Clause 251
Housing and Regeneration Bill
3:15 pm
Alistair Burt (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; North East Bedfordshire, Conservative)
No. I am demob happy, so if anything I say turns out not to be party policy, it will be quite straightforward—I was out of office at the time when I said it.
I cannot see anything that we have said that would give the right hon. Gentleman the concerns that he has. The provision is in the Bill not because of an amendment that we have tabled but because the Government have put it there. His suspicions would be far better directed towards his own Front Bench. He should ask under what circumstances use of the clause would be considered—perhaps when as able and effective a Minister as the one before us is moved to some other place, someone else might come along and seek to make use of it. Perhaps the clause would be suspended if new homes were flooded, as some presumably are in the west country at the moment. I do not know, but nothing that has been said by the Opposition either on Second Reading or in Committee could give the right hon. Gentleman cause to raise the concerns that he has mentioned. We rest our case.