I beg to move, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Before thirsting to reduce local authority autonomy in such a way as to allow him to pursue his redistributionist agenda, it is incumbent on him first to consider the efficacy or otherwise of existing policy. In that context, will he oblige the House by telling us what assessment he has made of the effect of the change in the rules on the use of capital receipts from the sale of council houses in the last Parliament on the size of interest repayments on local authority debt?

Approximately £1.2 billion received from the sale of council houses is currently brought within the overall framework, which allows the pooling to take place through the set-aside mechanism. The problem with that mechanism is that it does not apply to those authorities that are debt-free; that is just the nature of the mechanics involved. The principle of redistribution, which was argued strongly by the hon. Gentleman's own party when it was in government, and part of the approach that it adopted in the 1990 legislation, was to ensure that the receipts would be distributed to meet housing need rather than simply lying arbitrarily where they arose because of the vagaries of the housing market or the whims of tenants in particular areas.

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I give way to the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey).

In the Minister's opening remarks, he tried to suggest that all the councils that are debt-free were just lucky, because they were in areas where house prices were high and had received a large windfall from right-to-buy receipts. Surely some of those councils have managed their finances prudently, however, and worked hard to become debt-free. In some cases, they may have taken painful decisions to reach that point. Should they not now be allowed the chance to benefit from the freedoms that they have won after going through the pain of putting their finances in order?

Lots of other authorities have worked extremely hard to run their finances in the most efficient way possible, but, because they happen to be in areas with low house values, where capital receipts do not generate the same amount of money, they have not been able to reach the same position as those lucky enough to be located predominantly in the south-east. Frankly, it is curious for the hon. Gentleman representing the Liberal Democrats to be advocating a policy that would have a strongly redistributive effect, which favoured the affluent areas, rather than the areas of greatest need. That would be the effect of the policy that he is advocating. I can understand why the Tory party would pursue that line, but it is strange, to say the least, that the Liberal Democrats should do so.

The Minister quoted a figure to my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow). Will he confirm for the record that the sum involved in relation to debt-free authorities—the only ones that will be directly affected in cash terms by the measure—is about —120 million, and not £800 million, £1.8 billion or any other exaggerated figure?

The figure that I quoted was the total sum that we estimate will be brought within the pooling arrangements. That is similar to the set-aside. The figure for debt-free authorities is £120 million, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said. That is a significant sum, and can contribute substantially to meeting housing needs. I remind him of a little debate that we had in Committee. He will recall that I flourished a Liberal Democrat "Focus" leaflet. I do not usually do that.

Where is it?

I am afraid that I put it in the bin. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that, on the whole, that was the right course of action. The Liberal Democrats in Mole Valley argued that it was scandalous that Mole Valley council had received substantial capital receipts—probably not through any great effort of its own, but because housing in the area has a high value—but was not proposing to use those receipts to meet housing need. Instead, it intended to spend the money on other things. The Liberal Democrats in Mole Valley said that that was monstrous and wrong.

I thought that we had educated the Minister on this point in Committee. We said that it was about local democracy. The Liberal Democrats in Mole Valley were right to fight elections in that constituency on the proposition that housing receipts raised locally should be spent locally on affordable housing. That was a fair point, and it is consistent with the Liberal Democrats saying that the council should be allowed to do that. The Government want to take away the right of local authorities to spend receipts in their local area. The Minister is the one who is inconsistent. He is going against his policy of so-called new localism.

That was a pretty feeble effort. In Mole Valley, the Liberal Democrats campaigned on the simple principle that money from housing receipts should be used for housing. As soon as the Liberal Democrats have a chance to give effect to that principle in the House, they take a different view. It is the same old story.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Liberal Democrats have the opportunity to set the record straight? With respect to national policy, will my right hon. Friend confirm that the effect on the borough of Brent of this Liberal Democrat and Tory sponsored amendment would be to take away £2.1 million from the people of Brent? What the Liberal Democrats are saying on the doorsteps about investment in local housing would drive a coach and horses through what Brent council could do, unless it was prepared, as a matter of national policy, to say that Brent people should pay higher taxes to receive the same level of service, because the Bill would put £2.1 million on to its budget.

My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. In Brent, the Liberal Democrats no doubt claim that they would do many things to help Brent, but at the same time they actively supported an amendment in the House just last week that would have exactly the effect that my hon. Friend describes. It would take £2.1 million away from the London borough of Brent that could and should be used to meet housing needs in that borough, which has enormous pressures.

The Minister should be careful about what he says. We cannot take away something that is not there. Language needs to be used more carefully. Is he saying that Brent is an area of low house prices, which is why it is where it is? His argument was that places in London and the south-east would be the beneficiaries of the Opposition's amendment. Is he suggesting that house prices in Brent are very low?

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman does not understand the issue. There is a relationship between house prices and house values, and that is one of the important elements, but there is also housing need. Brent is an area of enormous housing need. The scale of the capital receipts that the borough receives is not proportionate to the scale of housing need in that area. Brent is one of the boroughs that will gain substantially from our proposal for a proper redistributive system that applies universally.

The Minister will recall that in Committee we offered an opportunity to ensure that right-to-buy receipts were recycled into housing in the local authorities involved, and he rejected that opportunity.

Indeed. That is exactly why we have increased investment by two and a half times the amount we inherited, and why we have been concentrating on the provision of new housing in areas of stress—particularly in areas where that can be achieved with good use of brownfield sites, such as the Thames gateway—while also investing in improving housing stock in areas of less demand, where serious problems are caused by property in poor condition and the fact that people are living in unsatisfactory houses. We have a responsibility to do both those things.

Is the Minister suggesting that, having sequestered my local authority's right-to-buy receipts, he expects nurses, policeman and school teachers who are needed in Surrey to commute daily from the Thames gateway around the M25? Is that his grand strategy for the future of the south-east?

No, it is not. As the hon. Gentleman will recall, I used the Thames gateway as an example to highlight the importance of using brownfield sites: but of course we are looking at brownfield sites elsewhere. What I am sure the hon. Gentleman does not want is indiscriminate building on greenfield sites in his area. That would be an entirely undesirable policy—a policy that was, as it happens, supported by the hon. Gentleman's party when it was in government: it let rip with development by private developers throughout the south-east, and particularly in the Thames valley.

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that one of the areas that would be disadvantaged by this measure is Milton Keynes? Will he join me in urging Milton Keynes council, which is of course controlled by the Liberal Democrats, to devote some of its efforts to educating Liberal Democrat Front Benchers here, to ensure that the party is not saying one thing in Milton Keynes and another in Westminster?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Milton Keynes is another of the areas that stand to lose if the amendment supported by the Liberal Democrats is passed. Of course, it is not the only one; a number of other areas stand to lose. Liverpool stands to lose substantially, as do Sutton and Basildon.

It is always a particular pleasure to joust with the Minister but the endless tergiversations and chameleon-like behaviour of the Liberal Democrats could readily absorb all the time available for debate today, and it does not seem very profitable for us to allow that to happen. The question that I would like answered is the question that I did ask, not that which I did not. Can the right hon. Gentleman simply tell me on a non-partisan basis what assessment he has made of the effect of the change made in the previous Parliament on policy towards the use of capital receipts from the sale of council houses on the level of interest repayments on local authority debt?

I cannot because the hon. Gentleman is asking some rather odd questions. There was no change of policy in the previous Parliament on the application of right-to-buy receipts. We have constantly said that it is right that right- to-buy receipts should be made available for and used for housing need to the extent that we operate a redistributive system, a system that, as I have said, we inherited from the previous Government. That system has remained in place since 1990. It is now being changed because of this Bill, but there has been no other change in policy.

Before we move on, can the Minister confirm who he thinks controls Basildon council?

I was referring to a number of authorities. There are many areas that are affected, including some Tory-controlled areas. Of course, the Tories are being a bit foolish in favouring the interests of their south-east heartlands at the expense of some of their other councils, which happen to have rather greater housing needs. No doubt the voice of Essex will be heard in due course, telling us that we should be fairer to Essex and insisting on the redistribution of capital receipts to favour Basildon. That is certainly a policy I would be happy—

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I must make progress.

The Minister has said that authorities will continue to have access to 25 per cent. of their right to buy receipts. For clarity—and for those who have not gone through the tortuous Committee process—will the Minister confirm that he is quoting the draft regulation that he has published, but that the Bill allows the Secretary of State to take up to 100 per cent. of receipts?

We specify amounts by regulation rather than putting them in the Bill; therefore, there is that power. But, on a number of occasions, I have made it clear that our policy intention is not to change the percentage from the 75 per cent. that currently applies to the great majority of authorities in the country. It is an anomaly that a relatively small number of debt-free authorities get preferential treatment and it would be quite wrong for that to be perpetuated. That would be the effect of the amendment, which is why we ask the House to reject the Lords amendment and to restore the Bill's provisions as originally presented and discussed in Committee.

The Minister is talking as if it were counter-intuitive that debt-free authorities should be allowed to keep their capital receipts. To most people, it would be intuitive that somebody in debt should use their capital receipts to offset their debt and that somebody not in debt should be free to use their capital receipts as they wished. Surely that is how the great majority of people would see it.

I disagree profoundly. In my view, it is counter-intuitive to argue that one relatively small group of authorities should be given preferential treatment and should not be required in any way to make use of capital receipts for housing purposes when all other authorities are required to do so. That is the anomaly that we are putting right.

If it were the Minister's intention that debt-free authorities with housing stock should spend their money on housing, why did he not make that the law instead of taking 75 per cent. away from an authority such as Bridgnorth in my area, which is debt free and has its housing stock? If Bridgnorth undertook large-scale voluntary transfer, 75 per cent. of receipts would be taken away and spent in other local authorities elsewhere. That cannot be right.

Once again, the hon. Gentleman is very confused. He and his party believe that it is right to spend money on housing; we wholly agree. It is also right to ensure that allocations should reflect the needs of different areas. If the hon. Gentleman is arguing that the right way is to leave the receipts where they lie, irrespective of need, inevitably that will disadvantage substantial numbers of areas with high needs and low receipts. If he is arguing that, I wish him luck; the people of Liverpool will have an extremely jaundiced view about the Liberal Democrat proposal to take £1.5 million away from that city and from many other areas that would be badly affected by the arrangements that his party has suggested in the Lords.

Liverpool, of course, has a declining population in comparison with many areas of the south-east. However, is not the process that the Minister is introducing analogous to saying to someone who has paid off their mortgage that they must now hand some of their money to others to help them pay off their mortgages?

No, it is analogous to an arrangement in which someone has provided the finance for an asset. All these houses were built with very substantial Government subsidy—in many cases, meeting the full costs—and national Government have a right to have an interest on the disposal of that asset. That would be regarded as an absolutely normal principle in any commercial operation, or, indeed, in any public service operation.

Unfortunately, the right hon. Gentleman's position will not do; it is as perverse as his appetite for nationalisation of local decision making seems insatiable. Does he not at least concede that where a local authority has substantial debts and some resources from the sale of council houses, it has a responsibility to use the latter to pay off the former, before benefiting from other councils' legitimately acquired funds?

No, the right position is that every authority—not just those that the hon. Gentleman gives as examples—should have a framework that provides an incentive to repay debt and to act prudently. That is part of the framework that we are introducing, which will be reinforced by the housing revenue account subsidy system. It will enable authorities to repay debt, but it will also recognise that many authorities still have very high housing needs that must be met. It is quite wrong that areas with high needs and few resources from receipts should be penalised, as the amendment passed in another place would do. This is a matter of social justice and fairness, and of ensuring a decent housing policy that looks after the interests of people throughout the country, rather than favouring just a limited number of areas that happen to have the good fortune of substantial receipts.

The Minister said a moment ago that this large sum would be allocated on the advice of the regional housing boards. Will he confirm who advises on the distribution of that sum between the boards? I assume that he was referring to distribution within a region by the boards.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We seek a national framework to ensure a fair regional distribution overall, and we will then invite regional housing boards to make recommendations within their regions about actual distribution. The decision on the allocation between regions is ours. The regional housing boards make recommendations on decisions within regions, but they are obviously subject to the agreement of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning.

So that we can see what the flow of funds looks like, can the Minister explain the distribution between the eight English regions, by percentage, of those funds, and the distribution by region of the £120 million in capital receipts taken from debt-free authorities? If he does not have the figures in his voluminous folder, perhaps he can get hold of them.

I will happily provide the hon. Gentleman with answers to both those questions by writing to him. But to ensure that he has a full and fair picture, I should remind him of a third element: what the allocations are following the recommendations of the regional housing boards. That information will complete the picture by showing where the money is going to, as well as where it is coming from.

We are now 45 minutes into the allocated time, and hon. Members will have noticed that the long summer recess has not increased the Government's appetite for the proper scrutiny of their business. We have the three most controversial groups of amendments to consider in a time-limited period of two and a half hours, and the remainder of the evening for—

So get on with it.

The Under-Secretary says, "Get on with it," but I want to get on with placing on record our perplexity at the allocation of time as between the first three groups of amendments and the remainder. Why the Government could not have allowed us three, four or even five hours to debate the first three groups is completely beyond Conservative Members.

In many respects, the hon. Gentleman may be said to be making a powerful case about how moneys should not be redistributed and about local democracy, but he is suggesting that the policy is being implemented by the Government to change the status quo. It is not. In fact, the previous Conservative Administration introduced the policy and decided that that was the way to pool and redistribute moneys

And the 75 per cent.

As my right hon. Friend rightly says, they also introduced the 75 per cent. figure. Will the hon. Gentleman therefore explain to the House why there is so much outrage about what the Government are supposed to be doing, when what they are actually doing in this instance is maintaining the status quo and when it is the hon. Gentleman who wants to change it?

That is an extraordinary argument. The hon. Gentleman should ask the Local Government Association why there is so much outrage. If we take his point literally, he is suggesting that if we accept the Government's proposals, nothing will change. That is simply not true. Local authorities that have been free to spend their capital receipts because they are debt-free will find that 75 per cent. of those receipts will be sequestered by the Secretary of State. They will also potentially be exposed to a 100 per cent. sequestration of their right-to-buy capital receipts. In particular the 34 debt-free authorities, which have been ably represented by the capital receipts group over the course of this long battle, will feel the impact. Other local authorities do not have access to their capital receipts in the same way, precisely because they are indebted. That is another example of the Government's determined assault on well-managed, prudent councils in order to prop up their favoured authorities, including—I have to say—the odd basket case. It is also a frontal assault on the principle of localism.

Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that the authorities would have received Government subsidy both for the repayment of the debt, because that was taken into account, and also—in many cases—for the renovation and improvement of the properties?

Some of the authorities may have done so, but many—as the Minister well knows—have been in negative housing subsidy. The value of the housing stock has been enhanced by the care and maintenance of the local authorities and their tenants over the years. It is those tenants and council tax payers who should benefit from a capital receipt by their local authority.

I shall address this issue in greater detail when I make my speech, but I am sure the hon. Gentleman would agree that we should not let the Government get away with the notion that all those houses were built and maintained solely by central Government subsidy and the taxpayer. Many of them were built under local authority initiative, decades and sometimes centuries ago, as local communities acted to provide homes for the needy in their areas. The Government are trying to rewrite history, and we should not let them get away with it.

The hon. Gentleman is right, but even if the Minister has a point about the original financing of the housing stocks, it is bizarre to try to rewrite the rules 30 or 40 years later by saying what was given as a grant is now subject to a clawback: it is as if the Government were saying, "Sorry. we forgot to tell you at the time."

If that is bizarre, can the hon. Gentleman tell me what was the logic of his party when it introduced this arrangement in 1990?

I do not suggest that authorities that have access to their capital receipt s should be subject to a retrospective clawback, which is what the Minister's argument appears to be.

I would not like the hon. Gentleman to leave the list of areas that suffer a shortage of affordable housing without mentioning places like Shropshire and Cornwall where shortages exist for different reasons. Shortages in those areas are due to people either buying holiday homes or retiring to the area, yet local salaries are much lower than nationally agreed pay settlements for the public sector. There are good public sector jobs in Shropshire, but houses cost £200,000.

I acknowledge the hon. Gentleman's point. It is important to recognise that the issue is not confined to the south-east of England; there are other areas with buoyant right-to-buy receipts and buoyant housing markets. They all have one thing in common: they suffer from the problem of how to provide affordable housing for public sector workers.

May I respond to the serious comments that the hon. Gentleman makes about house prices in the south-east by reference to my borough of Brent? I understand perfectly that the south-east is a high house price area, but I hope that the hon. Gentleman will reflect on and take to heart the fact that inner-city and outer-London boroughs such as Brent are subject to peculiar pressures in attracting key workers, which are not simply mirrored in house prices. The pressures of working in those environments are a disincentive to workers, so if we are to address the problems of public service delivery and key worker housing, which he rightly highlights, boroughs such as Brent, where key sector workers face complex difficulties, need the sort of investment that has meant £2.1 million to meet Brent's housing needs.

I do not for a minute suggest that there are no problems in boroughs such as Brent. We are all aware of the broader issues of dealing with inner and outer-city deprivation; the list of problems is endless. However, it is wrong for the Minister to characterise areas that will have that money—the 75 per cent.—taken from them as areas that do not have a problem. They are leafy, they have buoyant housing markets

They may have high housing need.

In Standing Committee, I cited Lord Rooker who said outside the House that it was likely that only one authority—Barking and Dagenham—of the then 34 debt-free authorities with housing stock was likely to be regarded by the Government as in housing need—[Interruption.] No doubt the Minister will correct me if that is incorrect.

This issue has been debated more than any other during debates on the Bill in both Houses. The arguments have been explored in great detail, and the Opposition have had to think hard about the Government's arguments. The Minister will admit that the Opposition have tested the Government's arguments and thought hard about them. The Minister's problem seems to be that we have reached a different conclusion from him, and I shall set out the principles of why we have done so shortly.

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will recall that Brent's 1998 local government settlement for children's personal services was indeed not generous and that it had a bad effect on Brent. If we look at the Government's record, however, specifically on housing and capital allocation over the past six years, we find that the Labour council in Brent has begun the rebuilding of houses, which was left in abeyance for years by the Conservative administration in Brent and by the then Conservative Government. The record of the Labour local authority in Brent, supported by the Government, in delivering on housing need in Brent is absolutely exceptional. Last year, we had one of the largest capital allocations that we could have had. I therefore hope that the hon. Gentleman will now address the real question—

Order. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will now conclude his intervention.

You are probably right, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to admonish the hon. Gentleman, but perhaps I, too, should be admonished for giving him the opportunity to make that party broadcast. At least he confirmed, however, that he was not happy with Brent's local government finance settlement from this Government.

Earlier, the Minister shook his head when my hon. Friend said that some of the properties go back for centuries. Many boroughs in mediaeval market towns built properties that came into the hands of councils, which turned them into flats and houses. Those properties often realise the highest possible values if they are sold. They were funded not by central Government in the 20th century, but by locally raised money or by charitable money in the 19th century.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. Two councils in his constituency—South Shropshire and Bridgnorth—are debt free and will be affected by the measure, but they have real housing need. That brings me to my third point of principle against the Government's proposal. Housing need is sometimes a relatively subjective concept. The Government say that they have housing need indicators, but the housing need that the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) mentioned—the need for affordable housing for key public sector workers—is a key issue. We do not know how authorities will meet that need when the money is taken from them. The Minister may say that we do not know because the Government have set up regional housing boards—a step in the right direction—which have yet to report. However, he is asking the House to take a decision on one side of the equation when we do not know the information on the other side of the equation.

I have tried to follow the hon. Gentleman's argument closely, but I do not understand his point about the regional housing boards. Surely if those boards are to be the arbiter of genuine housing need, it is absolutely right that we take the decision on one side of the equation and not on the other. That is precisely because of the point that the hon. Gentleman made at the beginning of his remarks: this process should be free of partisan judgment and based on objective criteria. That is exactly what the regional housing boards are supposed to provide.

The hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways. The Minister was trying to say that some authorities that do not have housing needs will lose and that other authorities with housing needs will win. We want to know about and to understand the housing needs, because we know from our constituencies, from which much of our information for such debates comes, that there are housing needs in the so-called leafy boroughs of suburban London. There are housing needs in rural areas such as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Matthew Green) and in parts of Surrey. The Government cannot have it both ways. We want to know where housing need will be met before the money is taken away. Perhaps that information should come from the regional housing boards—I do not disagree with that. The process should be less partisan and should be based on objective criteria. However, we are being asked to make a decision before we know about the need.

Surely it is unlikely that there will be sufficient money to meet all the housing needs in a given region, even with the pooling of money. There will be priorities. In the west midlands, it might well be decided that Birmingham needs an extra 20,000 houses. We need only 1,500 more affordable homes in South Shropshire district council, but the district contains only 30,000 people. The suspicion in South Shropshire is that it is likely that the money for the west midlands will go to areas other than South Shropshire or Bridgnorth.

Over the weekend, I talked to several council leaders and councillors who will be affected by the decisions to check whether they were still happy with our position, because this is a serious moment during the passage of the Bill. They were clear that they managed their budgets and forward planning in the knowledge that when they became debt free, they could use the moneys as they wanted.

We have had a good debate on an important subject, although the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) made several rather curious allegations, the most frequent of which was that the measure is confiscatory. By that logic, the Conservative Government who introduced the whole set-aside regime were confiscatory. He alleged that the measure represents heavy-handed government forcing local authorities to do undesirable things, yet his party, when in government, introduced measures that required local authorities to set aside capital receipts. I cannot accept his latter-day expressions of support for the idea of greater freedom for local government without reminding him of the actions of Conservative Governments.

If so much new money is available for housing needs, why is it necessary to take £120 million from the debt-free authorities that have worked so hard to become so?

If the hon. Gentleman bears with me, I will give him a full answer that deals with the inherent contradiction in his case. He seems to believe, as Liberal Democrats generally do, that it is possible to find ways out of difficult conflicts without any pain, but it is not. It may be so in the Liberal Democrat Valhalla, where everyone debates everything ad nauseam and outcomes are always pain free, but in the real world there are hard choices that require decisions. There is conflict between allowing receipts to remain where they fall and ensuring a fair allocation of housing resources. This is a testing moment for Opposition Members to show where they stand. Are they in favour of simply letting things lie according to the accidents of history, or do they want a fair distribution based on principle, not accident?

Is taking money away from Tory and Liberal Democrat councils and giving to it to Labour ones the hardest decision that the Minister has ever had to make?

It is not like that at all. It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman proposes to take money away from a substantial number of Liberal Democrat authorities. I understand exactly why Conservative Members support the measure—because, in general, Tory councils will benefit from it; it is self-interest on behalf of predominantly Tory authorities. I find it extraordinary, however, that the Liberal Democrats should argue against the interests of many of their own authorities. That is an example of the curious stance that they often take by standing on their heads on certain issues. [Interruption.] I shall come back to the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) in a moment. I want first to respond to the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge.

The Minister is taking a static one-year view when we are talking about housing and capital finance. These things do not happen from one year to the next. The span is 25 or 30 years plus, as we have discussed. The Minister cannot say that what he has said justifies his case. He must take a much longer-term view. If he did that, he might win more of us over.

The hon. Gentleman, for whom I have great respect, could not have made my case better. Essentially, he is arguing for special treatment for a few authorities that happen at this moment to be in a favourable position. We are taking the longer-term view and saying that there should be a framework that applies fairly throughout all authorities and ensures that resources are allocated according to need. Surely the Liberal Democrat party would say that that is a fair principle, and it is the principle that underpins our policy.

I have listened to everything that the Minister has said. Does he understand how he is undermining the sense that he wants to convey that he is granting freedom to local authorities? Does he understand also the psychological significance of the provision? We are talking of only 40 authorities, but a message is being sent to all authorities and to the Local Government Association that the Government do not really want to let go and allow local authorities to manage their own affairs. Instead, they want to control what they do.

I hope that we shall shortly come on to the next group of amendments, which deals with financial management and accompany all the provisions that change radically the capital allocations system. The provisions will remove Government controls and will free local authorities to take decisions on capital allocations. The Government are making substantial moves towards giving local authorities greater freedom and flexibility. We are also a Government who have principles. One of those principles is that fairness in the allocation of resources to meet needs should be paramount. We are not resiling from that. It is sad that the other parties are prepared to argue for a framework that will give special advantage on the basis of accidents of history and geography to a few authorities, rather than taking the more rounded view.