New Clause 3
Housing and Regeneration Bill
1:45 pm
Alistair Burt (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; North East Bedfordshire, Conservative)
Thank you, a great cry. None from my side, but a very strong appeal from the Minister. [Hon. Members: “No, no.”] My hon. Friends’ development is coming on now.
I can put on record my views about pathfinder. I am not wholly negative about the concept. I have seen pathfinder areas. I have been to east Lancashire and seen Max Steinberg’s work up there in very difficult areas such as Nelson and Burnley. My concern about pathfinder has always been that it is a very blunt instrument. The housing market moves very quickly, and I think the NAO report exposed that. I do not think that the Department’s response has been very good. But if the responsibility goes to the agency, what chance will there be for Members of the House to burrow into the issues that concern us, like those exposed by the NAO, and the pathfinder and housing market renewal programme is not showing more signs of being responsive to the housing market and the appropriate changes are not being made?
I am sorry to raise the Thames Gateway again, but I feel I must. I raised it in business questions and Members of the Committee will know how concerned I am about the handling of it. I was not best pleased with the stage at which the written statement was produced, for reasons that we discussed last week. This is a project for which the Department has had responsibility and has recently received very extensive criticism. Three conclusions from the PAC’s report were, first:
“The Department does not know how much the regeneration of the Thames Gateway will cost the taxpayer.”
Secondly:
“The Department has not translated the vision for the programme into comprehensive and measurable objectives, nor are there robust systems to measure progress.”
Thirdly:
“The Department's management of the programme has been weak, and has not demonstrably added value to the programme.”
Those are pretty damning criticisms, but now, conveniently, the whole thing is passed, as a result of the Minister’s written statement, to the Homes and Communities Agency. That seems to me to be a pretty big responsibility on its own, so why not report to Parliament? Why not take the opportunity today of saying, yes, these are big things, we want the agency to be required to report to Parliament, we think by statute, on matters as important as this. It would be sensible to have the report in the terms that we have suggested. If the Minister takes up our suggestion, I suspect that the report will be more extensive. But we are asking specific questions through the new clause.