Clause 10 - Non-money receipts
Local Government Bill
3:30 pm
Mr Nick Raynsford (Minister of State (Local and Regional Government), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Greenwich and Woolwich, Labour)
After the apocalyptic visions of the previous debate, I can tell the hon. Member that he has put his finger on an extremely important issue that has given us some pause for thought. I hope that I can explain why we are proceeding in this way and why his amendment is neither necessary nor helpful. We entirely agree that there must a reserve power to cover avoidance; otherwise the system simply would not work. We equally recognise that there is currently an important provision that makes it possible for local authorities to pass land at a value well below its market value to registered social landlords in order to enable development to take place and to get the benefit in the form of nomination rights. We have no wish to cut across such sensible arrangements, which are all part of the proper process of ensuring that assets are used to best effect to provide housing for people in need.
Under the present system, housing nomination rights are exempted by regulations from the set-aside requirement. We have to find a way forward, but the broad exemption proposed by the amendment would not be satisfactory because it could invite attempts at evasion of the pooling rules. The right place for dealing with this is in the regulations where it is possible to target a relaxation more precisely. The regulations do not at present include any provision of this kind. I want to make it clear to the Committee that this is a first draft and that we are looking sympathetically at options involving nomination rights that would continue to encourage good partnerships between local authorities and registered social landlords.