Clause 27 - PMS and PDS lists
Homes Bill
3:00 pm
Mr Don Foster (Bath, Liberal Democrat)
I accept entirely that the policy objective is correct, but the debate about whether the amendment truly achieves it. There are two problems with what the Minister has just said. First, both of us acknowledge that local authorities did not expect to be granted all the 130,000 requests for possession orders, but they thought that they would try. However, surely the Minister does not believe that they did not expect to win the vast majority of them. In the vast majority of cases, the authority expected to win, but could not convince the court of its case. In cases in which authorities thought that they had sufficient evidence but did not secure the possession order, they could not demonstrate that they had a sufficient case. The Minister said that they would have to show that they had sufficient evidence for the entitlement. To whom would they have to show that?