Clause 8
Housing and Regeneration Bill
3:45 pm
George Young (North West Hampshire, Conservative)
The clause gives the HCA powers to manage and repair housing. I shall return to the point that we discussed briefly in an earlier debate, as we are about to confer those powers on the HCA. I must tell the Minister that if the HCA is going to be not only the provider of resources to housing associations but a potential competitor with them for such development, it will change the whole relationship between the HCA and the housing association movement.
In response to the earlier debate, the Minister said—I hope that I am quoting him correctly—that it would not be a prime objective of the HCA to provide housing. I am not sure whether it should be any objective—prime, secondary or at all. Then, under pressure, he described a scenario in which the HCA might have to intervene, but I was not wholly convinced, and it does not deal with the powers in clause 8. Is it really true that the HCA will manage and repair housing when we have the most well-developed and efficient housing association movement of probably any country in the world?
Clause 35 specifically relates to the HCA acquiring, constructing and converting buildings into such accommodation. The Minister needs to make it clear exactly what the role of the HCA is. Will it be in the business of developing, constructing, managing and repairing, or are those powers only to be used as a last-ditch emergency when all else has failed? If he does see the HCA as a developer, provider and landlord, that gives a totally different complexion to the whole debate about the role of the HCA.
I hope that in replying to clause 8 stand part, the Minister can go a little further than just say that it is not a prime objective of the HCA to provide housing, and make it absolutely clear that the local housing associations will do that, apart from in some exceptional circumstances which he is about to describe.