''10A Licence conditions

A local authority which has issued a site licence shall be under a duty regularly to consider whether it is necessary or desirable to attach conditions to the licence or to alter or cancel existing conditions and to take all reasonable steps to ensure that such conditions as are attached to a site licence are being complied with.''.'.

New clause 29—Amendment of the Mobile Homes Act 1983—

'(1) The Mobile Homes Act 1983 is amended as follows.

(2) After section (1) there is inserted—

''1A (1) Before the making of an agreement to which this Act applies the owner of the protected site shall give to the potential buyer a copy of the written statement.

(2) The written statement shall be signed by both parties on the day of sale.

(3) The implied terms of that written statement shall include particulars of the land on which the occupier is entitled to station the park home sufficient to identify—

(a) the boundaries of the land on which the mobile home may be located; and

(b) the services provided on that land.''.'.

Government amendments Nos. 458, 459, 464 and 465.

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

The issue of park homes was raised repeatedly on Second Reading. As the Committee will be aware, we had hoped that a private Member's Bill parallel with the Housing Bill would contain many of these measures, but that has not happened. We do not think that it is right to wait any longer to implement some of the key recommendations of the park homes working party, which will improve the rights of park home owners across the country. I congratulate the working party, which has campaigned extensively to improve the rights of park home owners, who face unfair pressure and treatment in certain sites across the country.

New clause 44 would require owners of park home sites to provide a written statement setting out the terms and conditions of a site agreement to the other party at least 28 days before that agreement commences. That would remove the anomaly in the Mobile Homes Act 1983, which enables site owners to provide the terms and conditions of the agreement up to three months after the agreement commences. It will still be possible for parties to agree a period shorter than 28 days between themselves, but the occupier must give his consent in writing to the specified shorter timetable.

The new clause is designed to ensure that potential park home occupiers are in the strongest possible negotiating position with the site owner before coming on to the site. Given that many of the conditions of site agreements are already laid out in the implied terms in schedule 1 to the 1983 Act, it has always been possible in theory for occupiers to find many of the terms of their agreement by looking at the legislation, if they know how to get hold of it and understand its details. However, site owners may also include express terms specific to their park in the agreement and previous legislation does not provide for an occupier to have prior knowledge of those. That puts occupiers in an unreasonable position, because they must, in effect, sign up to an agreement without knowing detailed provisions that govern their site and the home that they have purchased.

The new clause provides that any express terms of an agreement that are enforceable by the site owner can be enforced through the courts only if they are set out in writing 28 days in advance of agreement. That will act as an incentive for site owners to abide by the new requirement: for example, if a site owner wants to ensure that he will be able to move an occupier's home to a different pitch in future, he will have to set that out in an express term in advance of the agreement; and if he does not provide that in writing 28 days in advance

of the agreement commencing, the provision cannot be enforced against the occupier—the owner simply will not have the right to move the occupier's home—whereas any express terms that are enforceable at the suit of the occupier and would work in the occupier's favour can be enforced against the site owner. In the event of the owner failing to produce a written statement, the occupier may apply to the court at any time after the making of an agreement for an order requiring the owner to produce the written statement.

New clause 45 meets two of the park homes working party's recommendations. Age will no longer be a relevant criterion when a site owner applies to terminate an agreement because of a detrimental effect on the amenity of the site. Site owners will still be able to apply to the court to end an agreement because of the condition of a home, but not simply on the basis of its age. The new clause also introduces a new procedure so that the court can allow the occupier time to effect repairs to their home.

We understand that when an occupier wishes to sell his home, some site owners delay the process by failing to give or withholding approval of a prospective purchaser. New clause 45 requires site owners to give occupiers their decisions about potential purchasers in writing within 28 days of notification by the occupier of a request for approval. If such a decision is not forthcoming, occupiers may apply to the court for an order declaring that the purchaser is approved.

Agreements are often of infinite duration, so when a home is sold on by an existing occupier, the original agreement is simply assigned, so the agreement can, for example, pass by succession on the death of an occupier. It is therefore important not only that the changes are made for future agreements, but that they apply to existing agreements. The new clause makes provision for that.

New clause 46 adds to the Mobile Homes Act 1983 a power for the appropriate national authority to prescribe new implied terms for site agreements and to repeal and vary existing implied terms. We are considering tabling a statutory instrument that includes an implied term giving the occupier the right to quiet enjoyment of their home. We want to consider that in more detail and we would need to consult stakeholders. Again, it is important that such changes apply to existing agreements as well as future ones. The first order made under this power could therefore have retrospective effect. Any changes made to implied terms when the order is first used would also affect the implied terms of existing agreements, but future exercises of the power would be prospective, not retrospective.

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

Under that provision, could there be an implied term that the owner has to be a fit and proper person to manage the park homes site, or would that require specific legislation? If the latter, why are we not seeking to do that in this Bill?

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

I shall come to the question of fit and proper persons. It would probably be hard to introduce such a provision under secondary

legislation, because of the complexity of the issues that we would need to deal with. Many clauses of the Bill deal with issues around fit and proper persons for the purposes of selective licensing and the HMO regime. The matter is addressed one of the Government amendments grouped with new clause 44, so I will discuss it when I set out the purpose of those amendments.

The order made under the power would be made under the affirmative procedure. There is also a consultation requirement. This power would provide considerable potential to deter bad practice in the industry.

New clause 47 gives same-sex partners rights equivalent to those of unmarried different-sex partners to succeed to an agreement to station a home under the Mobile Homes Act 1983. New clause 48 amends the Caravan Sites Act 1968 to mirror the Protection From Eviction Act 1977, which gives park home occupiers the same protection as that afforded to occupiers of conventional housing. It makes an important change to the wording in relation to the existing offence under section 3 of the Caravan Sites Act. At the moment it says that the acts in question must be

''calculated to interfere with the peace or comfort''

of an occupier. The new wording provides that the acts must be

''likely to interfere with the peace or comfort''.

That would increase the chances of bringing successful prosecutions and the deterrent to site owners who harass or put unfair pressure on park home owners. The measure introduces a new offence, which mirrors that which appears in the Protection From Eviction Act. The offence could be committed either by a site owner or by an agent, and does not require intent with regard to the harassing actions. Offences under section 3 of the Caravan Sites Act will in future be either-way offences, not summary offences as they are at the moment.

This clause will, as a whole, give park home occupiers equivalent protection to that afforded to occupiers of conventional housing. That is important. We know that park home owners are more likely to be elderly and/or vulnerable, and to be in a difficult position when enforcing such rights as they have under current legislation. Many park home site owners and the representative bodies support the proposed measures and have been involved in the park homes working group. Some irresponsible park home site owners put undue pressure on the occupiers of their site in an unfair, unpleasant and deeply distressing way. It is right that we provide park homes occupiers with greater protection against such treatment, and that is what the new clauses are designed to do.

Further new clauses have been tabled by other hon. Members and by my hon. Friends. New clause 27 aims to implement two of the park homes working party's recommendations: first, that residents associations should be recognised and, secondly, that residents should enjoy the same level of protection against harassment as is afforded to private tenants. The Government have accepted the recommendation of the working party that procedures should be

established for recognising residents associations. However, the new clause as proposed does not properly set out what qualifying criteria should apply to recognition or who should decide whether the criteria have been met. It also confers on residents associations powers that do not apply to leaseholder residents associations—for example, the power to negotiate the pitch fee. There are no similar powers for leaseholder residents associations to negotiate service charges, although there are safeguards connected with the leasehold valuation tribunal. Residents associations will only really be effective if there is a body to which either party to a dispute can apply for arbitration. That would require primary legislation as well as full consultation with the industry and with park home owners. We would also need to establish to which body the parties should appeal in the course of a dispute.

We have considered the matter, but we do not believe that we can resolve all the details at this time, so we have chosen to concentrate on the measures that we can implement most quickly and that would make the greatest difference to park home owners. That is why we have confined ourselves to the new clauses, but they are not the end of the story. There is further opportunity to consider legislation and ways in which to implement the remaining working party recommendations, including those on residents associations. Many of the issues are tenure-related, and we have already said that we will consider the Law Commission's recommendations on tenure and associated legislation for the future. We agree with the second part of new clause 27 in relation to the Protection From Eviction Act 1977, and we have tabled an amendment to that effect.

New clause 28 aims to implement the park homes working party recommendations relating to site licensing and the licensing of owners or managers. The Government have accepted many of the recommendations and we intend to honour our commitment, but we do not consider that the new clause would implement those recommendations in a way that will work in practice. We have commissioned consultants to carry out detailed consideration of all the site-licensing recommendations, with particular reference to licensing regimes in the private rented sector. As part of their work, they are considering whether the criteria on fit and proper persons should be the same for site owners as for owners or managers of HMOs. They are also considering what procedures would be necessary to ensure that new site owners meet fit and proper criteria on the transfer of site licence provisions. That will obviously require consultation with local authorities. The consultants are examining the extent of local authorities' duties to attach, monitor and enforce site licence conditions, and the additional burden that those provisions will place on a local authority. They are also tasked with making recommendations on reviewing and updating the model standards that are attached to site licences. They will hold discussions with stakeholders and local authorities to establish appropriate procedures that

are fully workable. We expect the consultants' report shortly after Easter, but it is not something on we can swiftly propose amendments at this time.

There are two main reasons for that. First, the present site licensing system is based on planning considerations rather than on the attributes of a licence holder. To develop a new licensing system that addresses planning issues and the matters that we discussed at some length when we debated licensing systems applying to houses in multiple occupation or selective licensing would require some work to ensure that it was done effectively and appropriately. Secondly, a licensing regime requires us to set out details of what happens if the owner of the site were not a fit and proper person. Earlier, we discussed proposals for interim management orders and for local authorities effectively to take over the management of an HMO or a property under selective licensing. They are quite complex and we have had considerable discussion about them. To attempt to draft similar or parallel provisions when we might need different arrangements for park homes, given their size and the nature of the sites, would be premature and would risk making too many mistakes. For that reason, we do not believe that we act now. However, the consultants' report is under way, so we hope to make progress soon.

New clause 29 is designed to implement a working party recommendation that the written statement of the agreement should be provided in advance of sale. We have accepted that recommendation and have tabled a Government amendment to that effect. In fact we have gone further than the new clause by ensuring that there is a mechanism for the future amendment of implied terms as well.

I hope that the Committee will accept that it is right, at this stage, to take forward the main measures that will have the greatest impact, in the short term, on those who live in park homes, who are often vulnerable, and could face unfair treatment. Considerably more work needs to be done on many of the other measures. We have already set in train a programme of work on some of the most important remaining measures. We have an opportunity to consider the next steps, in terms of legislation, as part of our consideration of the Law Commission's work on tenure.

On that basis, Mr Pike, I would ask hon. Members to support the Government amendments and to withdraw their further amendments that have been tabled on this issue.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The Under-Secretary has wisely—and the Government have sensibly—taken on board many of the points that have been made by hon. Members in all parts of the House about the particular problems in respect of park homes. As you will remember, Mr Pike, those concerns were voiced on Second Reading. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning), who is a great champion of these matters, made it clear then that there are profound problems with park homes, but said that park homes

provide a useful way of making available accommodation that, when properly run, can be extremely desirable and go some way to help with housing shortages.

The Under-Secretary said that such homes are often occupied by older people, and particularly by vulnerable groups. I certainly agree with that, so it is all the more important that we are absolutely clear about the circumstances in which these park estates operate.

You will note, Mr Pike, that we tabled an unselected amendment on these subjects. I fully acknowledge that the Government have gone some way, following publication of the Bill, and have taken into account the comments made on Second Reading, not least by the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson), who made it clear that there are a number of rogue park owners. The Government have responded in a reasonably positive way. We welcome that mood and those measures. However, I am not sure that they go far enough. I will say why and I hope that the Minister will respond to some of the points.

It is worth quoting the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre, who said that if the minority of

''park owners who make their residents' lives a misery''—[Official Report, 12 January 2004; Vol. 416, c. 613.]

were removed through the right legislation, park homes could be a big part of the solution to providing affordable, adaptable, good quality, sustainable housing. The hon. Gentleman is right about that. However, I doubt that Bill gives residents sufficient powers to remove such rogue owners.

My specific concerns are drawn from a letter from the National Park Homes Council, which wrote to my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) about its concerns because it knows, as you do Mr Pike, that my hon. Friend always takes the plight of vulnerable people seriously, and that he is a champion of the interests of people in the greatest need. The letter noted that our amendment talked about the issue of ''recognition'' of a constituted ''residents' association'' by landlords. It went on to say that the council presumed that such recognition should include the receipt of appropriate information, consultation on matters affecting homes and participation as individuals or through representative groups. We presume the same. If that type of relationship ensues as a result of the measures before us, we might be able to overcome some of the problems of those park home residents who feel that they are often not listened to, that their concerns are not sufficiently taken into account and that they have little redress over management issues of park estates.

However, there are questions about the provisions that I have described, and I hope that the Under-Secretary will be able to answer them. What information does she feel it would be appropriate for an estate owner to provide to residents? How does she define a fit and proper person? The hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney), as ever observant of those matters, raised that question.

In earlier sittings, we deemed it appropriate to discuss fit and proper persons; when we were dealing with HMOs, we debated the matter at some length. It would be consistent to have a clear understanding of what is a fit and proper person in the provisions under discussion, as it would make the Bill coherent and afford people the protection that I have described.

Should one or more residents associations be recognised on a park with anything from six to 200 pitches? On a small park, it is likely that there will be one representative association, but on a larger park, there may be more. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton said that there are about 200,000 park homes, so it is a significant issue. Finally, what controls should there be to ensure that a residents association is democratically consulted, sufficiently represented and accountable to its members in order to safeguard the interests of less vocal residents? We do not want the Bill or the accompanying guidance to recognise associations of individuals if the organisations are not democratically accountable or constituted in a proper way.

Leaving aside procurement and the provision of goods and services to residents, greater clarity is needed on the relationship between estate owners and occupiers, on representation and consultation and on information. The Government have made a step in the right direction but I am not convinced that they have gone far enough to satisfy the whole Committee, some of their recalcitrant Members or some outside this place who had expected much more. It is a start, it may even be a fair start but it is not yet a good start. The Under-Secretary can make it so with her response to my questions.

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

Mine is an inadequate voice to speak on behalf of about 250,000 people who depend on and enjoy their residence on park homes. At this stage of the Bill's progress I say ''thank you'' to the Under-Secretary for the amendments to include new protections for residents of park homes.

Although for the purposes of the debate we focus on the problems of park homes, on the whole they provide a positive and happy environment. The owners contribute to the positive image of that housing sector, which to a large extent provides affordable housing and happy and law-abiding communities. It has already been mentioned that many of the residents are elderly. They tend to respect their property and environment and they have a responsible attitude that makes for happy, cohesive communities, which are no trouble to anybody.

On occasions, unfortunately, bad behaviour from site owners impacts on the happiness and quality of life of some vulnerable people. We should help people in that situation. Today, we talk of people who live in park homes, but legislation lags behind us. We talk of caravans in legislation from 1968 and mobile homes in legislation from 1983. Bringing the legislation up to date is technically difficult, so it is a shame that we will legislate for the continuation of caravans and mobile homes in law when we know that we are discussing modern park homes.

I shall provide a picture of my constituency, where there are six park homes sites, one owned by a local authority and the rest in private ownership. They form the happy, secure communities that I have already described. Sadly about two years ago, into the life of one of those communities came a man who bought the whole site overnight for cash and openly announced that he wanted the people who lived there off his site because he did not like the agreements with which he was lumbered and he wanted to be able to re-let the accommodation to other people at a greater price. The people who lived there found that the law gave them little protection against this person. The local authority could talk about a licence for the site, but could do nothing to control his behaviour. Those people had little recourse to action following his intimidation of them.

I can only say thank goodness that that person was not exempt from the natural laws of the land, and was eventually arrested by the police for physical assault on one of the residents. That is what it took before there was some intervention to help a lot of people who had become very unhappy. As a result of direct constituency involvement, I am therefore pleased to add my voice in support of this legislation.

I am a member of the all-party group on park home owners, which meets representatives of the owners and residents and hears dreadful stories from some parts of the country. There are stories of there being no written statement of the terms, so owners try to change the terms unilaterally after a person has paid good money and signed up to the deal. There are stories of changes being imposed by owners on the use of the site's amenities without any reference to, or consultation with, residents. There are stories of excessive charges for utilities, and although the regulator has given guidance on that, I note that new clause 19, which was not selected, refers to that problem directly.

There are also stories of the demands by owners for commission payments when a resident wants to sell their park home to a new owner. That commission is legal and nothing can be done about it, but the owner is entitled to veto the choice of the person who will buy the home, and that can become a powerful tool to ensure that a decent-sized commission is paid for the transaction to go ahead.

Those kinds of problems were the reason why a working party on the sector came up with a set of reasonable recommendations. The Government issued a formal and positive response to that report, and we now see amendments that demonstrate what the Government accepted was faulty in law and needed to be changed. I am grateful to the Under-Secretary for saying that she is prepared to make those changes.

I am also pleased to see that new clause 46 includes the provision for changing implied terms in the future through secondary legislation so that we do not have to mount great battles for new primary legislation each time we want changes. Of course, changes will happen in consultation with owners' representatives and residents' representations. All of that is welcome.

However, I have some concerns about the position of residents' associations and fit and proper conditions for the owners of the licences, as opposed to the conditions of the licences that relate to the land. I hope that we will be able to make progress on that in the not-to-distant future. I see that the Under-Secretary wants to wait for consultants' advice and the result of the Law Commission's work on new tenure before committing herself to final moves. There is a powerful lobby in this place for those issue not to be lost after today, and I am confident that we will return to them when we have the full information, and that we will make further changes later that will be important for those people. I think that today is a day for celebration and saying thank you. I hope that people around the country will be pleased that the Government have listened and responded positively.

Matthew Green (Liberal Democrat, Ludlow)

Committee members will notice that my name and those of my hon. Friends and other hon. Members have been added to the new clauses tabled by Labour members of the all-party park home owners group. That is because we thoroughly support those new clauses and the changes that they make. The set of proposals under discussion is the Government's way of forestalling a Back-Bench rebellion in the Committee. The proposals are very welcome. Although they are not the whole loaf, I will be fair and say that they are more than half the loaf—they are three quarters of the loaf. The Government new clauses and amendments are all measures that we support.

Park home sites have been discussed by hon. Members who have spoken in this debate, but the problems affect many constituencies throughout the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Teignbridge (Richard Younger-Ross)—[Hon. Members: ''Where is he?'']—He is leading on the Fire and Rescue Services Bill and is probably speaking at this very moment. He is upset that he cannot be here, because park homes are major constituency issue for him. His constituency contains many parks, such as New Park in Bovey Tracey, Buckingham Orchard in Chudleigh Knighton and Pathfinder Village in Tedburn St. Mary.

There are a number of park home sites in my own constituency, and although I have not had a problem with particularly bad landlords, the park home groups in my constituency, particularly the Doddington Heights group, are active in seeking to get the law changed. That group has its own very well formed residents association, yet it has so far received no recognition as the Government want such associations to have. It consists of a responsible group of people who, although they have fairly good relations with their landlord, believe that many of these changes need to be made. They would obviously welcome the changes that the Government have proposed, but would like them to go further.

Doddington Heights is one example of cases in which I have been involved that highlight the need for recognition of residents associations. As I said, the Doddington Heights landlord is generally fairly good;

however, probably for financial reasons, the landlord ended the service whereby the caretaker would go round and collect the rubbish on Thursday—or whatever day it was—and put it at the entrance so that it could be picked up by the local authority. Now, the residents, many of whom are fairly elderly, must take their rubbish some distance to the collection point. Doddington Heights consists of about 100 homes on a hillside. I have attempted to get the local authority to go beyond its responsibility and to go on to the site, but its vehicles are too big to fit along the narrow driveways that characterise such sites.

That is exactly the sort of situation in which a properly constituted residents association could negotiate with the landlord. In addition, some sort of third-party appeal process is needed. The Government say that they accept the recommendations but that they are still consulting and will carry out more work. My question is: will anything happen? It has taken a long time to get to this stage, and the Under-Secretary's comments contained no future time scale. I am sure that the all-party park home owners group and many Labour Back Benchers will keep up the pressure on the Government, but the Government resisted the pressure for quite a long time before making the current set of proposals, and I am concerned that it may be many years before we see changes relating to residents associations.

I accept that new clause 29 is unnecessary—the Government's new clauses successfully cover its provisions. However, both new clause 27, on residents' associations, and new clause 28, on fit and proper persons, deal with live issues. Although the Government have said that they accept that, we wait to see whether they will deliver. I hope that, when summing up, the Under-Secretary will give some sort of time scale and commitment about when the consultation will finish. Clearly, we cannot prejudge what No. 10 will decide will be in the Queen's Speech, but if she was lucky enough to catch the ear of the Prime Minister and persuade him of the need for parliamentary time, would such legislation be ready in time for the next Queen's Speech? If the hon. Lady can provide any information, it would be welcome. I am not asking her to commit to something that she cannot commit to; I am simply asking whether that time scale is feasible.

The new clauses are welcome, and they successfully circumvent the need for any votes. I know that the three non-Government new clauses are not the lead ones, and therefore have not been moved, but I suspect that we would not have pressed them to a vote even though we have put our names to them. I would not want it to be thought that we were trying to block any of the Government new clauses—far from it—but we need more assurances from the Under-Secretary that there is more to come, and that it really will come and come soon.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

I shall be brief because my hon. Friend has made our case very well. I simply want to say well done to the Government. They have taken a step in the right direction that is extremely welcome to my constituents

who live on the mobile home site called Riverhill. I do not have too many residents who live in that type of accommodation, but there are a number at Riverhill and they have experienced the problems that we have heard about both in today's debate and others on the work of the all-party group.

New clause 48, which extends protection from harassment to occupiers of mobile homes, is exceedingly welcome. I have had some disturbing casework from Riverhill that suggests that bullying, both direct and indirect, does take place and can seriously reduce the quality of life of elderly and vulnerable people. The new clause is exceedingly welcome and I hope that it will get support from hon. Members on both sides of the Committee. I encourage the Government to go even further as quickly possible.

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

I thank hon. Members on both sides for their support for the new clauses measures. They have wide support not simply in the House, but across the country and from a range of different stakeholder organisations.

The hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) asked a series of specific questions about residents associations, He asked how they should be constituted, what controls there should be on them, what kind of information should be provided for them, and so on. Those are important questions that need to be answered. It is because we are not yet in a position to provide detailed answers that we have not tabled amendments implementing such measures at this time. For example, it would be appropriate to provide all kinds of information to residents associations, including information on such things as car parking, but it could be of limited use to have information without the power to go to arbitration. That is why we need to determine a series of follow-on questions, many of which the hon. Gentleman rightly raised, about the nature of that arbitration and how a residents association should be constituted to ensure that it remains representative.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I endorse the view that the Government have dealt with some of the concerns expressed on Second Reading and elsewhere. Does the Under-Secretary envisage that the detail will be provided in further amendments to the Bill, or in secondary legislation?

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

I think that primary legislation is the likely route for introducing statutory residents associations and setting up a statutory mechanism for arbitration, although it may be possible to do it through secondary legislation or non-legislative routes, and we shall consider doing so. We must be realistic about the limitations on being able to do that in the Bill: we have tabled amendments on the highest-priority issues that can be introduced most swiftly to make the greatest difference to park home residents. We accept that the Bill does not implement all the recommendations of the park homes working party and that we must do more work.

We have already set in train further work on the question of fit and proper persons, because that requires detailed consideration. I cannot say today

what we mean by a fit and proper person in relation to park homes, which is why we have commissioned consultants to do the detailed research. An obvious starting point would seem to be the ''fit and proper person'' criteria in relation to HMOs, but it may have to be different for park home site owners. As I have said, the consultants carrying out that work and some of the work relating to site licensing expect to report back to us just after Easter. We will then be able to decide whether all the questions have been resolved or whether further work needs to be done and what the timetable for the consultation should be. I cannot say today what the timetable is likely to be.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I appreciate the Under-Secretary's difficulty. Does she think that the Bill cannot be amended because of the timetable that she has described and the possible difficulty of dealing with such fundamental issues in secondary legislation? Is there a possibility of introducing a small Bill to deal specifically with those issues?

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

A private Member's Bill or one that also takes account of the Law Commission's review of tenure might be the right option. I cannot give the Committee specific detail at this stage. All that I can say is that we have dealt rapidly with the most important measures in response to the previous private Member's Bill and to concerns raised on Second Reading, and I pay tribute to the officials and parliamentary counsel who have acted rapidly to get us this far. We must be realistic about the further work that needs to be done. I cannot confirm the precise timetable at this stage. As I have said, we will have a further opportunity to consider future legislation based on our response to the Law Commission's proposals on tenure reform, because many of the issues relating to park homes are also tenure issues. However, we have not made any decisions on that.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The Under-Secretary has made it clear that she cannot reply to a number of specific questions that have been raised today and previously. We look forward to a time when she can do so in the most appropriate form. For now, will she confirm two things? First, will the local authority sites that are not currently subject to licence conditions because they are exempt be made subject to those conditions? Secondly, will she bear in mind the comments that were made during consideration of provisions about same-sex partner eligibility? New clause 47 affords same-sex partners the same type of rights as those earlier provisions did. There is some concern about people who share a home but are not in a relationship equivalent to marriage. Will the hon. Lady consider such cases so that such people are not disadvantaged by any changes? I do not want a great debate on that now, but it is important to bear in mind some of the points made by hon. Members of all parties about people who might be disadvantaged by changes.

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

On the issue of same-sex partnerships, the measures ensure that we deal with discrimination in respect of this aspect of the Bill as we did in respect of succession rights. The purpose of the Bill is not to deal with all issues relating to same-sex partnerships: other legislation on that subject is being discussed, and other work is under way. It is right, however, that people who are partners in a relationship, whether a same-sex partnership or an opposite-sex partnership, should be treated in the same way. That is the purpose of the provisions.

Matthew Green (Liberal Democrat, Ludlow)

Does the Under-Secretary agree that if the Conservatives were to be consistent, they ought to vote against new clause 47?

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

I think that the hon. Gentleman is right. Unfortunately, I was not here during the previous discussion about same-sex partnerships. I hope that Conservative Members might take the opportunity to affirm their strong support for treating same-sex partners fairly, as their leader has recently done. That would ensure consistency throughout their party. I see a certain amount of squirming on the Opposition Front Bench on the issue.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I do not want to get into a great debate—we have talked about this matter at great length, and there are more important things to deal with. During the earlier debate—I am sorry that the hon. Lady did not hear it—concerns were expressed by hon. Members of all parties about the way in which certain people might be disadvantaged. No part of the debate followed what might be described as stereotypical lines. We were simply concerned that people in arrangements that were not covered by these provisions, or the earlier ones, might be disadvantaged and examples were given.

The debate on the earlier provisions related to family members. That is less applicable to the debate on the provisions before us, in which family members are included. A couple of friends, perhaps elderly spinsters, who were living together, might be faced with some difficulty, because they would not enjoy rights under the Government's proposals. I do not think that the Under-Secretary would want to disadvantage people who were not partners but were sharing a home. I want the hon. Lady to confirm that she will consider such cases. When the point was raised earlier, the Minister for Housing and Planning generously said that he was aware that good points had been made during the debate and the Government were sensitive to them. I hope that the Under-Secretary recognises that that question, and my other question about local authority sites—which I hope she will answer—were intended to be helpful.

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

I know that hon. Members raised succession rights for siblings. The purpose of the provisions is not to change succession rights fundamentally or change the in which that they apply to the tenure in question. It will simply ensure that there is equal treatment for same-sex partners and

opposite-sex partners. We are addressing that specific issue, and it is right that we do so. I heard the hon. Gentleman's point about the previous not being stereotypical. I trust, then, that we should not interpret his vote on earlier amendments, or his decision on whether to support the amendments before us, as stereotypical acts.

Did the hon. Gentleman also raise a question about unlicensed sites? I did not entirely understand his question; it was something to do with local authority sites. Will he clarify? I am hoping for a bit of semaphore from the corner.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I was saying that local authority sites that are currently exempt should be licensed, and asking for clarification.

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

Local authorities are themselves the licensing body, which is why they are treated differently in relation to model standards when issuing licences: they cannot issue licences to themselves. The site licensing provisions may well have to be introduced differently in relation to local authority sites. That must be considered as part of the consultants' work.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I do not want to labour the point, but as the Government are considering the issue seriously and are to introduce further measures that tighten up the law in a range of ways, it would be entirely inappropriate if such measures dealt with one type of site, but not another. The hon. Lady rightly draws attention to the present difficulty that local authorities do the licensing. We need to find a mechanism to deal with that. That was the point of my probing question.

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

I am happy to ensure that issues around local authority sites are considered as part of the further work. Earlier, we discussed HMOs and different rented properties. The local authority rented sector is treated differently from the private rented sector, and it is right that different arrangements apply. However, we can ensure that issues around local authority sites are properly considered as part of the further work that we do on park homes.

I hope that the Committee will support the new clauses. They are important, and, as hon. Members have said, they take an important step forward and allow us to give greater protection for those who need it.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

New Clause 45 - Implied terms relating to termination of agreements or disposal of mobile homes

Power to amend terms implied in site agreements

New Clause 47 - Succession to site agreements by same sex partners

New Clause 48 - Extension of protection from harassment for occupiers of mobile homes

New Clause 1 - Tenancy deposit scheme (compulsory)

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Peter Pike (Labour, Burnley)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 26—Tenancy Deposit Scheme—

'(1) Where a landlord requires payment of a deposit in relation to any premises occupied as a dwelling under a tenancy, the occupier must pay that deposit into the Deposit Scheme unless subsection (2) applies.

(2) Landlords, or their appointed agents, who are members of national self-regulated bodies that are bonded by insurance schemes approved by the appropriate national authority may request in writing the payment of any deposit lawfully demanded directly to themselves.

(3) Where subsection (2) applies, the occupier must pay the deposit directly to their landlord, upon which the landlord must provide a written receipt.

(4) Any dispute between the landlord and the occupier over the return of the deposit is to be resolved by independent adjudication.

(5) The appropriate national authority may by regulations specify—

(a) The terms, conditions and management of the Deposit Scheme;

(b) Approved bodies and schemes under subsection (2);

(c) The mechanisms and procedures to be followed under subsection (A).

(6) The appropriate national authority may by regulations specify that a failure to adhere to such sections of this Part as it sees fit constitutes acts or omissions for the purposes of section 211(2) of the Enterprise Act 2002.'.

New clause 49—Tenancy deposit scheme—

'The appropriate national authority will by order introduce a tenancy deposit scheme to be reviewed annually.'.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

This is a long awaited debate, in which we hope that the Government will be as open-minded as they were on park homes. The Minister will know that many of his Back Bench colleagues support the proposal for a tenancy deposit scheme, and he will also have noted that, with the tabling of their amendment, the Conservatives appear to have decided that they support such a scheme. It seems that on all sides of the Committee there is momentum behind the idea. From listening to the Minister and his colleagues both in formal debate and in private, I know that the Minister is supportive of the idea. The Parliamentary Private Secretary is shaking his head, but I think that the Minister has a mind of his own and is keen on the proposals.

The arguments have been well made. Tenants need to have their funds protected, because the deposits are their money, and many tenants on low incomes get badly hit when a small number of landlords abuse the deposit system. However, there are arguments in favour of a tenancy deposit scheme from landlords' perspective too. Some landlords' refusal to return deposits without good reason has produced bad behaviour by tenants, who do not expect to get their deposit back and so do not look after the property that they are renting.

I believe that the scheme fits nicely into the Bill, because the Government's intention is to upgrade and improve the quality and standard of the private rented sector. A tenancy deposit scheme links into that aim, as it would play a major role in improving the status of the private rented sector and would, I hope, lead to an increase in its size. We all realise that that is one of the surest and soundest ways to deal with the problem of the lack of affordable housing.

The arguments are strong and appear to be accepted on all sides. The Under-Secretary said in a debate last year:

''I recognise the wide range of support on this issue, and we all agree that there is a problem that must be resolved. We also agree that a voluntary approach does not work.''—[Official Report, Westminster Hall, 15 October 2003; Vol. 411, c. 120WH.]

Ministers are on the record acknowledging that the Government should address the issue. The debate needs to focus on getting the Government on the record on a number of detailed points, leading them to

accept the clauses in the group before us, or to commit themselves amendments at a later stage or separate legislation.

I have a few direct questions for the Minister. First, can the Minister say—on the record—whether the Government support the introduction of a tenancy deposit scheme in principle? They are, in principle, in favour of joining the euro, and of many other things, and we want to make sure that they have decided on the principle of the schemes. That would be a great help. If the answer is yes, as I hope it will be, will the right hon. Gentleman then say whether the Government are committed to introducing detailed legislative proposals to implement such a scheme in the future? Are they going to do anything? We know that they occasionally have problems with timetables, but are they going to say that they will come forward with proposals of their own?

Let us be more specific: do they have a timetable in mind? Will such legislation be in the next Queen's Speech or do they have some other device to ensure that it is forthcoming? Do they have any idea of when they will get around to the measure? They appear to have linked action to the concluding report of the Law Commission. Does that mean that the timetable is inextricably linked to the workings of the Law Commission? I am sure that colleagues on all sides will have read briefings from Shelter and others, including the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, in which the case is strongly made that, on this issue, there is no direct link with the work of the Law Commission. The Government appear to be hiding behind that, but there is no logic in their stance. As I said earlier, logic dictates that the measure we propose should be in the Bill, since it relates to regulating the private rented sector. If Ministers are trying to create such a link, they need to be more persuasive than they have been hitherto.

If the Government are beginning to agree to a timetable in principle, perhaps the Minister can enlighten us on their thinking about the details of the scheme. He is hardly likely to set it out in detail, but I am sure that he has put his mind to the fundamental matter of how the funds would be held. There are two alternatives for a deposit scheme, which have been aired by different groups: either the landlord would retain the funds, and disputes would be settled by independent arbitration in which the arbitrator would have the power, outside of the small claims court procedures and normal judicial processes, to require the landlord to pay; or the funds would be held from the beginning of the tenancy by a third party.

I cannot believe that the Minister has not given some thought to that fundamental design question. If he is thinking of the timetable, he should at least share his thoughts. We hope that he will accept the new clause, as it is not a probing amendment. We want to work with the Government; we do not want to be churlish. They are moving in the right direction and we want to encourage them, teasing out their thoughts so that we can debate the details of the scheme in the House and not just subcontract it to the Law Commission.

I am conscious that many colleagues wish to speak on the subject. Many Labour colleagues feel strongly about it and have signed early-day motions, and I look forward to them joining in the debate and persuading their Front-Bench colleagues that it is time to move. If we had to wait for the Law Commission, how many years would it be before we saw any legislation? How many more tenants would have their deposits unreasonably withheld? How many landlords would see their properties trashed by tenants acting on a perverse incentive because they did not expect to see their deposits returned? The proposal favours all sides of the private rented sector. It is time that the Government acted, and I hope that they will listen to the will of the House.

Robert Syms (Conservative, Poole)

This is a matter of concern and it is useful to debate it in Committee. Our new clause 49 is different as it would involve a voluntary rather than a mandatory scheme, but it is possible that a voluntary scheme could have targeted, statutory regulation underpinning it. The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) made it clear that arbitration is important.

In Poole, where a voluntary scheme has been running for several years, in six years I have never had anyone come to my surgery moaning that they have not had their deposit back. There is an arbitration system with the local rent service which works well. A voluntary scheme would be better with perhaps a national template or legislation on the side of arbitration to ensure that matters were dealt in a common manner throughout the country.

From the perspective of landlords, we should remember that the average HMO tenant stays in the property for 18 months, and inevitably there is wear and tear and damage. For many landlords it is important to get some money as a deposit so that the standing of an individual is known, and because tenants sometimes disappear leaving their rent in arrears. Many landlords would not stay in the industry if they could not obtain a deposit, so it plays its part in the provision of property.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

If there were a tenancy deposit scheme, in all the circumstances that the hon. Gentleman describes that money would go back to the landlords, so I cannot see his problem.

Robert Syms (Conservative, Poole)

Our view is that a voluntary scheme is better. We must also remember that deposits are paid only 70 per cent. of the time. There is a part of the market where no deposits are paid. Some of the most vulnerable people in society cannot afford deposits, and there are landlords who let property to them.

As the law stands, there are examples in certain parts of the country of voluntary schemes working well. As legislators, we ought first to go down the route of a voluntary contribution. The incidence of wrongful withholding is still relatively low, although that is significant for the tenants who are affected, which is why people go to citizens advice bureaux. Voluntary

measures can work well, but there must be some targeted statutory regulation to underpin them so that disputes can be dealt with.

It is important to understand that third-party accounts would increase regulation, bureaucracy and cost. Who does that cost fall on—all the tenants, or the landlord? A compulsory scheme with a system of third-party accounts could also lead to delays in the return of money. We should think very carefully before we go down the statutory route. A voluntary route is better, and it is possible to design a scheme that works well but with a degree of modest statutory underpinning in terms of arbitration.

Clive Betts (Labour, Sheffield, Attercliffe)

I hope that we will make progress on this matter, and I look forward to hearing the Minister's response. The best that we can hope for is that he will express a lot of sympathy—without a lot of tea—particularly about new clause 26, which I tabled, and that he will go on to explain in detail how some of its drafting is defective. However, he might surprise me by accepting every word, although it is unfortunate that the new clause has not been before the parliamentary draftsmen, because they are the bastions of good practice in this place, and they have never drafted a defective clause, so we know that we can rely on them when we cannot rely on others.

I thank Shelter for advising me on this matter. It has led an important campaign—along with the Consumers Association, the National Union of Students and citizens advice bureaux—to get the issue into the forefront of debate and to ensure that we make progress on it. I share the hope of the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton that the Minister will at the very least announce that the Government support the principle of introducing a tenancy deposit scheme. We can then have a discussion about when that might happen, and if and when we address the details of the new clause the Government might even suggest the route that they will go down.

The new clause offers an excellent and clever way forward. There is the reserve of a deposit scheme that landlords will pay into, but if landlords are members of a self-regulated body that is approved by the appropriate national authority they will be able to keep the deposit because they will be properly bonded by insurance. Tenants will be able to rely on that fall-back, and in the event of a landlord disappearing overnight—which is one of the accusations that tenants make against some landlords—at least their money can be returned. The entire proposal is also underpinned by the independent adjudication.

This matter is about the balance of power in housing. We are dealing with many vulnerable and poor tenants. They have recourse to the small claims court but they do not really understand it, and when they are faced with the law and filling in complicated forms, they will not deal with such problems. They will simply feel aggrieved that their deposit has not been returned in full. They may believe that the landlord's wear and tear estimates are completely over the top, but they will not pursue their rights in law.

Twenty per cent. of tenants who are asked say that some or all of their deposit has been unreasonably withheld. That figure may not be a reflection of actual fact. Some tenants may feel that the deposit has been unreasonably withheld when it has not, but at present there is little testing of tenants' concerns because the current arrangements are not convenient or easy to use. That is why independent adjudication is so important.

The south-east Sheffield citizens advice bureau, which is in my constituency, has given me further information and advice. I ought to declare an interest, as I am the president of that body. My interest is in supporting and promoting the excellent work that it does on behalf of my constituents. I received a letter from the deputy manager, Ms Gillian Bramall. She makes an important point that echoes that made by the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton when she states:

''It is an issue that affects all in the private rental market, from vulnerable tenants on low incomes to students to young professionals and families, and it damages the reputation of all private sector landlords.''

The Government are committed to developing, restoring and promoting the private housing sector. A scheme such as this would reassure tenants and let them know from the beginning that the deposit that they hand over will not suddenly disappear for no good reason at the end of their tenancy. That would restore faith and confidence in the private rented sector and benefit the sector as a whole. It is important to understand that the proposal is not just about tenants but about the way in which the private rented sector is perceived.

Ms Bramall reasonably points out that it is quite amazing in this day and age that there is no regulation about how landlords should hold on to the money, how quickly deposits should be returned at the end of a tenancy or who should benefit from the interest. There is no requirement for the landlord to provide an inventory or written statement declaring what the deposit is held against, and there is no independent adjudication. Those major factors, which are missing from the current arrangements, must be included in any national scheme.

The scheme must be compulsory. The Conservatives say that a voluntary scheme might work. As the Minister knows, the pilot voluntary scheme for tenancy deposits has been shown to work only for the small number of tenants who have landlords who decide to join it. That is a crucial issue. As the evidence given to the Select Committee by private sector representatives indicated, the pilot was worth while because it proved that tenancy deposit protection would work through either of the two methods in my new clause. The conclusion from the pilot was that a scheme would work, but a voluntary scheme would not.

Where do we go from here? Lord Falconer, when he was the Minister for Housing, Planning and Regeneration, said that there was a strong case for legislation. This Minister sent out slightly different signals when he came before the Select Committee and said that it was an open matter and that the issue was

still being considered. I hope that on reflection he has accepted that there is an overwhelming case for introducing a scheme. Information provided by Shelter shows that the benefits of such a scheme could be three times the £20 million that the Government estimate—nearer to £60 million. Because the benefits realised from the voluntary scheme were taken from landlords who were likely to be better landlords because they had joined the scheme, the real benefits, far from being similar to the costs, would be greater.

Another reasonable point made by Shelter is that having a scheme could reduce the number of claims because landlords would behave better in the knowledge that the scheme was in place. Therefore, the £19 million quote for costs is probably a significant overestimate. The evidence from countries such as Australia and New Zealand, where schemes are in place, demonstrates that only 2 or 3 per cent. of tenancy deposits come before the adjudication process because the existence of the scheme deters landlords from misbehaving.

How should we proceed? The Minister might suggest parliamentary time. We have done so much work and gathered so much information from the pilot and discussions in the Select Committee and elsewhere that it should not be impossible to insert a clause in the Bill at some point in its parliamentary process. The Minister might say that the Law Commission is reviewing tenancy and arrangements between different sectors. That is right, but the Law Commission was not asked to deal with tenancy deposit schemes; they are not in its remit.

Do we really have to wait? Let us say that we get legislation on the Law Commission proposals in this Session. We may get it back into Parliament after the next general election. In the meantime, we could have two or three more years of unsatisfactory arrangements in the private rented sector, even though we could add something to this Bill with little difficulty. I hope that the Minister considers that. If there is agreement in principle—which I hope there is as there is so much evidence that a scheme can work, helping tenants and promoting the whole of the private rented sector—I hope that he will say yes, while also saying that we can do something more quickly than the Law Commission. If he is not prepared to accept any of the new clauses, I hope that he will table a new clause later to introduce this important measure into legislation as quickly as possible.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

I want briefly to add my support to the proposals for a national rent deposit scheme, which needs to be introduced sooner rather than later. Particular pressures make such a measure increasingly important, certainly in my own patch of Northampton.

First, house prices have gone up sharply. One of the options for many people in my area who were in a council property and needed a housing transfer, or simply wanted to move, was to buy a property: properties were reasonably cheap and most people

were in work. Because of the increase in house prices, that equation has changed, and home ownership is no longer an option for people moving out of social housing. There are also other pressures on social housing, and we have a growing student body in need of rented housing.

Many of the people who would particularly value and appreciate a scheme such as this are not the very poorest. They are not those on housing benefit who are moving into accommodation; quite often they are in work, but the deposit is a substantial amount of money, and the real issue is that they might lose it, hindering their ability to move on. If they are saving to buy, that will be a deduction from the deposit on the property. Colleagues have mentioned the fact that an element of tit for tat is then introduced into the relationship between landlord and tenant. People might say, ''I just won't pay my rent for a couple of months at the end of the tenancy, and that will deal with part of the problem.''

I would argue that a scheme is needed. Colleagues have provided all the information from the pilots, Shelter and citizens advice bureaux. The changes in the housing market, which I suspect will be long standing, are another reason to introduce such a measure. However, it is important that it is carefully worked out. I hope that the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton does not press his new clause to a vote, because I would vote against it. It is important that the Government introduce properly worked out and carefully thought through proposals, which can properly be put into place.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

If the hon. Lady looks at the new clause, she will see that it is not prescriptive in any way and just gives the Government powers to introduce the scheme once they have had a chance to consult. We are proposing exactly what she wants.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

I understand that enabling legislation can be useful, but if we want the full details of a workable scheme set out, it is important that the officials who have to implement it have a proper role in drawing up the proposals. If the hon. Gentleman does press the new clause, I shall vote against it, but in the strong hope that, with emerging pressure, proposals will come from the Government.

Matthew Green (Liberal Democrat, Ludlow)

I shall respond first to the point raised by the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble). Let us suppose that there were a vote, and that the Labour Back Benchers who signed the early-day motion—or, in three cases, tabled the excellent new clause—voted with us, and the Conservatives and the Government lost. Although the new clause may still be imperfect, I am sure that the Government would be minded rapidly to introduce stuff that would work. We would be only too happy to work with them in those circumstances. The fact that this may not be a perfect new clause is a poor reason not to vote for it. That is a purely technical excuse to

allow Members to get out of voting for an opportunity to introduce a tenancy deposit scheme. That is the situation in which the hon. Lady may find herself.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

As somebody who did not sign the early-day motion but is keen on the measure, I think that there is an issue about how such measures are introduced and how we go about providing a scheme that will work to everybody's benefit. I do not care what anybody else does; I am confident that I want these critical measures developed in such a way that they properly protect tenants, and civil servants are probably in the best position to draft such measures.

Matthew Green (Liberal Democrat, Ludlow)

I acknowledge that the hon. Lady has not signed the early-day motion or attached her name to the new clause. I was putting my comments in broad terms, in case any of her colleagues were similarly minded. I suspect that, in the hon. Lady's time as a Minister, she let the civil servants get to her too much; she seems too much a fan of them. A big problem with Ministers is that they rapidly go native, and follow their civil servants blindly.

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

If this is a good new clause that we should all support, will the hon. Gentleman explain something for me? Is he saying that we must have a scheme within 12 months, or that such a scheme must be passed by affirmative procedure in both Houses? If he is saying both—and that is the way that the new clause reads—does it mean that if there were secondary legislation for us to vote on, we would all have to vote yes?

Matthew Green (Liberal Democrat, Ludlow)

The hon. Gentleman has not been listening. My point was that even if the Committee passed a new clause that was not technically perfect, we would be only too happy to talk to the Government about perfect arrangements that would meet their approval. We do not have the benefit of parliamentary draftsmen, and the issue of whether the new clause is perfect is not a reason not to vote for it.

On the tenancy deposit scheme, the citizens advice bureaux have been mentioned, and I want to read from a letter from Jane Harrison, the manager of Bridgnorth and district CAB, which is my local bureau. She has written to me in the past, and I have then written in turn to the Minister, and there has been correspondence backwards and forwards between us. Jane Harrison's most recent letter to me on the subject of tenancy deposit schemes is dated 3 February. It is in response to a letter from the Minister to me, and says:

''I am sad that the . . . Minister of State for Housing and Planning seems to be looking at this matter as simply a contractual issue between landlord and tenant which he feels can be rectified by seeking redress through the courts. What the minister seems to have failed to grasp is that this issue most involves those most in need in our society, who often have no access to housing other than through the private rented sector. A tenancy deposit of £400''—

which is quite common in my area—

''may represent a decent meal for two in a London restaurant but it may involve over seven week's income to a person on benefit. The amounts retained by Landlords represent a huge sum of money to the majority of tenants. The tenants are often those most deprived in our society who through economic and educational disadvantage are least able to access justice through the courts.

This matter is particularly difficult for those in rural areas, where a trip to the local County Court may involve a two-hour journey on four buses. These tenants need the protection of the law. As do Landlords whose tenants wrongfully avoid payment of final months' rent to recover the deposit which may legitimately be withheld by their Landlord. The Government has not in the past hesitated to interfere in contractual relationships, particularly where they feel that there is unequal bargaining power, as in the case of employment and consumer contracts.''

She makes a strong point, but those who tend to lose their deposits are not always the poorest in society: they may be in social housing or have other means.

The hardest hit group of tenants is young people, often aged between 18 and 25, because they are the most mobile: tenants who move house regularly lose the most money. If one puts down a deposit and lives in the same house for 20 years, that deposit, if withheld unreasonably by the landlord, will be a pretty small amount in real terms 20 years later, but if a person moves house every six months and loses their deposit every six months, that adds up to a considerable sum. That tends to affect young people, who are the most mobile and who often need the money for access to a car or to get a job. There are many reasons why they are hit hardest. The Government have a tendency to view young people as problems and not to offer them solutions. The Bill gives them an opportunity to offer young people a solution to a problem that affects them regularly.

I hope that the Minister does not say that the Bill is not the vehicle for this scheme. The Leader of the House, in his evidence to the Select Committee, said that

''if . . . as a result of pre-legislative scrutiny some valuable recommendations were made from the Select Committee that the Department saw as improving the Bill and was happy to take forward and that lengthened it a bit, then I do not think that is going to jeopardise the Bill.''

The Minister may want to disagree with the Leader of the House, but I hope that he will not do so, because I am sure that he will want to show us that he is considering accepting the new clause.

Previous Ministers have prayed in aid the Law Commission as a reason for not taking immediate action, but it is worth quoting its response. Paragraph 1.85 of the 2002 consultation paper specifically states:

''The question of whether or not tenancy deposits should be regulated, and if so how—an issue covered in the legislation of many Commonwealth jurisdictions—is not considered here.''

The Law Commission makes it absolutely clear that it is not considering tenancy deposit regulation, so I hope that the Minister does not pray in aid that body. I am confident that he is keen that such a scheme should be introduced, and we seek an assurance from him on that.

I was disappointed, although perhaps not surprised, to hear yet another policy U-turn by Conservative Members, as I thought they were in favour of the tenancy deposit scheme. Indeed, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), when shadowing the Deputy Prime Minister before the last leadership changeover, committed the party to supporting the tenancy deposit scheme, saying that the Housing Bill was the ''natural vehicle'' for a scheme to protect tenants from what can amount to ''legalised

theft''. Clearly the Conservative party now wants to move from dealing with ''legalised theft'' to something that is voluntary.

I hope that Conservative Members can tell us when, between now and the autumn of last year, which I believe was the last time that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden spoke on this subject, their policy changed. Clearly they have shifted ground. When did that happen? I hope that it is an accidental shift and that they will rapidly return to supporting a compulsory scheme, as they did six months ago, that they will keep up the pressure on the Government and that, should we decide to press the new clause to a vote, they will be minded to support it, as other members of the Conservative Front Bench would be if they were present.

I know that we have a reasonable Minister dealing with this matter, and I know that he will want to have at heart the concerns of tenants and landlords, and to encourage the private rented sector to deliver more homes. This is exactly the sort of scheme that will encourage the expansion of the private rented sector. It will stop private landlords having a bad name with tenants: as we have heard, the 20 per cent. who are bad landlords or have caused problems with deposits give a bad name to all private landlords. It will encourage people into the sector, both as landlords and as tenants. I would be surprised if the Minister did not support the scheme in principle, and I look forward to his detailed timetable showing when the Government will introduce it.

Alan Whitehead (Labour, Southampton, Test)

The Liberal Democrat proposal reflects the well known Eastleigh airport problem, which occurred near my constituency. The Liberal Democrats in north Eastleigh issued focus leaflets locally saying that the planes from Southampton Eastleigh airport should take off to the south while the Liberal Democrats in south Eastleigh put out leaflets saying that the planes should take off to the north. They were members of the same party, in the same borough, and the same heading was on the leaflets.

Sir Sydney Chapman (Chipping Barnet) (Con) rose—

Peter Pike (Labour, Burnley)

Order. Let us not stray too far from the subject.

Sir Sydney Chapman (Conservative, Chipping Barnet)

The hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) puts on record a feature of politics today, which is that one goes the way the wind blows.

Alan Whitehead (Labour, Southampton, Test)

I think that one should go the way the aircraft take off, but I take the hon. Gentleman's point.

I raise the issue because new clause 1 is essentially a Henry VIII clause to allow the Government to do something that is not included in the Bill, but which they might consider doing at a future date. Henry VIII was keen on such legislation because it allowed him to do roughly what he wanted, regardless of the protests

of wives, courtiers or others. As far as I recall, the Liberal Democrats have vociferously opposed such clauses in other legislation and other circumstances. The Government included such clauses in the Local Government Act 2000 and the clauses were condemned mightily by the Liberal Democrats as paving the way for unaccountable legislation that was not properly formed or thought out and which would lead to catastrophe.

In general, Henry VIII clauses are not a good way of legislating. They may be a useful rhetorical device, but as far as legislation is concerned, they are not the way forward.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

When did Henry VIII require his legislation to be subject to an affirmative resolution of both Houses of Parliament?

Alan Whitehead (Labour, Southampton, Test)

The point about Henry VIII's Parliament is that it mainly gave affirmative resolutions, which it did for very good reasons and precisely because it was concerned about the Henry VIII clauses.

We must it bear in mind that Henry VIII clauses are not a good way of legislating when we consider our position on a tenancy deposit system. I am entirely with the idea that it is time to have a tenancy deposit scheme. I think that for a number of reasons, many of which have been rehearsed before the Committee. I am concerned in particular about a statistic that might startle hon. Members: 22 per cent. of the population in this country have no assets whatever. The only asset some people in rented accommodation have is the deposit that they have scraped up for their tenancy. That is essentially a rolling asset, which is applied to the next tenancy when the previous tenancy expires. Although we are not talking about a huge number of people, the loss of such a tenancy deposit through illegal or nefarious means is not just unfortunate, but a complete catastrophe for those people as far as their ability to negotiate their way into their next tenancy is concerned.

I applaud the work of churches and other organisations in Southampton that have got together to run a tenancy bond scheme and a voluntary tenancy deposit scheme with some landlords. It has worked well, but as hon. Members said, it is only the landlords who want it to work who have made it work. To some extent, that reflects on the possible high estimate of the cost benefit scheme that my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) mentioned earlier. He suggested that if a tenancy deposit scheme were to operate, the recidivism in it would be much lower.

I thoroughly support the idea of a scheme. I suspect that the devil is in the detail when it comes to ensuring that the arbitration system works well. The arrangements should be fair to tenants and landlords. There are times when a landlord feels unjustly treated, such as when tenants leave in the middle of the night. They know they will not get their deposit back and they do not want to be held accountable for effectively wrecking, and on occasions maliciously wrecking, the

premises. It is important to get the process right so that it is fair to all parties, works well, is transparent and can sustain itself over a long time.

It is important to get the details right. That might take a little time to sort out. I hope hon. Members on both sides of the Committee will support such a scheme and that there is a way to provide it. That should not be done through a Henry VIII clause, however. We have to consider whether we can introduce it in a clause inserted at a later stage of the Bill's proceedings or in separate legislation. We would have to consider the detail required, which should be properly examined before legislation is passed. I support the principle behind the proposal. I think it has almost universal support in the Committee and I hope that that can be converted into a real scheme, brought about by legislation in the not-too-distant future.

Vera Baird (Labour, Redcar)

I rise to speak with great shyness because, as hon. Members will have observed, I was not here at the outset of the debate, although I was here for all my hon. Friends' speeches and support in principle what they advocated. I apologise for my absence and promise hon. Members that I was not at the pictures; rather, I was taking part in a debate in Westminster Hall on a matter in which I have taken a great deal of interest.

I am anxious because I have received correspondence from the citizens advice bureau in Redcar and Cleveland. Based on its long experience, it urges me to support a tenancy deposit scheme. As I understand it, a 1998 CAB report ''Unsafe Deposit'' gave rise to the pilot voluntary scheme that we have discussed. I also pay tribute to the Teesside housing action group, based in Redcar. Earlier, in the context of a Westminster Hall debate, it told me that it finds, on a day-to-day basis, that its tenants are—as it puts it—frequently ripped off by landlords. I give that group all the support it merits in advocating the principle of a compulsory tenancy deposit scheme.

Both groups approached me from a tenant's point of view, and I echo what my hon. Friends said. It is good for the private rented sector to have such a clear and firm set-up as a properly planned tenancy deposit scheme. Tenants are used to not getting their deposit back and there is undoubtedly the problem that they tend not to pay rent for the last couple of months to forestall the impact on their finances if what they expect to happen does happen. That is bad for landlords—good ones, as well as the bad.

I was in Committee just in time to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe list the lack of regulations on how deposits are dealt with. He said that they are important factors and that clarity is necessary. I agree with him. As a lawyer, I regard it as a current difficulty that the remedies for a tenant whose deposit has been taken away are difficult to pursue. The tenant would have to go to the small claims track at the county court. In a town such as Redcar, deposits are often about £50 or £100, depending on the size of the property. The minimum fee in the small claims

track is £50. If the landlord is brought to court by that means, which is not always the case, confrontation will follow.

If a judgment is given, there is a further fee for enforcing it if the claim is not paid, so tenants' deposits are cost-ineffective moneys to get back when they have been wrongly kept. It worries me greatly that the sector is vulnerable. I appreciate that the middle-ranking tenancies suffer, too, but the lower-ranking sector has become used to putting up with being ill treated and has no way of acquiring rights. We must not tolerate that.

I do not like the new clause and shall not vote for it. It is wholly inappropriate to set out a system in a one-line, swingeing statement that would have to be planned with extreme care and for which the devil is in the detail. However, I agree with my hon. Friends and urge the Minister to take positive and quick action. It is a good cause and I am confident that he will support it.

Sir Sydney Chapman (Conservative, Chipping Barnet)

The new clauses are variations on a theme. Hon. Members on both sides of the Committee accept that a tenant deposit scheme should be introduced. It would not be before time and I subscribe to the general view.

New clause 1, moved the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton, followed by the hon. Member for Ludlow, is a definite, set-in-concrete proposal, which I find difficult to support. In all fairness, I accept that the Liberal Democrats want us to adopt their radical new clause because they think that the Government will move at a leisurely pace if we do not. However, I do not share the view of the hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) on the issue.

The hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe spoke to new clause 26. He specifically laid down a reasonable set of conditions that should apply when introducing a tenant deposit scheme. I thought that the hon. Member for Ludlow was a little unfair on my hon. Friend the Member for Poole.

New clause 49 seems entirely acceptable. It does not say that the scheme should necessarily be mandatory. If I interpret my hon. Friend the Member for Poole correctly, he actually spoke in terms of a voluntary scheme, at least initially, and I think that this is sensible. I do not see any gap between what my hon. Friend said and what colleagues have said on the Floor of the House. I must not stray, but the Committee will recall that when we dealt with part 5, on home information packs, we expressed grave reservations and said that if the Government were minded to go ahead with them, they should at least be introduced on a voluntary basis. I accept in principle that there must be a tenancy deposit scheme; the question is how it should be introduced. I agree with my hon. Friend that it should be voluntary at first.

Under new clause 49,

''the appropriate national authority will by order introduce a tenancy deposit scheme to be reviewed annually.''

After it has been reviewed—or perhaps after two or three years—we will see how the system is working and will be able to iron out any problems. Then, I am sure we will be happy to make it mandatory. That is the line of my thinking, and I am now agog to hear what the Minister has to say.

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

This has, at least so far, been a good, constructive debate. It is conventional to say that sort of thing in the House, but I mean it. The Government are extremely sympathetic to the sentiments that have been expressed by hon. Members on both sides in the debate. In the course of my response—which will be lengthy, as this is a very serious issue—I intend to demonstrate to the Committee that the Government are taking this issue very seriously.

I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Northampton, North and for Southampton, Test and to my hon. and learned Friend the member for Redcar for their support for a well thought out scheme, whose details are set out as fully as possible in primary legislation. I intend to revert to that subject in the course of my remarks.

My hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield, Attercliffe and for Southampton, Test and, initially, the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton asked some very direct questions. As a preface to my remarks, I would like to answer—on the record—the question whether the Government support in principle a statutory tenancy deposit scheme. The answer to that question is yes. The hon. Gentleman then asked if the Government were committed to introducing proposals at some time. The answer to that question is also yes. However, there are many serious issues still to be resolved, and he knows that it is impossible to make commitments about future Queen's Speeches and specific timetables for future legislation. However, the Government are considering what might be required in drafting such legislation and, in the light of those considerations, what might be a suitable legislative vehicle.

The hon. Gentleman also asked a number of detailed questions about what one might describe as the infrastructure of a tenancy deposit scheme, for example, the deposit arrangements. I intend to answer those questions in the course of my remarks and offer a view as to how and when we expect to take these matters forward. There is a seamless, if not timeless, quality to the policy and law-making processes of Parliament. I am grateful to all hon. Members who tabled amendments for the opportunity to continue the Adjournment debate held in Westminster Hall on 15 October last year. The clearly expressed view by hon. Members of all parties was that the safeguarding of tenancy deposits from misappropriation by rogue landlords is a matter of great concern.

In responding to that debate, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary began by endorsing what my hon. and learned Friends the Members for Dudley, North (Ross Cranston) and for Redcar had said during its course. The interest of my hon. and learned Friends is well attested. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary noted that the crux of the matter was that the most vulnerable tenants are highly unlikely to pursue their

claims in court. Therefore, no matter how great the injustice done to them, they were unlikely to get the remedy to which they were entitled. I would add that many of those who go through the small claims procedure also find it difficult to enforce a judgment against a landlord who is resolved not to pay.

On the precise point made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar about costs to tenants who seek redress, let me say in candour that we have yet to work out how that matter can be addressed, but a tenancy deposit arrangement that involved adjudication by a third party such as the independent housing ombudsman or the residential property tribunal would certainly be cheaper than a court proceeding. We are considering safeguarding the position of tenants through written agreements, which we believe would serve to reduce the frequency of disputes.

Opposition Members and, to some extent, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe spoke about using the Bill to deal with tenancy deposits. The essence of new clauses 1, 26 and 49 is that more needs to be done, and done sooner rather than later. The Government perfectly understand those who are concerned that the Housing Bill should not be ignored as a bird in the hand, as it were, but I do not endorse the new clauses for two reasons. First, in a statement on 16 June 2003, the Government committed themselves to considering the case for legislation alongside their consideration of the proposals that the Law Commission is to publish. I hasten to add that those proposals are expected within a little more than a couple of months, not the two centuries that have so mockingly been alluded to in the course of our proceedings.

Secondly, following that statement, we made it clear that a simple amendment to the Housing Bill would not achieve the desired effect.

Mr. Davey rose—

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

I am about to explain why it would be inappropriate to add the new clauses to the Bill, but if the hon. Gentleman wishes to come in at this point, he may, of course.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

I just want to ask whether the Minister can assure the Committee that the Law Commission is studying the issue and that it will make detailed recommendations on it.

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

If the hon. Gentleman is patient, I will assist him, and if I do not, he will be perfectly entitled to come back at me.

We have come a long way in our consideration of the options, but we need to give further thought to issues that have been referred to. In March 2000, we encouraged the industry to set up a voluntary pilot. Initially, we provided start-up funding for two years. However, it soon became clear that the pilot would not grow into a self-financing voluntary scheme. Nevertheless, we extended its Government funding, as

it became clear that addressing the case for legislation was the next step and that we needed to learn further lessons from the pilot.

I stress that Government funding for a roll-out of the pilot as a national scheme was never in prospect. The Committee will appreciate that the Government would need to legislate for express powers to do that. Furthermore, it became clear that a voluntary scheme, even with Government funding, would not attract more than a minority of landlords. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe was right about that.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

Will my right hon. Friend say more about that? Before introducing any statutory scheme, it is important that there is proper consultation with landlords. The worst result would be if the supply of rented accommodation dried up. At present, such accommodation is exceptionally important.

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

My hon. Friend draws me to what I was going to say about the consultation process. I agree with her about the need for consultation—indeed, in November 2002 we issued a consultation paper on the case for legislation. We now propose to publish our response to the consultation, along with some carefully thought out legislative proposals. I hope that we will be able to do that in May or June.

When considering the scope for legislation, we will look carefully at what is proposed in the new clause and at other proposals made by Shelter. However, this is a genuinely complex issue and real problems need to be addressed before the infrastructure for safeguarding tenancy deposits can be put in place. We need to be sure that as much as possible is set out in primary legislation. I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Northampton, North and for Southampton, Test—both former Ministers—for making that point so forcefully. The new clauses would leave many important issues to secondary legislation. We need to get the balance between primary and secondary legislation right.

On more than one occasion during these proceedings, the Government have been chastised for their alleged propensity to leave too much to secondary legislation. I would argue that in a matter as complex as tenancy deposits, with so many important rights at stake, we need to put the necessary arrangements in legislation and ensure appropriate scrutiny. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test was right to point out the inconsistency of the Liberal Democrat position in that respect.

The more one plucks at the issue, the more one finds loose ends to be addressed. For example, even if we were to march ahead of the Law Commission's proposals, there would still be a case in favour of considering a requirement for written terms of tenancy. In schedule 4 we provide that it should be a mandatory condition of licensing that landlords provide tenants with a written statement of their terms of tenancy. There is good cause for saying that that should also apply to other landlords when they take deposits, but we have to consider how that would be enforced in the absence of the incentive of gaining a

licence. If we made that a requirement, the written terms could set out how deposits would be safeguarded and disputes over them adjudicated. The question of how deposits should be safeguarded raises the issue of whether there should be a single custodial scheme or whether professional or trade bodies should be allowed to establish schemes. Such schemes could also be based on third-party guarantees through bonding or insurance.

We have consulted—precisely as stipulated by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North—on those options, and the practicality of implementing them now has to be addressed. There are a number of existing models: letting agents already have the national approved letting scheme, and there are the client protection arrangements of the Association of Residential Letting Agents. We need to consider how best to support professional and trade bodies that are raising standards and training landlords and agents to manage their responsibilities, and whether such bodies could further that good work by attracting members through offering cost-effective tenancy deposit schemes.

The terms of a tenancy need to be clearly established between landlord and tenant at the start of the tenancy if misunderstandings are to be avoided at its conclusion.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I am interested in the case that the right hon. Gentleman is making. He emphasises that the process is complex: there are difficulties of enforcement and infrastructure and the relationship between such provisions and other parts of the Bill and other legal requirements on landlords is complex. Given all of that, would it not be better to start with a voluntary scheme? He argues that the pilot has not reached those who are most likely to be rogues, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Poole and the hon. Member for Southampton, Test pointed out, there are good examples of local pilots. Would it not be better to build on them, at least at the beginning, for it will take considerable time to resolve all the difficulties and introduce a mandatory system?

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

I was going to respond later to the points made by the hon. Member for Poole, but I will use the opportunity offered by the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings to do so now.

For all the reasons that have been mentioned, voluntary schemes alone will not do, but I say again that we want to work with professional bodies that operate voluntary schemes. The hon. Member for Poole did not advocate voluntary schemes as the sole solution; he said that there had to be some form of statutory underpinning. He is right about that, and I shall explain how we think that might work.

The pilot scheme that I referred to showed that disputes over deposits most often involve inventories and cleaning at the end of a tenancy. Those are simple, straightforward and rather mundane matters, but anyone—constituency MP or human being—who has experienced cases involving tenancy deposits knows that such matters are crucial. Requirements regarding

inventories and cleaning at the end of a tenancy must be made clear at the start of it. It is important to prescribe what may be required of inventories after considering the forms and media—written, pictographic, photographic, and even video—in which they may be provided.

There are also considerations of how one defines a deposit. We need to exclude alternative means of extracting deposit money. It is no good banning unprotected deposits if refundable fees replace them. We would also not countenance devices such as a partially refundable double rent for the first couple of months. A scheme, or several schemes, will need to be established to guarantee that deposit money will be available to be paid to the people—landlords or tenants—to whom it should be paid. Such schemes will need to be approved, and we need to consider the criteria that should apply when approving them.

To return to the point made by the hon. Member for Poole, if we allow professional bodies to set up schemes subject to third-party guarantees, we might still need a default scheme. We will need to establish what any default scheme should consist of and what the role of the Government in its provision should be. There will need to be independent adjudication or determination of disputes. We will need to consider the means or the bodies through which adjudication is provided and appealed. We will need to consider how decisions are enforced. The new clause suggests that that could be done by using the enforcement procedures established under the Enterprise Act 2002. However, under part 8 of that Act, an enforcer is able to obtain an order to protect the collective interests of consumers, but individual tenants are not given redress against the landlord.

A key complaint is that the present court process is protracted and that its outcomes are difficult to enforce. The determination of disputes needs to be quick, cheap and enforceable. The body or bodies involved will need to be part of a legal process that offers a clear and simple route for appeals. The Bill might offer a quick solution to the issue of tenancy deposits, but that could be short sighted and create more problems than it solves. Indeed, in the Adjournment debate on 15 October, the my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary wisely counselled against legislating in haste.

The Government want physical and management standards in the private rented sector to be raised, and that is a key theme of the Bill. However, tenancy deposits are a function of the contractual relationship between landlord and tenant, and it is appropriate to consider deposit protection in the context of matters that have been considered by the Law Commission in its recent review of tenure. On 5 November, it published its report on renting homes. As the Committee now knows very well, its proposals are to be enshrined in a draft Bill that it intends to publish in the next few months. I cannot say at present which aspects of its proposals will be taken up.

The Law Commission proposes that the regulatory framework for all tenants should be based on their having written contracts. That could offer a better

point of reference for landlord-tenant relations than direct reference to the many provisions of housing statute.

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

Even if my right hon. Friend does not want to say whether the Law Commission will be pressed, can he say whether he will consider including the inventory in the written record of the tenancy? That is often a source of complaints, and sometimes inventories are not included in tenancy agreements.

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

I hope to be able to reassure my hon. Friend on what we are saying to the Law Commission about tenancy deposits. As the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton pointed out, the treatment of tenancy deposits was not part of the commission's original remit. However, there is a good case for dealing with that aspect of landlord-tenant relations as a key element of their initial contractual obligations.

It is true that the commission's proposals may not offer us a quick fix and that there is much to be considered in them. As stated in its report, its recommendations for the reform of housing law represent radical legislative changes to the regulation of the rented sector of the housing market. In particular, the historical link between principles of property law and housing legislation will, as far as is practicable, be abandoned; instead, a new approach based on a contractual relationship that incorporates consumer law principles of fairness and transparency is proposed.

The Committee, especially my hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield, Attercliffe and for Northampton, North, who raised the question, will be interested to note that I have made a new reference to the Law Commission in connection with its work on tenure. I have asked it to publish with its draft Bill some indicative clauses on the protection of tenancy deposits.

Clive Betts (Labour, Sheffield, Attercliffe)

I welcome what my right hon. Friend is saying. What he is offering will probably not be introduced as quickly as some might hope. Obviously, he cannot tell us when a Bill will be introduced in Parliament, but can he say when the proposals will be ready to be put into a Bill? Has he any idea of the time scale?

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

My hon. Friend tempts me, but I am not going to succumb. He will have gathered from the drift of my comments that work is actively taking place. We expect the Law Commission to report to us in a timely fashion—I have mentioned a period of three to four months—and that at that point we may be able to consider a legislative route, but I cannot be more precise. I hope that that reassures my hon. Friend.

I referred to my request to the Law Commission. I envisage that the results of the exercise may have to come with some health warnings attached. First, they will be indicative and not fully approved for enactment. Secondly, we might not have tied up all the loose tends to which I referred in time for publication of those indicative clauses. Thirdly, they will be tied to

a provision in the Law Commission's draft Bill. It is unlikely that they could be shoehorned into the Housing Bill.

I hope that the Committee will accept that as a sensible next step in developing proposals to safeguard tenancy deposits in the context of the Law Commission's work. It should illustrate how safeguarding should work in the context of a requirement for written agreements. Having said all that, I emphasise that we are open to a wide range of options, but it is worth considering that provisions for the safeguarding of deposits could be a mandatory requirement of such written agreements. Tenants could enter agreements with the assurance that their deposits would be safeguarded by a Government-approved scheme set out in their tenancy agreement. In that case there would need to be the assurance of a quick and cheap resolution of claims in the event of disputes, as well as prompt payment from such schemes following adjudication.

With any mandatory requirement for the safeguarding of deposits, enforcement is an issue. We will need to evaluate all the options carefully. However, enforcement might be easier if safeguarding started with a written agreement or, at the very least, a statement of the terms of the tenancy. It would be a big step forward if all tenants could expect to see their rights and obligations clearly set out, including the way in which their deposit would be safeguarded and any disputes would be resolved.

New clause 1 would oblige the Secretary of State to provide a mandatory tenancy deposit scheme within 12 months of the implementation of part 6. I think that we all agree that that would be a very wide power, leaving everything to be prescribed in secondary legislation at the discretion of the Minister and by affirmative resolution of both Houses. New clause 49 would oblige the Secretary of State to provide for a tenancy deposit scheme to be reviewed annually. New clause 26, which was tabled by my hon. Friends, is longer and more elaborate, but I argue that it throws up a number of unanswered questions.

New Clause 49 would require landlords to pay deposits into the deposit scheme, but what that scheme would be is not defined. It would allow voluntary opt-outs from the scheme for members of self-regulated bodies that are bonded by insurance; in such cases the deposit could be paid directly to a landlord. Disputes about the return of a deposit would be resolved by independent adjudication, but the means by which, or the bodies through which, such adjudication would be provided and appealed is not set out.

Under new clause 26, both the insurance and the deposit schemes would have to be approved by the appropriate national authority—the Secretary of State in England and the National Assembly for Wales in Wales. The appropriate national authority would also be able to issue regulations covering the management, terms, conditions and procedures of the schemes, and it would have the right to specify enforcement under the Enterprise Act 2002—for example, by local authority trading standards officers. However, the new clause leaves much to be prescribed in secondary

legislation and fails to define what is meant by ''deposits'' compared with other financial payments. Similarly, it does not define the nature of the default deposit scheme of independent adjudication, or the criteria whereby the voluntary opt-outs might be judged. Although new clause 26 provides that landlords have certain obligations regarding the receipt of a deposit, it does not establish the position of the tenant on payment of a deposit. In addition, it does not address the ability of the tenant to check that the deposit has been legally dealt with by the landlord on the basis of a valid inventory. Much of the enforcement would be left to local authority trading standards officers. In short, new clause 26 points to a variety of loose ends that need to be tied up before we can be sure of satisfactory legislation on tenancy deposits.

As I approach the end of this serious analysis of the amendments and the general issues, let me explain what we consider to be the way ahead and how our thinking on tenancy deposit plays into broader Government policy. I remind the Committee that the Chancellor's pre-Budget statement in December 2003 set out proposals for encouraging investment in the private rented sector. That will help raise standards in, and the image of, the sector. Apart from rooting out bad landlords through licensing, we need to deal with disreputable practices, and eliminating the misappropriation of tenancy deposits by rogue landlords will really help to raise the sector's image. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe was absolutely right about that, as was my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Redcar.

My hon. and learned Friend also made the point that if too many tenants fear that they will lose their deposit at the end of a tenancy, the practice of withholding the last month's rent could become widespread. That point was also made by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North. So, while many tenants are concerned about losing deposits, many landlords face unpaid rent. How deposits are dealt with can too easily damage the image of the sector. The contractual relationship between landlord and tenant needs to be founded on trust. How deposits are handled is crucial to that. Landlords seek deposits to secure a commitment to the decent treatment of their property. Tenants need a commitment by the landlord to return the deposit if they have played their part.

I conclude by assuring the Committee that the Government are working with stakeholders to develop robust proposals to ensure that tenants' deposits are safeguarded and that any legislative proposals fully deliver that objective. That work will be published in a response to the consultation on tenancy deposits. We hope to publish it before the summer. I hope that I have demonstrated to the Committee the seriousness of the Government's consideration of the issue of tenancy deposits and, in light of those assurances, I hope that the new clause will be withdrawn.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The Minister has, indeed, answered with due seriousness the queries raised by Members on both sides of the Committee. He has committed the Government to a scheme that, I think, will be welcomed by everyone. Every Member who has contributed to the debate has stressed the need for a national scheme. The right hon. Gentleman has acknowledged that need and committed the Government to it.

We understand the difficulty of implementing such a scheme in a consistent fashion. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Sir Sydney Chapman) said so persuasively, we have argued for an approach that is sufficiently flexible to allow the scheme to develop over time. That is why it is important to review the scheme regularly and, after consultation, to consider carefully the best form of implementation. Both landlords and tenants have concerns and have made representations to the Minister, to us and, I am sure, to others.

Given what the Minister has said, it would be inappropriate to press our amendments at this juncture. I do not know what other Members will say, but I think that we have put on the record our determination to ensure that the problem is dealt with in a consistent and effective way. The Minister has made it absolutely clear that he intends to do that. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment—

Peter Pike (Labour, Burnley)

Order. You are not in a position to do that.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Or I would do so had I the right. I should like to say, at this juncture, how members of the Committee very much appreciate your chairmanship, Mr. Pike—the marvellous combination of northern grit tempered by a Christian heart, a kind of mix of rugby league and matins, which has provided for us the smooth consideration and proper scrutiny of business. As I said, if I had the right to withdraw the amendment, I would do so. I know that the Minister will have carefully considered the points made by my hon. Friends and others during the course of our short debate.

Clive Betts (Labour, Sheffield, Attercliffe)

I was probably correct in saying that I would get a lot of sympathy from the Minister. I got a detailed explanation of why there might be deficiencies in my new clause. Most important, we have agreement in principle to a mandatory tenancy deposit scheme, which is a very important step in delivering on the Government's commitment to do something about a very real problem. I appreciate that.

I accept that at this stage my right hon. Friend cannot make definitive statements about when legislation might be introduced after the Law Commission has considered the matter, but he has at least given an indication of when he expects the Law Commission to report and said that it will publish some indicative clauses for consideration. That is progress towards legislation. I am sure he accepts that, although we shall not press the new clause to a Division today, we will watch progress very carefully to make sure that a scheme is proposed in legislation as soon as possible.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

This has been an excellent debate and the Minister has given an excellent response. We really have moved forward in our campaign, although we would have liked a more certain timetable. Shelter, NACAB and other campaigners would have liked a definitive timetable, but they probably understand why the Minister is not in a position to give that today. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe pointed out that the Minister said that he is in favour of the principle of the proposal; in fact, the right hon. Gentleman has gone further today, telling us much more than we knew about his reference to the Law Commission, which will be reporting with indicative draft clauses in the next few months. In addition, the Government are to consult further on this issue before the summer recess. That is progress indeed and the reason why, in due course, I will ask to withdraw new clause 1.

Although we have clearly come a long way, I hope that the Minister can give some indication of the way forward. One of the reasons that we drafted the clause as we did, leaving important matters to secondary legislation, was that we wanted to get some momentum and ensure that the Government will act quickly. I believe that the Minister has been able to reassure hon. Members that the Government will legislate before the next election. It would be in their interests to do so, as the measure would be very popular.

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

When is the next election?

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

The Minister will not say. Does he think there will be a snap election? That really would be news to stem from today's debate. On the assumption that there will not be a snap election, the next Queen's Speech would be the appropriate place to announce the measure.

I do not want to prolong our proceedings. I am grateful to the Minister for the way in which he has responded to this debate, and to hon. Members on both sides of the Committee for their contributions. In a matter of an hour or so, the Conservatives did two U-turns—but we have got used to their wriggling. I am grateful for the comments of Labour Members. They have played an important part in persuading the Government on this matter.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.

Sitting suspended.

On resuming—

New Clause 20 - Accessible housing registers for the disabled

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Peter Pike (Labour, Burnley)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 25—Accessible housing registers—

'(1) Each local housing authority shall maintain an accessible housing register.

(2) An accessible housing register means a register of—

(a) existing or planned accessible residential properties in the local authority area, whether purpose-built or adapted, with details of the access features relating to each property, and

(b) disabled people who require accessible housing,

and a service of matching disabled people to properties so recorded.

(3) For the purpose of this section ''accessible residential properties'' means dwellings, flats and houses in multiple occupation in England and Wales which provide a reasonable means of access and ease for use for disabled people or which may be easily adapted to provide such access and ease of use.

(4) The appropriate national authority may give guidance to local housing authorities about exercising their functions under this section.

(5) A local housing authority shall have regard to any guidance for the time being given under this section.'.

New clause 42—Disability housing registers—

'In the Housing Act 1996 (c.52) after section 167 (2E), insert—

''(2F) Subject to subsection (2), the scheme may contain provision for the creation of a disability housing register.

A disability housing register consists of—

(a) a register or database of existing or planned accessible residential properties in the local authority area, whether purpose built or adapted, with details of the access features relating to each property,

(b) a register or database of disabled people who require accessible housing,

(c) a service of matching disabled people to properties so recorded.

For the purposes of this section ''accessible residential properties'' means dwellings, flats and houses in multiple occupation in England and Wales which provide a reasonable means of access and ease of use for disabled people or which may easily be adapted to provide such access and ease of use.

The appropriate national authority may give guidance to local housing authorities about exercising their functions under this section.

A local housing authority shall have regard to any guidance for the time being given under this section.''.'.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

From the way that my colleagues have rushed back from their break, you can see the enthusiasm that they feel every time I rise to speak, Mr. Pike— although having said that, I see that the number of Government Members is not great either,

and for the hon. Member for Ludlow to lose one colleague might be described as a misfortune, but he would have to plead guilty if charged with carelessness, because both his colleagues have gone. [Interruption.] But I do a disservice to the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton, as he has rushed back from his steaming cup of tea to hear my important words about new clause 20.

Peter Pike (Labour, Burnley)

Order. I remind hon. Members that we have a lot to get through this evening.

Matthew Green (Liberal Democrat, Ludlow)

As the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings has just said how few people there are here, it might be worth his while putting on the record the fact that there are currently more Liberal Democrats present than Conservatives.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

At this stage of our consideration of the Bill, the time has come for me to say something nice about the Liberal Democrats, so I confirm that at this very moment in time, and for the first time in the many hours for which the Committee has sat, they are here in greater numbers than the Conservatives—though not, of course, in greater quality.

Peter Pike (Labour, Burnley)

I hope that you will now speak to the new clause, Mr. Hayes.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I shall, Mr. Pike.

The new clause can expect support from the whole Committee. It advertises a widely held desire among organisations and charities for disabled people for an accessible housing register. Its importance is underlined by the inadequate information currently available about appropriate housing for disabled people. There is a lack of supply of such housing, so any mechanism that brings disabled people and that housing together is welcome. There also a mismatch between supply and demand. Often, there is not a good match between the housing in a locality, the adaptations that have taken place during or subsequent to construction, and the people who would benefit most from living there.

The register would force local authorities to recognise the level of need for accessible housing within their areas. It is important that we do not frame the provision as one model; there must be choice. We do not want to force disabled people to accept accommodation simply because there is a register; there must be a range of models and options so that they can exercise choice over the housing that is most appropriate for them.

The Disability Rights Commission is very supportive of the proposal. It tells me that suitable property and people would be better matched were a register available, and that it would provide great social and financial benefits. I know that all Members on both sides of the Committee will share my concern that the new clause should be added to the Bill.

As there are other things to discuss in the short time available, I will make just two other points. There will be those who wonder whether the register that the new clause would require local authorities to draw up would add to their cost burden. Let me say

categorically that there would be substantial savings as a result of the provision of such a register. That is partly because of the problem of mismatch that I described, in that the people most likely to benefit from adaptations are not necessarily housed where those adaptations are made. There will be savings as a result of not removing adaptations and not having to adapt further properties, and as a result of the reduction in residential care admissions and hospital bed blocking.

There is significant financial benefit in ensuring that as many disabled people as possible—and elderly people, because of course there is an overlap between people with disabilities and people with infirmities associated with age—can stay in their own homes, properly adapted to their needs, for as long as possible. That affords people not only independence, but dignity. It also means a cost saving, because it would reduce the number of people forced into inappropriate accommodation. From the perspective of independent living, the new clause is a valuable and helpful proposed addition to the Bill, but I also think that it can be justified in terms of cost-effectiveness.

The lack of information in many localities about the availability of adapted and accessible properties, and the number of disabled people requiring them, means that resources are wasted. The Opposition have illustrated an appropriate concern for our most vulnerable fellow countrymen, and it is vital that the Bill, too, should do that. I hope that in that spirit, the Minister will accept our new clause.

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

Grouped with new clause 20 is new clause 25, in my name. My hon. Friend the Whip has commented on how all three new clauses in the group look suspiciously similar. That is a tribute to both the drafting skills of the Disability Rights Commission and its power to persuade not only Conservative but Labour and Liberal members of Committee to table a clause on its behalf, and I give it credit for that.

I emphasise what the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings said. There are two purposes to the clause. The first is the narrow purpose of ensuring that resources are efficiently used. A tenanted property might be adapted for use by a disabled tenant, and when that tenancy ends, a new tenant who is not disabled might ask for the adaptations to be taken out again. The next tenant might be disabled, and ask for them to be put back in. That kind of nonsense can be stopped, to some extent, by matching disabled tenants with people who are interested in properties adapted for disabled tenants' use. However, we must always bear in mind the caveat that, as the hon. Gentleman said, this should be a matter of choice and empowerment, and that we should not try to restrict people to a particular property simply because it has been adapted. There are savings to be made from taking that kind of approach.

The clause's second purpose is much more general. It is that we should take the modern consumer approach to providing services for people, and adopt an estate agency type of approach to matching disabled people with properties that meet their needs. Once we look at the wider horizon, as my right hon. Friend the Minister might say, we can see that the

proposal need not be restricted to tenanted properties or affordable housing; it applies to the whole housing market. That reminds me of the earlier debate on my amendment concerning housing information packs to benefit disabled people, and the point about people not going to look at properties that it is a waste of time viewing because they are not suitable. The approach taken in the new clause would make that information available to people much earlier.

The idea of a register and a matching service is not new. There has been Government encouragement, and steps to develop that approach, in the past, going back to the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996. Annex 1 to circular 17/96, entitled ''Private Sector Renewal: a Strategic Approach'', which was issued under the Act, contains guidance to local authorities to consider the

''development of registers of adapted homes and of people looking for such properties''.

Those are the building blocks of a disability housing register.

Then, in paragraph 6.11 of the code of guidance issued under parts 6 and 7 of the Housing Act 1996, in the section headed ''Information about allocations schemes'', housing authorities are encouraged

''to maintain lists of properties which are suitable for disabled people and other special needs groups.''

Again, encouragement is given at an early stage.

More recently, disability housing registers were defined in a good practice guide published jointly in 1999 by the Housing Corporation and the National Disabled Persons Housing Service. This publication, which was called ''A Perfect Match'', describes the benefits of such registers, gives examples of early approaches to their use and suggests how they might be set up. Although that guide is sold out, a second edition is in preparation and should be available next month.

Those are examples of what has already been done. It is time for a statutory duty to be introduced to take disability housing registers a step further. I support a briefing that I have received from the National Disabled Persons Housing Service, which in turn is supported by the Disability Rights Commission, Shelter, the National Housing Federation and the Royal National Institute for the Blind and gives local housing authorities stronger encouragement to establish DHRs. I am told that such services have already been established in Sheffield, Bradford, Leicestershire, the city of Leicester, Reading and Glasgow, sometimes as part of more general disabled persons' housing services.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I am interested that the hon. Gentleman mentions Reading, because I have a paper about Reading, to which his arguments are relevant. In Reading there has been a real saving from such a project. The local authority estimates that such a register may save it between £200,000 and £400,000. Figures from Bradford suggest a saving of perhaps

£600,000. Those are considerable sums, and I ask the Minister to look more closely at the experiences that the hon. Gentleman describes in those places.

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

So you see, Mr. Pike, that we come full circle back to the economic sense of establishing the registers, as demonstrated by those statistics.

One of the wider benefits of registers is that they would publicise the right of disabled people to be treated like anybody else in every aspect of housing provision. I want to give an example of a shocking practice relating to part M of the building regulations, which requires all new properties to be built to lifelong standards: for instance, they must not have steps to the front door, but must have doors wide enough for a wheelchair. If somebody who is disabled wants to buy the property, they can do so and will be able to use it, but if someone bought it when they were not disabled and later become disabled, the property would already be suitable for their changed circumstances.

I have done some research and I have asked parliamentary questions on whether builders now obey part M of the regulations. To a huge extent they seem not to. I have a constituent called Tim Midgley, a wheelchair user, whom I supplied with research last year by the John Grooms housing association and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. With the help of that research, Mr. Midgley did his own assessment of houses built between October 1999, when part M became effective, and December 2002. He claims that, of more than 500,000 properties built during that period, only 71,000 were compliant with part M. The new regulations from October 1999 apply to permission given to develop a property, not from the start of construction, so it is possible that many of the properties built then had received permission before that date. Therefore, to be fair to builders, I must add that many of the properties may not have been covered by part M.

However, a wheelchair group that Tim Midgley tells me about has more recently carried out two surveys of homes. Between 7 and 9 September 2003,

''123 wheelchair users visited 287 show homes''

and found that only two out of 287 total were suitable for them, in terms of their being able to get to the front door and the front door being wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair. Later,

''Between the 19th to 23rd November 2003 . . . 106 wheelchair users visited . . . a further 185 . . . sites''

and found that

''only four were accessible to wheelchair users''.

My maths tells me that that makes six out of 472 at the end of 2003. The excuse that the permission was granted before October 1999 is wearing a bit thin. I urge the Minister to take note of those statistics and make some inquiries.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

It is worth adding to the hon. Gentleman's extremely apposite comments that between 350,000 and 750,000 people who would be affected by that are either permanent or part-time wheelchair users. Given what he has said, it is not

surprising that the John Grooms housing association described the chances of a disabled person being able to access a suitable home as a lucky dip.

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

That is right. A large number of us have signed an early day motion—I think that it is early-day motion 173—congratulating John Grooms on that research and on exposing those statistics.

To return to the clause, I believe that if there were such a service matching disabled people to properties, and it was obvious that the market was not providing the properties needed for that matching service, the existence of the service would help to highlight that fact. We would be doing disabled people a great favour by establishing those registers and services, so that such things would be exposed more regularly.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

I support what has been said in the general debate so far. Obviously, our new clause 42 is linked with the new clauses in the name of the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings and that of the hon. Member for Stafford.

There seems to be a general consensus in the Committee that we need to build on the guidance for the 1996 Act. I have the same briefing as the hon. Member for Stafford, and I will not repeat everything that he has said. Clearly, that guidance existed and it is something that can be built on. It is a shame that it rather seems to have got lost when the guidance following the Homelessness Act 2002 was issued. I hope that the Government can return to the previous guidance and extend it far more widely—as is suggested by the three new clauses, which, in different ways, propose the new register.

I want to give one example from an area that I am beginning to know more about, where, if we had such a register, the state would save an awful lot of money. Through contacts with constituents I have been made aware that there is growing use of dogs for disabled people, which enable them to become completely independent in their own homes. Thus people who had previously required 24-hour care, seven days a week—with the expense that that brings the social services departments of local authorities—suddenly have very little human care, because the dog can provide all the care that they require. It may sound astonishing to hon. Members, but that is a fact. Charities such as Dogs for the Disabled and Canine Partners for Independence provide and train the dogs. They bring about an amazing change in those people's lives. They suddenly get freedom—even, sometimes, the freedom to go out to work. Therefore the state benefits even more, because someone moves off benefits, goes into gainful employment and pays taxes. There are huge benefits.

Why do I raise that issue in relation to the registers? Well, one of the issues for the people who would benefit from having such a dog—who would choose to have a dog if they could—is that they need homes with a garden: the dog has got to do what dogs do. Therefore, it is important that homes with gardens are available for such people. Perhaps such a consideration could be added to the guidance. That would not only provide the financial benefits

mentioned by the hon. Member for Stafford, it would facilitate access to specially trained dogs for disabled people, which would provide another financial benefit for local authorities and the state. It would show the power of this House to adopt measures such as the ones proposed. Not only would it improve the quality of life for the disabled people who would benefit, but it would also have huge benefits for the wider community. This is a matter of total common sense. It is not a party political point, but something on which we can all agree.

I was interested to see the Minister's reaction to the comments of the hon. Member for Stafford, which clearly showed that although though the House has passed regulations on the matter, they are not being properly enforced. We are not seeing the desired changes in construction practices. The Minister was rightly alarmed by that. I hope that he will confirm that the Government will accept one of the new clauses, or at least the principle behind them. I hope that he will be alarmed by what he has heard and make further efforts to ensure that regulations previously passed are properly enforced. If he does so, he will get three cheers from the Committee.

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

New clauses 20, 25 and 42 propose that local authorities should be required to maintain accessible housing registers for people with disabilities. Clearly, it is important that people with disabilities are housed appropriately, and we must match the housing needs of disabled people with the accommodation available. We are providing substantial support to local housing authorities through the disabled facilities grant, which will increase from £57 million to £100 million next year. Hon. Members have made some important points about matching local needs with the availability and the provision of housing locally.

The proposals would require local authorities to maintain detailed registers of all accessible housing in their areas. New clauses 25 and 42 would require the local authority to maintain a register of people with disabilities and offer a service matching their needs to appropriate homes. We have to exercise considerable caution when contemplating placing statutory obligations on local authorities, given the considerable demands that that would place on their resources, especially those of their housing services.

I was interested in the points made by hon. Members about the potential savings that might accrue, and I am happy to consider further some of the examples that they gave. The matter needs more rigorous consideration. It would be easy to postulate savings, but then find that the burdens created by having to provide such detailed information considerably outweighed any potential savings on resources. I am happy to consider that matter further; there is guidance on it already.

The code of guidance on the allocation of accommodation recommends that housing authorities maintain lists of properties suitable for people with disabilities and other special needs groups. It recommends that the lists contain accessible or significantly adapted local authority stock, and RSL

and private sector properties, to which tenants would be nominated. That explanation is contained in statutory guidance, so housing authorities are expected to pay due regard to it.

We should also bear in mind that we have recently abolished the duty to maintain a housing register. To reverse that and place an additional burden on local authorities, particularly in relation to one category of housing, would seem to run counter to the direction of reducing the statutory burdens on local authorities in this area.

We also need to consider the changes that are taking place in the approach to letting local authority and social housing. Hon. Members raised the question of choice, and emphasised the importance of choice for people with disabilities. That is an important issue. We are seeing the introduction of choice-based lettings across the country. In the areas in which such lettings have been piloted, they are proving extremely popular. They give prospective tenants considerably more choice and flexibility when deciding where to go. Such lettings are a shift away from the traditional idea of the local authority allocating a person to a place, or to a particular house. The traditional idea of the register may look rather different if a choice-based lettings approach is taken. Through that approach, which is rather different from the register approach, there may be other ways of improving the match between needs and availability. We need to consider the issue further.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford raised a point about part M of the regulations. Clearly, that is a cause for serious concern, and we will certainly pursue the issue of whether part M regulations are being implemented and enforced. Hon. Members are right: if this House has specified the changes that it thinks need to take place to improve accessibility for people with disabilities, such changes ought to take place in practice. We will need to pursue the matter to ensure that they do, and to see whether further measures need to be taken. I give him an undertaking that we will pursue the issue.

On the broader question raised by the new clauses, we are concerned about placing disproportionate burdens on local authorities. I am concerned about the points that hon. Members have made and want to consider further how better to match needs, particularly in the context of choice-based lettings, which may allow us to pursue the issue in a slightly different way. I will consider the matter further, but I urge the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings to withdraw the new clause, because we do not think it appropriate at this stage to introduce a statutory duty for local authorities in that way.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I hear what the Under-Secretary says, and, of course, such things are never easy. The new responsibility would be testing for local authorities, but I must pick up on a point that she made about costs. As I said, I have a paper from Reading—the hon. Member for Stafford mentioned Reading first. In

Reading, there is a partnership between the borough council social services and housing departments, which is the lead partner, Reading Abbey and Reading Thames primary care groups, and Ability housing association. The partners have been running the project for some considerable time. They estimate the costs of running the register to be something in the order of £40,000 a year. They also estimate that with an effective disability housing register, up to 10 residential care admissions that might normally be expected each year could be prevented, saving something in the region of £156,000 a year. On that basis alone, the register would be cost-effective.

In addition to that, there are the substantial savings on adaptations. It is worth pointing out that the team estimates that 10 void properties a year require adaptation before the tenant moves in. As most of us on the Committee know, the cost per property of installing adaptations ranges from £100 to about £8,000. The team estimates that the total annual cost would be about £25,000. In addition to that, there is a cost of approximately £8,000 for dismantling adaptations. As the hon. Member for Stafford said, that often happens when a different kind of person moves into the property. As those figures stack up, the £40,000 for running the scheme looks pretty insignificant.

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. As I said earlier, I am keen to look in more detail at the evidence that he has, and at the comments that hon. Members have made about cost. I have not seen the survey that he cites, which is why I am keen to look at it and consider the cost issues in more detail.

Mr. Hayes: The Under-Secretary is, as ever, professional and charming. She almost persuades me not to push the new clause to a vote, but knowing that the Government are unlikely to support it, given what she has said, and mindful of the fact that we need to press the point home hard, a vote is appropriate on this occasion. I hear what she says, and the debate has been constructive, but I want the Committee to vote.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 6, Noes 9.

Warm homes

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Peter Pike (Labour, Burnley)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 43—Standards in social housing—

'(1) The Secretary of State shall ensure that all social housing will by 2016 and as far as is reasonably practicable have insulation and heating and ventilation standards that are at least equivalent to that required in newly built homes by the Building Regulations for the time being.

(2) For the avoidance of doubt the standards referred to above shall include the following provisions in the following circumstances, namely that:

(a) in the case of properties with reasonable access to a loft the standard should specify a minimum loft installation of 200mm; and

(b) in the case of properties with cavity wall the standard should require that the cavity be insulated; and

(c) any hot water tank must be adequately insulated; and

(d) there must be a heating system that is economical and efficient and which is capable of heating the whole dwelling to a comfortable level in normal weather conditions at a cost that is affordable to the occupant; and

(e) in the case of properties with solid walls and no loft space any such house must achieve a SAP rating of no lower than 60.

(3) In this section ''social housing'' means housing let by a registered social landlord or a local housing authority.'.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The whole Committee will be concerned about fuel poverty. There is probably not a great deal of fuel poverty in sun-drenched Ludlow or leafy Surbiton, but in other parts of the country there certainly is.

Matthew Green (Liberal Democrat, Ludlow)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way to me, since he mentioned my constituency. I have to say that he has very little idea of what it is like, which is probably why the Tories lost the seat. In fact, there is a considerable amount of poverty in my constituency—some of the poorest wards in England are there—and along with poverty goes fuel poverty. The hon. Gentleman has a completely wrong idea of what Ludlow is like.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I know a great deal more about Ludlow following this Committee, because I have heard numerous anecdotes about it. Indeed, I might say that I know more than I expected, or needed, to know about Ludlow as a result of his many comments. I do not have the figures to hand, but of course average incomes in my constituency are considerably lower

than in his. By any measure of deprivation my constituency is in greater need than his, and he ought to be careful before he makes that sort of intervention—but let us leave that to one side.

There are many other parts of the country where fuel poverty is greater than either in Ludlow or in south Lincolnshire. It is worth reminding the Committee how fuel poverty is defined—the Government define it as households that need to spend—but do not necessarily do so—more than 10 per cent. of their income on energy, compared with a national average of 3.5 per cent. of income. There is a big overlap between fuel poverty and other forms of disadvantage. People suffering from fuel poverty will usually be in older or inadequate housing. They will often be from vulnerable groups—the elderly suffer disproportionately from fuel poverty—and they will also, of course, include those living in areas affected by adverse weather conditions. In the far north, the temperature is altogether harsher than—[Interruption.] Perhaps the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) wants to intervene, although I was not thinking only of lovely Bolton—

Sally Keeble (Labour, Northampton North)

Think of somewhere—anywhere—in the north-east.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Off the top of my head, I could say Gilly-gilly-hassenpfeffer-catch-an-Allan-Bogen-by-the-sea. Max Bygraves, who has played a large part in our proceedings, had a particular interest in it. I understand that he lives on the cliffs at Bournemouth, so he probably suffers sharp winds and cold temperatures, although probably not the fuel poverty that lies at the heart of the new clause.

The new clause would create a new responsibility. The warm homes initiative began in the mid-1990s. A Bill was introduced, I think by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess). It subsequently became an Act and was sharpened up by Bills in 2000 and later. It has led to a series of targets and to proper expectations about what we should do about warm homes. Indeed, the Government have set their own targets. The latest figures suggest that there have been some improvements and that there has been a decline in fuel poverty as a result, but the Government are not on schedule to meet their target by 2010. The real problem is that the provisions do not have enough teeth to allow us to enforce our responsibilities as regards warm homes. The new clause would give the provisions more teeth.

I know that hon. Members on both sides of the Committee have strong feelings about warm homes and fuel poverty. They recognise that there have been improvements since 1995, and the Government acknowledge the need to do more, but there are real problems with meeting the targets, and the provision of properly insulated warm homes is patchy. If we are to deal seriously with fuel poverty and the problems faced by vulnerable groups, we must take this opportunity to reinforce our commitments by supporting new clause 21, in my name and those of my hon. Friends.

I hope that the hon. Member for Stafford, who has moved half way across the Floor of the Committee and is now closer to the compassionate Conservatism that I have sought to articulate over the past several weeks, will not simply abstain but go all the way in the defence of the most needy by supporting the new clause with my Conservative colleagues and me.

Matthew Green (Liberal Democrat, Ludlow)

I support new clause 43, in the name of the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East. In fact, you have caught me out by calling me to speak now, Mr. Pike, because I was half expecting you to call him to speak to it first. It has the firm backing of the parliamentary warm homes group, and I am delighted that he has tabled it. I shall not go through the briefing, because I suspect that I would be taking the words out of his mouth. I have seen that happen to others in Committee, but I shall not do it to him. I am sure that he will take a comprehensive approach to the issue.

The hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings seems to be looking forward to the end of our proceedings even more than the rest of us—he is certainly running out of sensible things to say. He suggested that his constituency had lower than average incomes, but I do not think that it is an objective 2 area, as most of mine is. I do not think that it is a rural regeneration zone, as mine is, either. To find areas with lower average incomes than south Shropshire one must go to the north-east of England, or Cornwall. I suspect that his statistics are wrong, not for the first time.

I do not want to remove the gloss from what the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East will say. I am sure that he will make the points that I would otherwise have made from the excellent brief from the parliamentary group on warm homes. We fully support his new clause, and if he were minded to press it to a Division, we would vote with him.

Brian Iddon (Labour, Bolton South East)

New clause 43 is the product of the all-party group on warm homes. The Government's objective under the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000 is to end fuel poverty by 2010 in the social housing sector by setting a decent homes standard. The gist of my argument is that we will not meet that standard if we do not upgrade the decent homes standard with regard to energy or thermal efficiency.

Standards for new build, whether in the social or the private sector, are now much higher than the standards set for improvement in thermal efficiency by the decent homes standard. There lies the problem. The warm homes group has done some research, which we have circulated to the Committee. The group concluded that, based on the latest 2002 Government figures, 1.4 million social sector homes in England are failing to meet the decent homes standard. Of those, the vast majority—80 per cent., or 1.1 million—failed on thermal insulation grounds. There is an urgent need to

install energy efficiency in the homes occupied by perhaps 2.5 million people—I am working on the average figure of 2.2 persons living in a household.

Even worse, the former Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions acknowledged in its 2001 consultation on the decent homes standard that 25 per cent. of social sector households whose property already complied with the current decent homes standard were still in fuel poverty. If those figures are still broadly correct—estimates by the National Energy Action group given in evidence to the Trade and Industry Select Committee suggest that they are—a further 650,000 social sector homes, lived in by a further 1.4 million people, that comply with the current standard, are still in fuel poverty. If we add 1.1 million and 650,000, that comes to around 1.75 million households, and if we convert that roughly into the number of people living in those households, almost 4 million people could be living in those homes.

We have a choice. We can either continue with the current standards or upgrade the standards. The argument of the warm homes group is that if we do not upgrade the standard of thermal efficiency for the decent homes standard, we shall not comply with the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000. That is the choice available to the Government.

I have a further point. The Government have introduced a number of instruments to improve our homes, including the thermal efficiency, and I have referred to the decent homes standard. The Bill also refers to the housing, health and safety rating system and the licensing of houses in multiple occupation. The second problem is that there appear to be no links between the three policy instruments that the Government are using to improve our homes, and all of them could impact on the problem of energy efficiency.

I will try to keep this brief, because there are other matters to be discussed before we finish. Ideally, the energy efficiency standards of all three policy instruments that I just referred to should be the same. If they were the same, we would accelerate towards the target that the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000 set the Government. The bottom line is that we will not achieve that target unless standards of thermal efficiency are improved under the decent homes standard.

Sir Sydney Chapman (Conservative, Chipping Barnet)

I support my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings on new clause 21, as I support the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East on new clause 43. I do so particularly because I have the privilege to be vice-chairman of the all-party warm homes group.

As a retired architect, throughout my political career I have found it strange that a country such as ours, with such an economy—whatever difficulties it may get into temporarily—has not got a housing stock that meets what ought to be, on any account, basic standards of insulation, heating and ventilation. Generally we have a temperate climate, although it can be extreme at times. I applaud the Government for responding to private Members' legislation, which a number of us have been involved in over the years, and

for their commitment in the 2000 Act. It is no criticism of the Government when I say that this is something that, on a multi-party basis, we ought to encourage whatever Government is in power to pursue. What I particularly like and recommend about new clause 43 is that it gives sufficient time—until 2016—to get the standards up to the requirements of a civilised nation.

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

New clause 21 sets out the need for guidance on the improvement of existing houses in multiple occupation in terms of insulation and heating. The Bill already contains measures relating to the energy efficiency of homes, such as home information packs, which would include energy reports for prospective buyers, and the new housing health and safety rating system, which will enable authorities to assess the health and safety impact of a range of hazards—including those caused by cold, damp and mould—and will provide an objective basis for appropriate action.

Sustainable communities need decent homes. We have made the achievement of the decent homes target a clear priority for social housing providers over the next few years. It is clear that the benefits in terms of quality of life for occupiers, and also in terms of the health of those who live in houses that do not have adequate heating and do not meet the decent homes standards in whatever way, can be great.

The thermal criterion is an important part of the decent homes target. A large proportion of the homes that fail to meet the standard do so either because they are not properly insulated or because they do not have adequate heating. It is clearly an important issue in terms of meeting the decent homes and fuel poverty targets. Minimum standards of energy efficiency for future housing stock are set out in part L of the building regulations. We are committed to further amendments to part L that would increase the energy efficiency of new dwellings as well. The minimum standards of energy efficiency set out in the building regulations also apply when building work is carried out on existing housing stock, including houses in multiple occupation. Local authorities have wide powers to provide assistance to home owners and tenants for repairs and improvements to their homes.

New clause 21 is specifically about guidance and acting in accordance with it. There is already considerable guidance available. We are publishing revised guidance on implementing the decent homes standard, including the thermal comfort criterion, this week. It also covers the refurbishment of private sector homes, including HMOs. We must recognise that fewer levers are available to us when dealing with the private sector compared with the social housing sector; it is much easier for us to make changes and tackle fuel poverty in social housing than in private sector housing.

We have issued substantial guidance on how to improve the energy efficiency of existing and new-build housing. For the refurbishment of existing dwellings, we have issued new improved guidance documents for local housing authorities and registered social landlords. We have also provided funding for other bodies such as the Energy Saving Trust and the

Building Research Establishment, which provides additional detailed guidance. There is also web-based guidance on many of those matters.

There is no need for further statutory guidance, and although I agree with the intention behind the new clause, it would be inappropriate to specify a requirement for further guidance when a considerable amount is already available. I ask the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings to withdraw his new clause.

New clause 43 would require the Secretary of State to ensure by 2016 that all social housing stock had the same levels of insulation, heating and ventilation as new-build properties as set out in the building regulations. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East knows, we are committed to meeting the decent homes target by 2010. It will ensure that all social housing can provide occupants with a reasonable degree of thermal comfort, and that each dwelling has efficient heating and effective insulation. Both criteria must be met before the standard is reached.

Matthew Green (Liberal Democrat, Ludlow)

I am sure that the Minister is aware that the Government's own consultation on the decent homes standard has accepted that 25 per cent. of homes that already comply with the standard may still be in fuel poverty. Although the standard will mean an improvement for many properties, it will not completely deal with fuel poverty.

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for timing his intervention so that I could take a drink of water, as my throat had become extremely dry. He is right to say that fuel poverty is not about energy efficiency alone; income and fuel prices are also relevant. Households living in decent homes but in fuel poverty are likely to be among the poorest households, so addressing fuel poverty means dealing with the infrastructure of homes, heating and energy efficiency, and factors such as household income.

That is why we have also set a target to end by 2010 the problem of fuel poverty for vulnerable households. We will shortly publish a fuel poverty implementation plan that will set out how we will make further progress towards that target. It includes the housing programme perspective, but the hon. Gentleman is right to say that there are further aspects.

Brian Iddon (Labour, Bolton South East)

We are now seeing significant increases in fuel prices, especially gas prices, which have a knock-on effect on electricity prices. Does the Minister not agree that we might push more people into fuel poverty if they continue to rise?

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

My hon. Friend is right. Prices are an important factor, which is why even something as simple as VAT on fuel was an important issue. I can assure him that the discussions on meeting the fuel poverty targets led by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs consider all factors, including utility prices, which have been discussed with the regulators. We consider fuel poverty in all its dimensions; it is not simply a housing and energy efficiency issue.

Hon. Members have raised questions about efficiency. Because of differences in efficiency between gas and oil heating systems and the other heating systems listed, the insulation regarded as appropriate to meet the decent homes target differs according to the kind of heating. For dwellings with gas and oil programmable heating, cavity wall insulation or at least 50 mm of loft insulation is regarded as effective. For dwellings heated by electric storage heaters or other kinds of heating, 200 mm of loft insulation is required.

Those measures are seen as the best way of increasing the energy efficiency of homes. It is right that they should be part of the broader decent homes target. Analysis undertaken by the Building Research Establishment, using data from the 1996 English house condition survey, was useful in setting out the criteria. Many landlords will be able to provide housing above that standard, and additional guidance on implementing the standard for high energy efficient boilers is available when central heating is installed or replaced.

A wide range of issues has been taken into account as part of the decent homes standard. That standard and the fuel poverty target are challenging, but in the round they set out realistic milestones on the progress that needs to be made. Considerably more needs to be done, however. The publication of the fuel poverty implementation plan will set out further details. We are moving in the right direction and are making substantial progress, but we clearly have further to go. We recognise the many dimensions of the problem. So I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the motion and new clause.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I hear what the Under-Secretary says. She is right that progress has been made. Indeed, she was right about the number of people in fuel poverty. Although she did not give a figure, it has fallen from 5.5 million in 1996 to 3 million.

As I said, and as the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East indicated, half those people are vulnerable and suffer from a range of special needs or deprivations. The Government acknowledge that. Although progress has been mad, it is too slow. As the hon. Gentleman said, to meet their targets, they will have to accelerate pretty rapidly, because at the moment they are on schedule to miss them. The energy efficiency improvement needed to meet those targets is about 8 per cent. a year, but it is running at about 6 per cent. The right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher), the former Environment Minister, described that figure as ''wholly inadequate''. Given that he is no longer a member of the Government, it is for current Ministers to explain their progress. The general view is that if we are to attack fuel poverty, a significant improvement in performance in respect of warm homes is needed.

I have not gone into detail about the technical aspects, and the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East is a greater expert than I am, but some of the adaptations and changes that can be made to improve the condition of homes are fairly straightforward, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet implied. They do not have to be terribly costly. As for new build, getting it right at the outset will not be massively costly—all the independent research supports that. We are not talking about an insurmountable target; it can be done if there is a will.

Although I accept the Under-Secretary's good will, and although I accept that the Government are moving in the right direction, I share the view of the hon. Gentleman, and of the group of which he and my hon. Friend are members, that more needs to be done.

Given the happy atmosphere that has permeated the Committee during our consideration of the Bill, it seems a shame to end our affairs in a Division. The Committee has singularly lacked contumely, except perhaps a little between Liberal Democrat Members and myself, but that has been no fault of mine, as you know, Mr. Pike. I am not wild about Liberal Democrats, but I know that the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton fully understands the importance of being earnest; he is certainly earnest. Although the hon. Member for Ludlow may have thought that he was a man of no importance, we have learnt that he is an important man, at least in Ludlow. As for the hon. Member for Teignbridge, we can only assume that he is somewhere that he thinks is more significant than being here, debating important issues that affect so many vulnerable people. Having said all that, however, I welcome the contribution of Liberal Democrat Members.

This has been a good Committee. There will not be much time at the end to say happy things about what we have done over the past few weeks, so I beg your indulgence, Mr. Pike. We have, I think, properly scrutinised the Bill. I thank my hon. Friends for the role that they played. Chipping Barnet, Poole and Westminster could not have better servants than my hon. Friends, nor could South-West Bedfordshire, in the form of my hon. Friend who is not here today.

Government Members have also performed a critical role in holding their Ministers to account—and how well the Ministers have done in response! The ministerial team in the Committee has listened, has been responsive and, in many cases, has acknowledged that there is more work to be done. There has been far more agreement in the Committee than disagreement.

I particularly enjoyed the Minister's occasional lapses into French, so much so that I thought it necessary to say to him, ''Il y a des gens qui croient qu'il est pretentieux d'utiliser le franccais quand l'anglais suffirait, mais je ne suis pas d'accord avec ces gens.''

Peter Pike (Labour, Burnley)

Order. The hon. Gentleman is out of order.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I may be out of order, Mr. Pike, but loosely translated that means that there are those who think that it is pretentious to use French when English will suffice, but I am not one of them.

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

Je ne regrette rien.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Given, I hope, the constructive role that all members of the Committee have played, I believe that we should end this aspect of our considerations with drama. For that reason and despite all that I said about the Minister, I think that we should vote on the new clause.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 6, Noes 10.

Keith Hill (Labour, Streatham)

On a point of order, Mr. Pike. May I follow the example of my honourable counterpart, the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings? I had prepared something glowing with positive references to every member of the Committee, but I am very much aware of the time constraints. Therefore, in the spirit of the hon. Gentleman's comments, I simply observe that this has been a highly constructive and creative Committee, which has mainly been good humoured. If there was any lapse, it was entirely my fault, and I throw myself on the mercy of the Committee.

We can honestly say that we have had full debates on all the substantive issues. I understand from my colleague who is the timekeeper on these matters that we have fully debated more than 65 per cent. of the Bill. That is no mean achievement when one allows for all the technical elements. I am sincerely grateful to hon. Members on both sides of the Committee for their serious, genuinely informed and positive engagement. I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, and my hon. Friends the Members for Gillingham (Paul Clark), our Whip, and for Bradford, North (Mr. Rooney), my Parliamentary Private Secretary, for their support in these proceedings. Indeed, I am grateful to all my hon. Friends, but they will not mind if I single out my guru for special gratitude.

On behalf of the Ministers, I express our huge appreciation for the support of the silent ones, both in the preparation for the Committee and during its proceedings. On behalf of the whole Committee, I

thank the Badge Messengers, police officers, Hansard and, not least, the Clerks, who have offered us wise guidance. Above all, Mr. Pike, we thank you and Mr. Conway for your ever cheerful, positive and wise guidance in our proceedings. The common consensus is that this has been a very good Committee, and we owe you a huge debt for that.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

Further to that point of order, Mr. Pike. May I add my thanks to those of the Minister, in particular to you and Mr. Conway, who presided over our proceedings with your usual efficiency, professionalism and good nature?

It has been a good Committee, in which hon. Members on both sides contributed to improving the Bill. Although we may return to some battles at future stages, we made progress, especially earlier today when the Government accepted the case for better regulation of park homes. That was a notable achievement. Many Labour Members can be proud of the pressure that they put on their Front Benchers to ensure that those changes went through.

We have particularly enjoyed the remarks of the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings—especially hearing about his lunches.

Chris Ruane (Labour, Vale of Clwyd)

Do not forget his bow tie.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

Yes, we have also enjoyed his bow tie and his lapse into whatever language it was—I am not sure that it was French. It reminded me of the ''Fawlty Towers'' sketch in which a young man with a hairy chest and a medallion says to Sybil, ''Pretentious, moi?''—it was funny when it was on the telly.

David Kidney (Labour, Stafford)

It's the way you tell them.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

We have had some fun, certainly at the expense of the Conservatives. We puzzled over their views on the rights of same-sex couples, which seemed to change from day to day. We had new policy ideas about how to define areas for selective licensing, although I will not linger on that sorry moment—it was not the highlight of our proceedings. We had some good, healthy debates, and have given the other place some real meat to chew on.

I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Teignbridge and for Ludlow, who made notable contributions. I also thank some Back-Bench Members, in particular the hon. Member for Stafford and the hon. and learned Member for Redcar—I hope she does not mind that. She made some very effective contributions. From the Conservatives, I thank the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet. He is a distinguished Member of the House and speaks with genuine authority on issues such as housing. He is able to think outside the political box, which is always welcome.

In that spirit of thanks to Back Benchers, I am pleased to see that we are moving towards the end of our proceedings, and I thank the Committee for its indulgence.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Further to that point of order, Mr. Pike. I omitted to add my thanks to you and to Mr. Conway. I have already said nice things about you, Mr. Pike. Mr. Conway has a reputation for defending defenceless creatures, and there are few more defenceless creatures than the members of this Committee. I thank him and all the staff of the House who have made our proceedings possible, effective and efficient.

Peter Pike (Labour, Burnley)

The Chairman, too, will be out of order in saying that—just as points of order raised in this House and in Committee are nearly always out of order—nearly all those points of order were not points of order. However, they were appreciated in the spirit in which they were made. Both Mr. Conway and I have enjoyed chairing this Committee. Some Committees are easy to chair; this one has been extremely easy and we have enjoyed it. Some can be difficult; that certainly has not been the case in any of our proceedings here. We shall now move on with the agenda.New Clause 22 Obligation to provide and facilitate provision of caravan sites

New Clause 22 - Obligation to provide and facilitate provision of caravan sites

Brian Iddon (Labour, Bolton South East)

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Peter Pike (Labour, Burnley)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 23—Amendment of the Housing Act 1996—

'(1) The Housing Act 1996 is amended as follows.

(2) In section 18(1) after ''housing'' there is inserted ''or caravan site management and provision activities''.

(3) In section 2(2), after paragraph (c) there is inserted—

''(d) caravan sites for Gypsies and Travellers as defined by section 24(8) of the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960 as amended.''.'.

New clause 24—Definitions—

''In this Part—

''Accommodation'' includes temporary stopping places as well as permanent accommodation.

''Gypsies and Travellers'' means Gypsies, Irish Travellers and such other groups as are established to be racial groups under the Race Relations Act 1976 and all other people who are of nomadic habit of life whatever their race or origin, but does not include members of an organised group of travelling showmen or persons engaged in travelling circuses, travelling together as such, but does include those who do not travel but retain nomadic character by reason of—

(a) the person's history including family history;

(b) the reasons for ceasing to travel;

(c) the person's future wishes and intentions to resume travelling when or if the reasons for settling have ceased to apply; and

(d) the person's attitude to living in a caravan rather than a conventional house.'.

Brian Iddon (Labour, Bolton South East)

Gypsies have had a rough time. I think that that is all I will have time to say, although this is a serious issue. I am moving the new clause on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck). She gave me four pages of notes, all very serious stuff, but the gist of the argument is that if the United Kingdom is looking for decent homes for most of our citizens in England and Wales, we cannot exclude a significant minority of people who have been excluded for such a long time. They cannot find public sector sites any more. The statutory changes made in 1994 expected them to find their own land and build their own permanent sites, but local authority after local authority has denied them that possibility by refusing planning permission.

At some significant point in the future, we have to look at the position in Britain of the Romany and of Travellers in general in a much more serious light than we can this evening. In view of the lateness of the hour, that is all that I can add.

Robert Syms (Conservative, Poole)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this topic towards the end of the Committee. It is important to make provisions for Gypsies and Travellers. I served for a number of years on Wiltshire county council at a time when sites were designated. That designation was accompanied by Government grants so that provision was made for Gypsies and Travellers. The main advantage for the county council was that it allowed greater legal force to move Gypsies and Travellers on from areas where they should not be. One of the retrograde steps taken by the Conservative Government was that they stopped the grants and decided to move away from designation. I supported that Government in general, but I did not do so on this issue. I think that many of the problems that we have had have been compounded by that wrong Government decision.

I note that the new clause deals purely with planning purposes. However, to deal with an issue that many of our constituents perceive to be a problem, we have to make proper provision—sometimes through local authority sites for Gypsies and Travellers. The Government ought seriously to consider returning to

the previous scheme. It worked well when authorities took advantage of it, and the authorities that had difficulties were those that did not opt for designation. As a Front-Bench Member, I put my hand up and admit that the previous Government made a mistake. Fortunately, the Major Government did not make many mistakes; however, that was certainly one of them. Ministers in the Department ought to consider seriously whether we ought to go backwards or forwards on the issue.

Edward Davey (Liberal Democrat, Kingston and Surbiton)

It is great when people repent. The hon. Gentleman did so with grace, and I am pleased about that. This group of new clauses is serious and enjoys support from many quarters. The National Farmers Union, for example, has written to my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow to urge him to support the new clause, which we shall do if it is put to a vote.

We are talking about the rights not only of Gypsies and Travellers but of the surrounding communities. Because Gypsies and Travellers are forced to try to find land, they often come into conflict with communities. There are a number of examples of that from my constituency. Because there are no more designated sites under the grant regime, Travellers have tried to find land, which has caused huge problems because they have done so in an unplanned, quite anarchic way, and have often resorted to breaking the law. That perpetuates the antipathy that communities sometimes feel towards them. The group of new clauses would trigger a policy review by the Government, which would help both Gypsies and Travellers, and the wider communities that we represent. The group has great merit and I hope that the Minister will give it proper consideration.

Yvette Cooper (Labour, Pontefract and Castleford)

This group of new clauses is important, but we do not have time for a long debate now. I should like to make it clear that I agree with the premise behind the group, which is that the present housing provision and planning systems do not adequately deal with site provision and the accommodation needs of Gypsies and Travellers. Local authorities do not assess their housing needs as they do the needs of the settled population. The planning system does not allow Gypsies and Travellers to identify sites themselves, which the evidence shows is increasingly what they choose to do. It is hard to find appropriate sites, which means that more and more development takes place on inappropriate sites, which can result in difficult consequences for the planning system and community cohesion, and in confrontation. I therefore agree with the premise.

A major review is now under way. Officials in the Department are holding a series of seminars with stakeholders, considering the issue in great detail. We are looking at incorporating the consideration of the accommodation needs of Gypsies and Travellers into the mainstream of the housing needs assessment and the planning system, because those needs are not now so considered. The problem with the previous system, which had certain advantages derived from the duty in

legislation, treated the category of Gypsies and Travellers as an add-on that could easily be lopped off as soon as the political climate changed.

We want to consider how, ideally, we can bring such needs into the mainstream. We have not yet reached any final conclusions about whether that would require primary legislation, although we are obviously mindful of the Bill's timetable. Such matters can be addressed through secondary legislation and by changing how the housing needs assessment and planning system work—for example, by revising circular 1/94 to make it easier for Gypsies and Travellers to identify their own sites and get support in doing so. That is currently under way.

We completely agree with new clause 23, which is about housing corporations being able to provide funding for Gypsies and Travellers. That might also be done through secondary legislation, but we agree with the principle of implementing the intention behind the proposal. New clause 24, which asks for reconsideration of the definition of Gypsies and Travellers, is perhaps the stickiest and most difficult. There are different definitions in race relations legislation and the planning regime, which focuses on land use rather than ethnic definitions. However, again, we are keen to consider the issue further, as part of the review.

On that basis, I would ask my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East to withdraw the clause. We agree with the broad intention, but believe that at present there may be other ways of more effectively delivering what we are trying to achieve.

Brian Iddon (Labour, Bolton South East)

I am grateful to hear what the Minister has said, and I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North, too, will be pleased to read those remarks tomorrow. We need a serious debate on this matter, but for now I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.

It being five minutes to Seven o'clock, The Chairman proceeded, pursuant to Sessional Order D [6 November 2003] and the Order of the Committee [20 January 2004], as amended, to put forthwith the Questions necessary to dispose of the business to be concluded at that time.

New schedule 2 - Registered social landlords

Clause 177 - Powers of entry

Clause 178 - Warrant to authorise entry

Clause 179 - Penalty for obstruction

Orders and regulations

Schedule 10 - Minor and consequential amendments

Schedule 11 - Repeals

Clause 204 - Short title, commencement and extent

New Clause 12 - Residential property tribunals

New Clause 13 - Appeals from residential property tribunals

New Schedule 1 - Residential property tribunals: procedure

Title