Clause 1 - Withholding of housing benefit on grounds of anti-social behaviour
Housing Benefit (Withholding of Payment) Bill
9:00 am
Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere, Conservative)
Mr. O'Hara, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship on this fine and sunny morning. Such weather is uncharacteristic of recent experience.
I believe in making declarations at every possible opportunity and today I wish to declare that it seems that the parts of the Bill in which we are interested are to disappear. I want the Committee to proceed expeditiously. You have listed the amendments that have been tabled. We tabled amendments to the Bill as presented by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field); the Government have tabled amendments that would, in effect, rewrite the Bill, and we have tabled amendments to those Government amendments.
Although amendment No. 1 has been tabled by Conservative Members, I shall not be moving or speaking to it, nor to amendments Nos. 1, 4, 2 and 3 and new clauses 1 and 2, which relate to the Bill in its original form. It is better to deal with matters that we shall be debating today, which are the Government amendments. I shall be speaking to the three amendments to the Government new clauses that stand in my name and that of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead. Those are described on the selection list as amendment P(a) to Government new clause 3, and amendments P(a) and P(b) to Government new clause 5. The more I read the selection list, the more it reminds me of algebra lessons at school. I shall now kick off.