Clause 26
Housing and Regeneration Bill
5:45 pm
Lembit Öpik (Shadow Minister (Housing), Department for Communities and Local Government; Montgomeryshire, Liberal Democrat)
I just want to highlight the complete pointlessness of subsection (3). Subsection (1) states:
“The current borrowings of the HCA must not exceed £2,300 million.”
Subsection (3) states:
“But an order under subsection (2) may not specify an amount of more than £3,000 million.”
As the Minister said himself, what is to stop anybody through an order changing the legislation to any amount at all? There is no prospect of subsection (3) doing anything useful. The amendments offer different sums. I think that the amount the HCA spends will end up being far in excess of £2.3 billion or indeed £3 billion. If it gets its momentum and if the house building programme that we need in this country is to benefit significantly from the investment through the HCA, the sums will have to be far higher than what has been put forward here.
The Minister, being so keen to maintain a frugalness of content in the Bill, needs to explain why subsection (3) is there. There may be an administrative reason. Perhaps there is a standard precedent in legislation of which I am not aware. But in the absence of those, while subsection (1) is meaningful, because it indicates some initial HCA borrowing limit, subsection (3) is meaningless, because it could be changed at any time.