moved Amendment No. 27:

I have the privilege of going first in support of the sentiments behind the amendment. This is not a new issue. I was secretary to an inquiry chaired by His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, which reported in 1976. It was called Rural Housing: Problems and Possible Solutions and it came up with a set of conclusions that are very familiar to us today: there was a gross insufficiency of affordable housing in rural areas and we should do more about it. Since 1976, we have had the right to buy, taking out of the social sector an awful lot of the homes in a lot of villages. There are three obvious facts to anyone who pauses for thought on this. First, the amount of council housing in rural areas is often—nearly always—less as a percentage of the total stock than it is in urban areas, so losing any of that council stock is likely to be more detrimental. Secondly, the percentage of homes bought under the right to buy in rural areas has been higher than in urban areas, so it started worse and ended up worse.

I support my noble friend’s amendment. In some ways there is very little to add to what the noble Lord, Lord Best, said. He brings great expertise to the Committee, for which I am grateful. I share his concerns about the amount of money that will be available to encourage and promote rural housing. That is why I particularly like my noble friend’s amendment, which calls for the HCA to take particular account of the viability of rural communities. I know that the CRC is doing a review on affordable housing and linking economic affordability with sustainability.

The noble Lord, Lord Best, reflected on more than 30 years of housing. The sad thing is that, with a few exceptions, we are not much further forward than we should be pro rata if one looks at what has happened over those 30 years to housing in urban areas. Clearly there has been much more progress in those areas. It is there to see, so I very much support my noble friend’s amendment. I am quite concerned that the board members, whoever they are, may not necessarily have rural affordable housing at the back of their minds, because it is a very small part of the overall pattern of housing compared with the bigger urban needs. Even more, there should be someone on the board who is recognised for having a particular skill, ability or understanding of what happens.

The other thing to remember is that, within the classification of rural housing, one could be talking about a small hamlet of 100, 70 or 50, compared with 10,000. People living in a community of 10,000 obviously have a greater say, because more people are involved in the community and understand it, than do people in a few villages where only one, two or three affordable houses are needed. I very much have a mind to support the amendment, and I hope that the Minister will take on board my noble friend’s comments.

Two other issues are tied up with this matter. My noble friend has called for the viability of rural communities. I am sure that Members of the Committee will be as anxious as I was to see the announcement in the press this weekend not only that 2,500 post offices will close, many of which are in rural areas, but that 4,000 more may close. If you start ripping out the heart of rural communities, even if they are small, by closing things such as rural post offices and schools—in the same way, the Government currently give more money to children who are educated in urban areas than they do for children in rural areas, in some cases by nearly half the same amount again—there is real proof that, unless someone speaks up for rural communities, they get lost. This is the Government’s problem; rural communities have a very small number of people compared with urban areas.

I hope simply that, if the Minister cannot accept the amendment, the Government will duly consider the best way in the Bill to help and encourage those who want to live and work in rural areas. The Bill is a once-in-a-lifetime sort of Bill. We are setting up the HCA and we should not let this occasion go by without addressing the concerns of rural communities.

No one would argue with the sentiments that have been expressed. I made a note of a couple of things that the noble Lord, Lord Best, said which made me think about the practicalities of all this. I agree with what has been said so far about not having representatives on the HCA board. Nevertheless, human nature means that individuals’ own backgrounds come into play perhaps more than features with us when we try to create neat legislation.

The noble Lord talked about building six houses in the middle of nowhere. I use his words; I would not like it to be thought that we on these Benches regard the countryside as being nowhere.

There are different financial and practical considerations in getting the numbers up in urban areas. The Cerne Abbas experience sounds very familiar to me from an urban background just as much as a rural one. There is interdependency between towns and countryside, and I do not want to forget that.

The Minister will be well aware that it ain’t easy and any solution to a problem—it is a problem—will not be produced in this Committee or in this Bill. As I see it, the Minister and her colleagues have a great responsibility to ensure that the aspirations of the rural communities are taken account of every bit as much as those in other spheres. We can look at the situation in the rural areas. It might be felt that they can easily be defined, but there is a blurring of the edges, and it is not just about town and country. There are lots of areas in between. The pressure under which housing has been put—we are solely concerned with housing here—over the past 30 or 40 years matches with the aspirations of ordinary people. At one time, they would never have dreamt of owning their own home or being able to rent a good home, but that has grown out of all proportion. I well imagine that most people in this Room are owner-occupiers and they have aspired from wherever they were to owning their own home, and they got it.

Thirty years ago, the need of people in the rural areas that we are concentrating on was to be able to buy their own house, and they bought it; they were given legislation, despite protests. The people in the rural areas were not really concerned about what would happen 30 years later; they were concerned about getting on the housing ladder. They bought the house and quickly sold it to buy another house, and away they went. We must not underestimate what I would call the selfishness of people. It is all very well saying that someone has the responsibility to do things on a grand scale, strategically but, at the end of the day, the people who live in rural areas are every bit as entitled to be as selfish as those who live anywhere else.

It has been said that housing is not the only product in rural communities that has been under attack; post offices have been mentioned. I have previously pointed out in Grand Committee that the attack on rural communities comes from many directions, not least that of the car-borne shopper. There was once an idyllic concept of a rural area, with a baker, butcher and candlestick maker. They were happy until it was discovered that not only could someone have a car, which they had never had, but could travel to the supermarket five miles away, which they had never been able to do. I am not making party political points, but with the affluence that gradually came they decided to exercise their rights, which we would all support.

Given the opportunity of the right to buy, they bought their own house. Consequently, the council house they had happily occupied under a good landlord—the local authority—disappeared. It is the same with shopping and post offices. If we want to stand still in a segment of life, we shall get nowhere. The Minister and her colleagues must ensure that the HCA is peopled by men and women with experience and nous: sense. They would not need to be told by this Committee or anybody else to ensure that people in rural areas get a fair crack of the whip; of course they are entitled to that. If the proposition was that rural people should get a fair crack of the whip, my hand would immediately go up.

All the arguments put forward about the cost of housing and poor level of wages are part of the rural scene. However, I do not think that the Minister will take kindly to the effective segmentalisation of the needs of those in housing: those who live in rural areas and are, by virtue of living there, entitled to more than just a fair crack of the whip. I note what the noble Lord, Lord Best, said: they were not entitled to special treatment, or something above and beyond. However, I hope that when their needs are looked at by the commission and the officers, they will have half a mind, looking back over a period, to ask whether they did right, by those in not only rural but urban areas. Those of us who had the great privilege of representing constituents in urban areas do not need to be told of the misery of constituents in appalling housing. The answer to their problems comes from not a beneficent landlord but hard-headed decisions taken by the Government. Ultimately, the Government will not be short of advice and special pleading. I do not object to that, but somebody will have to make decisions. The greatest decision, of course, will be over the allocation of resources. It will be some time before one gets the proper balance.

If this were a matter of sentiment I would of course put my hand up straight away. I live in a rural area within an urban setting: Loughton is in the middle of Epping Forest. If you are looking for rural ambience, I have it in Loughton. It is a successful town but, within a minute of leaving my house I am literally driving through beautiful forest whichever way I go; the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, knows this far better than I, having been responsible for its stewardship over the years. He and I are both proud and lucky to live there.

It will be difficult for the Minister and her colleagues to do something which marks out those living in rural areas as needing some kind of special treatment. I started out by saying that it is not easy, and the Government will get no credit for it, but I wish the Minister well.

I was evacuated during the war but, if I am allowed to count my grandmother staying on in London during the Blitz, 2007 was the first year in my life in which I did not have a London address. Therefore, I have to declare an immediate interest in that I no longer have a London address and I am now a totally rural person. That in some way affects my attitudes towards this debate.

The pressures on affordable housing in rural areas have already been alluded to. To provide examples, I will simply take two cases from the parish of 200 in which we live. First, I have quoted the example of my former immediate neighbour, a retired disabled agricultural labourer, on two previous occasions in your Lordships’ House, and this will be the third. He has now gone into sheltered housing. A breeze-block bungalow with a simple roof, in which he lived for all his life, was put on the market in part because of brownfield site opportunities. The 0.22 acre site was sold for £300,000, the intention being to knock the bungalow down and to put on that site a house that will have four bedrooms, each with en suite bathrooms. We made no complaint to the planning authorities, but it is yet another unit of affordable housing that has been taken away.

In the same way, the son of one of our colleagues in your Lordships’ House, totally honourably—I have no complaint whatever about the process—bought two semi-detached cottages that were attached to each other. Those represented two separate pieces of affordable housing in a single parish are now going to be a single house with further extension. Because of the duties that attach—I am not making any fiscal complaint—to the purchase of houses nowadays, there are any number of cases in the countryside where people are buying houses with the specific intention of extending them. They are not buying them because the house itself will fit their needs, but they will add extensions to them. I immediately declare a vicarious mea culpa, since our own house was sold to us by an estate agent under the slogan, “A 17th century shepherd’s cottage interestingly extended”. It did at least win a Civic Trust Award and is not therefore subject to the next complaint, about which I have an incidental question for the Minister.

I go back to the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, at the start of this Committee stage. We are seeing in the countryside a whole series of houses that are being given extensions that have only a nodding acquaintance with the architecture of the original building. The Minister does not need to answer now, but do the planning authorities have any design responsibility to see that there is not a discrepancy between the extension and the original building? At the moment, we are running the risk of acquiring the sort of landscape that they have in Ireland as a result of somewhat relaxed planning laws.

I will revert briefly to the urban experience, to follow up on what the noble Lord, Lord Best, said. In 1987, the Peabody Trust, which was a massive landlord in my former constituency, decided that it was not going to provide any priority to fourth-generation families living in a particular community. The Peabody Trust had estates all over the constituency. It was only going to be decided on economic criteria. I said that I thought it ran the risk of destroying communities that had existed for a very long time, whose strength was their very durability and continuity. I am pleased to say, to the credit of the Peabody Trust, that after 10 years it acknowledged that I had been right, and it established a reasonable quota for people whose families had lived in the area for a long time. In rural areas, we do not have landlords with that degree of control. Therefore, the same instrument cannot be used to provide continuity in affordable housing in the countryside.

I recall a meeting of the All-Party Group on Homelessness and Housing Need, which a number of your Lordships have attended. It was addressed by the director of the Rural Housing Trust, who said that the problem with dealing with one-off schemes in small communities was that the costs were disproportionately high and that they were therefore at a disadvantage.

I end on a different personal note. The late Derek Smith, who was a school contemporary of mine, retired from being a farmer and set up ViRSA, which dealt with rural shops. Before his premature death from cancer, he had become involved in housing as well. I cannot say how strongly I support the thrust and theme of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Best. When I became a Member of Parliament, Soho, in my constituency, was threatened with massive demolition. It was saved by the creation of the Soho Housing Association in the area, which did a remarkable job of retaining any number of handsome—frequently 18th-century—buildings that would otherwise have been swept away. The rural housing scene requires a sympathetic and interested resource, however that is achieved, to provide support in the same way as the Soho Housing Association did when it was set up. I am very proud of what the association has been able to deliver, and I very much hope that, arising out of this legislation, we will see similar advances all over the country.

Hear, hear!

This debate has been a long and interesting digression on rural housing. I have heard a lot of wisdom in the Committee this afternoon. I am not unsympathetic to the thrust of what the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, has had to say. I was particularly interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Best, had to say, because it struck a chord with me. I sat here thinking about this and about the ironies of life. The noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, and I are of a similar age, and while he enjoyed the playing fields of Eton as a young man, I enjoyed the strawberry fields of Great Bentley. I grew up in a rural community, and I would wager pretty fairly that I am probably the only Member of this Committee who lived in a rural council house. I might be wrong—I have not checked everyone’s entry in Dods—but I have some personal experience, which is why I have particular empathy with the points that have been made.

The council bungalow that I grew up in was the product of post-war visionary planning. I know this because the then Labour Government, in their post-1945 period, ensured that we had a massive home-building programme because of national need. I have spotted in the many years since my childhood that the rural council bungalow that I grew up in is repeated in rural communities all over the country. I have seen it many times. That was because the foresight of politicians of an earlier generation. Wise they were, because it ensured that in many rural communities up and down the country there was social affordable housing, which people who worked the land and who came back from the war could access fairly easily and readily and could afford to live in.

How does that affect where we are today? In some senses—this is a housing and regeneration Bill after all—we are talking about the need to regenerate and ensure that we have more than adequate housing and a range of affordable housing in rural communities. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, put her finger on this. Part of her critique of the amendment, with which she and I have some sympathy, was that it may fall down in the use of the term “particular”. The post-war Labour Government did not have to have a particular need to achieve their overall policy objective, which was to ensure that housing was regenerated not only in urban areas but in rural ones.

The noble Earl will probably be disappointed with what I have to say, although I hope that he also will be encouraged. I certainly understand where he is coming from. Ultimately, the amendment is unnecessary, and I will set out why. Simply, the Homes and Communities Agency is charged with the creation of strong and sustainable communities. It will be a national agency with skills, expertise and budgets to meet the needs of people living in all areas of the country—both urban and rural communities. Clause 2 sets out objects for the agency which represent the set of principles to which it must work. Anything that the Homes and Communities Agency does must come back to the principles of providing decent affordable housing alongside the regeneration of all our communities, wherever they are located, with a view to meeting the needs of people living in areas of England.

As I have said, we share the noble Earl’s concern about the viability of rural communities. I think that it is fair to say that all too often these communities have not been sustainable. Young people and young families just starting out find themselves priced out of the housing market in their villages or have to travel a long distance to their place of work. Strong and sustainable communities in rural areas can be maintained only if those families living there can afford to remain there. Members of the Committee have referred to the impact of the right to buy on rural areas. The noble Lord, Lord Best, made the point rather well. He said that the percentage of affordable council housing was lower in rural areas and that the percentage of those houses which were bought under the right to buy is higher; both are true statistically. So we have to take very careful account of that. It is for those sorts of reasons that the Homes and Communities Agency will continue with the national affordable housing programme from one of the transferring organisations, which has targets for rural affordable homes, for social rent and home ownership. The Government have recently announced their target of 11,000 homes to be built between 2009 and 2011.

The agency will be the Government’s foremost delivery agency and will be tasked with delivering strategic housing and regeneration priorities. In practice, the agency will do that by working closely with local authorities to deliver their aspirations for their communities. Local authorities in rural areas will assess the needs for their communities and will, quite rightly, have regard for the viability of those communities. Local authorities in rural areas will set out their aspirations for strong, viable and sustainable communities in their local development plans, in the regional spatial strategies and in their regional economic strategies. They will be knitted together and will have a bearing on how the local authority, as the lead organisation in the area, approaches these issues.

When the Homes and Communities Agency approaches local authorities to plan how to deliver national targets at the local level, these sorts of plans and strategies are the immediate tools which will inform their work and inform the agency’s investment decisions. By working with the local authority at the local level in rural areas in drawing up regional investment plans in partnership with local authorities and regional development agencies, the agency will ensure the viability of rural communities.

There is a desire to specify representation at board level; I understand that. I know that we have had some of this argument, but, picking up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, on representation on the board, I do not think that it is desirable to specify one particular group. In order to avoid having a board where all the specifics are identified and associated with just one individual, we want to ensure that the board as a whole reflects our priorities, including making sure that there is affordable rural housing.

However, in paragraph 1(3)(a) of Schedule 1, there is a requirement on the Secretary of State to,

“have regard to the desirability of appointing a person who has experience of, and has shown some capacity in”,

a relevant matter. Consideration will clearly be given to this in the construction of the board to ensure that particular interests are reflected in its overall makeup.

It is worth making a couple more points here. We will ensure that the agency will be well advised in terms of benefiting from broader advice on issues related to rural regeneration and rural housing. In March last year the Housing Corporation itself was asked to set up and chair the Rural Housing Advisory Group which reports annually to the department. That group is chaired by Candy Atherton, who is a member of the Housing Corporation with special responsibilities for rural housing. The new agency will have the benefit of that continuing work, and members of that group include former members of the Affordable Rural Housing Commission, whose work has been extremely valuable in helping us design our strategy and general approach. Our case is this: we are very conscious of the particular needs of rural communities. The advice, guidance, help and assistance is already in place and will be incorporated into the agency. In terms of board appointments, of course it is going to be one of those issues that will be reflected in how the board is composed.

Finally, on resources, it is worth making the point that currently the Housing Corporation’s programme for 2006-08 allocates to rural districts some 21 per cent of all affordable housing allocations, which pretty much matches the noble Earl’s quoted figure of one in five living in rural communities. We are getting the balance right in terms of funding for that particular housing sector as well. One would expect that to continue over into the new agency, which will be charged with specific responsibilities.

We have had a good debate on a live and current issue. I certainly recognise the strength of feeling and interest, but our approach takes on board many of the noble Earl’s concerns as well as the others which have been expressed without having to go into the business of specifying in the way he suggests. That could have the effect of distorting the general balance in terms of the policy of the new agency.

Would the Minister like to reflect on his earlier comment when he said that this is a “digression”? I do not think he meant to say those words, but they were unfortunate when we are dealing with the small but very important question of provision for rural communities. I would hate this to go by without that being rectified, because those of us in rural areas have a feeling that that is what is likely to follow.

I think that the noble Baroness did not understand my use of the word “digression”. I took this to be a debate and a discursive opportunity to look at the issue of rural housing, and I certainly do not belittle it. As I explained carefully in my remarks, I do not just share an interest and a passion in this area; it is my origin, so I well understand the issues. I would not want to be misunderstood or misinterpreted.

That was a very good debate and I thank those who have supported the amendment. I was very interested in the idea of the noble Lord, Lord Best, about rural housing enablers. That is an excellent idea that the Government could take on board and think about. The noble Lord mentioned consulting parishioners and the difficulty he had had in one area in Dorset. The parish council is probably quite receptive to his idea, but when you get to local people, they are all right, Jack, because they already have a house, so they are probably less receptive to the idea of more housing in their rather quaint village. It is very difficult to get across to them that, although they might be okay, there are other people who need housing.

The amendment does not ask for special treatment for rural areas, as I emphasised when I started the debate. We are asking that rural areas receive their fair share of attention. I am sorry that the Minister did not like the amendment, or thought it unnecessary, and did not like the reference to taking “particular” account. I offered that if he did not like our amendment, he could come back with a better one that might give attention to urban and rural areas so that the word “rural” is included in the Bill. The Affordable Rural Housing Commission report was published five years ago and we are still concerned about rural areas. It is all very well saying how concerned we are, but we actually need to get something done. We think that something like this amendment would bring the issue to the attention of the HCA so that rural areas are not forgotten. I am disappointed by the Minister’s reaction to that.

The Minister did not explain how the Government propose to tackle the problems in rural areas. What is going to happen in rural areas? At the moment, very little is happening. They have a long way to go to catch up with urban areas to redress the balance. It is all very well saying that the funding is getting better now, but there is a long way to go to redress the balance. That was slightly disappointing.

Unless the Minister would like to come back with a better amendment, in his view, at this stage I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendments Nos. 28 to 32 not moved.]

[Amendments Nos. 33 and 34 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.]

moved Amendment No. 35:

Amendment No. 36 is in this group. If it is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment No. 37.

I have a brief amendment in this group. I cannot imagine that this group will take us more than an hour, like the previous one did, but who knows? My Amendment No. 36 would replace,

“roads or other transport facilities”,

with “transport facilities”. At all stages we ought to establish a level playing field between different types of transport and not assume that roads are necessarily at the top of the hierarchy in all cases. Of course, roads have a very detailed and intricate local relationship with any development, because they go right up to front doors or factory doors and, through the network, they link into main roads, trunk roads and motorways. New developments such as railways would not have that direct relationship, but if we are thinking of the Homes and Communities Agency being involved in eco-towns—I do not know whether we are; perhaps we can tease that out later on planning issues—and talking about ecologically, economically and socially sustainable new settlements, we certainly ought to be thinking about whether railway connections, for example, are possible, even if it involves building new lines.

Nevertheless, there are other forms of transport that have the same detailed and intricate local relationship with housing and other buildings as roads do, such as cycleways and footpaths. I could understand a reference in the Bill to highways, but it says roads. I think perhaps that was put in automatically by whoever drafted the legislation, because there is an assumption nowadays that roads come first and everything else comes second. That is the purpose of the amendment.

I shall deal with Amendment No. 36 first. It is grouped with the other amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, which make a small but significant change. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, would reduce one of the examples in subsection (3) of the types of infrastructure that might be secured by the HCA to “transport facilities” by removing the explicit reference to roads. I appreciate that the noble Lord is concerned that the drafting might limit the HCA to providing only one of any such infrastructure service at any one time or to any one development. I am sure that he would be concerned that if we single out roads in this way, it may skew the focus of the HCA in that direction.

Perhaps I should make it clear that the clause does not require the HCA to deliver roads. While it empowers the HCA to provide or facilitate the provision of infrastructure, it does not require it to do so. I do not believe that the provision will skew the activities of the agency or divert responsibility for the delivery of roads on to it. The inclusion of “roads or other” merely makes it clear that in this context we consider a road to be a type of transport facility. If we do not say so, it might not be obvious to all that roads should be included. Our intention is to enable the agency to act responsibly. As I said, it must ensure that the housing that it provides forms part of sustainable communities. Part of those communities being sustainable is that they must have the right infrastructure, including roads. That is the purpose of that paragraph.

Next, I turn to Amendment No. 41, which is in this group. It would expand from one set of examples of the types of infrastructure that may be secured by the HCA to emphasise that “recreational facilities” includes “open space”. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is concerned that as drafted it may not be obvious to all that open spaces should be included in recreational facilities and that the HCA should be empowered to secure them. I am not sure that is the case. It should be apparent to all that open spaces are a pretty vital recreational facility for all our communities and that the HCA should be empowered to secure them. Perhaps it is worth reminding noble Lords that the definition is what is known as a partial definition. The examples are illustrative, not exhaustive. We have made it clear throughout our policies that we consider open space to be vital to creating sustainable communities and ensuring their well-being. I do not think that we disagree significantly in terms of principles. I would like to give this matter some further consideration and return to it on Report.

Finally, Amendments Nos. 35, 37, 38, 39, 40 and 42 are a small group of amendments that could have significant effect. The effect may be to turn a list of examples of types of infrastructure that is not intended to be exhaustive, but to give a flavour of the sorts of things that we mean, into a narrower list. That is our concern; I am sure it is not the concern of the noble Baroness. Perhaps she is concerned that as drafted Clause 2(3) would have the effect of exclusivity; namely that the agency may, for example, be limited to providing only one of any such infrastructure service at any one time or to any one development. That is not the effect of the subsection as drafted. The definition of “infrastructure” is wide, inclusive and not exhaustive. I am concerned that the amendments may have a slight narrowing effect, as I argued earlier, on the types of infrastructure that the agency can provide. Such an effect would be contrary to their purpose.

I accept that this is a fine point of statutory interpretation. I would like to take some further opinions before concluding on this matter. I would be grateful if the noble Baroness would enable us to give the matter some further consideration and return to it on Report. Perhaps, if the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment, we could achieve some meeting of minds on this point before we next meet to discuss these issues.

I am obviously grateful for that conclusion. Amendments Nos. 36 and 41 are in the group partly because we were encouraged to agree to as much grouping as possible, not because we necessarily felt that they were obviously part of the same group. I am glad that the Government are going to consider my noble friend’s point. I did not think that the notes from which the noble Lord was speaking made it entirely clear that the Government agreed. He asked how it would be possible for anyone to think that other forms of transport facility were not included; I do not feel that that answered the point. My noble friend is absolutely right. I am grateful for that response, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendments Nos. 36 to 42 not moved.]

Clause 2 agreed to.

moved Amendment No. 43:

I wonder whether there is a conflict between Clause 3 and the provisions in Clauses 48 to 50. The HCA will be subject to guidance, which it must take into consideration, and directions, with which it must comply. It also needs a lot of consents. I am intrigued, because I do not remember such a short clause in any of the predecessor Acts of Parliament, from which the Bill is derived, or one that sets this out so baldly. I wonder what would happen if the matter were taken to court by the chief executive, who said, “I do not have to do what you said in this direction, Secretary of State, because I have Clause 2, which says that I can do anything I think is appropriate”.

Amendment No. 49A comes from the same thinking as that of my noble friend, and would amend Clause 6 half way down the third page. I propose that the powers to bring about the more effective use of land are referred to as specific. I suggest adding,

“by the use of the powers specifically set out in this Chapter”.

At least two of the terms in the clause are quite wide, although I am less concerned about this one than the other one. What is more effective is a matter of judgment. I am not clear what the criteria are for assessing what is more or less effective in this context.

I hope that the Government can assure us that the powers that the HCA will have to rely on are specific, and that we can read Clause 6 as an introduction to the more specific powers that the HCA will have rather than as something which the HCA could rely on without having regard to the detail of the powers that are set out in much more precise fashion.

I support Amendment No. 43, because the phrase,

“do anything it considers appropriate”,

is far too sweeping. I suspect that if we leave the clause as it is, it will not do the HCA any favours. Part of the concern that people have expressed recently about eco-towns and a whole range of other things comes from a deep-seated anxiety that local views will be railroaded. I know from the work that has already been done in the HCA that that is not the body language or the posture that that organisation wants to strike. If we leave the clause as it is and allow the agency to say that it can do anything that it considers appropriate, we are sending out entirely the wrong message, and it would be no bad thing if a test of reasonableness and reasonable action were built into the Bill. I support the amendment for that reason.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has picked up a point that I made at Second Reading about the powers of the Homes and Communities Agency. I argued then that,

“do anything it considers appropriate”,

is inappropriate. That is the only way in which I can describe it.

I do not suppose that the noble Baroness will be minded to concede the amendment—it would be a record if she were to do so; we would strike one up on the board and think, “Whoopee”—but I ask her to take it away and get it properly and legally considered. My concern is the same as that of the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, and my noble friend Lord Eccles. What will happen if something goes to judicial review with the clause as it is worded? I really would like this to be very well tested by professional lawyers before we go any further with the Bill in its present form. I ask the noble Baroness to take that request away. Perhaps she already has a legal opinion—I do not know; I see a piece of paper coming forward. If she has not, it would be good if she could do that and, when she has the result, circulate it to Members of the Committee. This is an extremely serious matter, and every Member of the Committee would welcome an authoritative answer. I am not sure whether I am prepared to take the view of those who drafted the Bill on this, because “They would say that, wouldn’t they?”. I would want an independent view, if at all possible.

I do not intend to enter the debate on Amendment No. 43, not least because I shall be providing the Minister with an opportunity to consult behind her. The judicial review issue clearly pertains to the present wording, but I shall be interested to hear the Minister’s defence. I only throw into the pot something I have mentioned in at least one other context, the definition of an act of God in Blackstone’s Legal Dictionary: an act which no reasonable man would expect God to commit.

The Minister knows, because I have already had a conversation with her, that during the Question put to her yesterday in the Chamber by the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, about Otmoor, my mind went to the fact that the chequered field pattern there was the genesis of and inspiration to Lewis Carroll for Alice’s adventures. There is a strong Lewis Carroll element to the wording of Amendments Nos. 44 and 45 moved by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. If the purpose of legislation is to be pellucid, I am not sure that it is as yet. It is currently worded in a matter of which Humpty Dumpty in those adventures would wholly approve.

This series of amendments is challenging. I hope I can do justice to the high expectations of Members of the Committee.

On Amendment No. 43, I entirely take the point on which Members of the Committee have challenged me: why do we need what appear to be wide powers? Why is the language as it is? The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, also asked whether this is subject to legal test, whether we are sure that this is the right language and where the boundaries are. I can answer that fairly simply. Essentially, there are limits in the legislation and existing public law to prevent the HCA from exploiting what could certainly be seen to be sweeping powers. There are four reasons for things being as they are, which I shall outline before I come back to the points raised by other Members of the Committee. I am particularly conscious that there is in some sense support for the amendment around the Committee, not least from my noble friend Lady Ford.

First, Members of the Committee are aware that a statutory body such as the HCA can only use the powers it is given in legislation. If they are not wide or competent enough, the body could unintentionally act ultra vires: outside its powers. I take the point about explaining this in simple language, a challenge I put to my officials as well; I am not a lawyer. In short, Clause 3 works with the rest of the powers in Part 1 to ensure that the HCA is at no risk of acting outside its powers.

Secondly, this is a standard provision in this sort of legislation, which creates a non-departmental public body. For example, the Urban Regeneration Agency was given this power in Section 160(1) of the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993. More recently, Natural England was given it in Section 13(1) of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006.

Thirdly, there are controls on the power. As with other non-departmental public bodies, these powers are given their limit and extent by the objects of the HCA because they can be exercised only for the purpose of the objects or for purposes incidental to those purposes, and by the specific powers that follow in the rest of the Bill. That is where the relationship between Clauses 3 and 4 is important. Some of those specific powers, such as that of compulsory purchase, can be exercised only on the authority or with the confirmation of the Secretary of State, so that is another safeguard. A further safeguard resides in Clause 4(6)(b), which refers to powers in general by stating that,

“the powers conferred by section 3 must not be used to override a restriction imposed on the exercise of a specific power”.

The specific power is the competent power and the general powers cannot be used to override it. For example, Clause 10 restricts the HCA’s ability to dispose of land, while Clause 22 states that the Secretary of State’s consent will be required before financial assistance is given to any person. Those restrictions are not overridden by the general powers in Clause 3. If, for example, the agency wished to fund a bypass in order to unlock a site that currently cannot be developed, it would first have to obtain the Secretary of State’s consent, either generally or specifically, including for the terms and conditions on which the funding is given.

Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who will presumably respond on their amendments, will allow me to intervene. I listened carefully to what the Minister said about the really complicated amendments. This is in no way a disparagement of what the Minister said, but I am bound to say that my mind went back to those puzzles in one’s childhood where you were told that Mr Black, Mr White, Mr Brown and Mr Green lived in houses that were—not necessarily respectively—black, white, brown and green and you were then given further information and asked to discover in which colour house each of them lived.

I am perfectly content, with a towel round my head, to reread what the Minister said to verify that it is now pellucid to the man on the Clapham omnibus. I hope that, if he is so minded, the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, will return to this on Report if he does not feel that the man on the Clapham omnibus will be able to follow it.

It might depend on how many hot towels are handed out to travellers on London transport. As regards my Amendment No. 49A, the noble Baroness is right that “chapter” is the wrong word to use. I should have referred to “part” or perhaps even “Act”. I will come back to that at the next stage because my underlying concern that somehow powers are being given that are not spelt out still remains.

I am most grateful for the care and attention that the Minister has given to these matters. I am afraid that journeys on London transport are not long enough certainly as regards looking at Hansard and trying better to understand what the Minister has said. That will be my homework reading when I am on the train to the north of England tomorrow evening. No doubt the other people in the carriage will all think that I am crackers. Never mind, that often happens.

I am grateful for the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, and of the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith. I was not sure which house the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, thought Humpty Dumpty was living in, but perhaps that will become clear in due course. I am a lot happier with the wording of Clause 3 following the explanation that was given, particularly as regards the word “appropriate”, which is clearly testable in court. That is reassuring. As regards Clause 4(6)(a) on the designated areas, I tabled the relevant amendment as a probing amendment and the matter has been duly probed. I am entirely happy with the answer that I received. We can discuss whether the HCA ought to have planning powers at all at a later stage. If it is to have them, clearly it has to operate within existing planning legislation, which differs from the objectives stated here. I am grateful for the explanation that was given on that.

However, I am still bewildered by the rest of Clause 4. It seems to me that parts of it are frankly contradictory. I hope that the Minister will look again at the wording to make it easier for most people such as me who are not professional lawyers, or even for some professional lawyers, to understand. Having said that, I am very grateful indeed for the care and attention that the Minister has given these matters and for the contributions of other Members. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Clause 4 [Powers: general]:

[Amendments Nos. 44 and 45 not moved.]

Clause 4 agreed to.

Clause 5 [Powers to provide housing or other land]:

[Amendments Nos. 46 and 47 not moved.]

Clause 5 agreed to.

Clause 6 [Powers for regeneration, development or effective use of land]:

[Amendments Nos. 48 to 49A not moved.]

Clause 6 agreed to.

Clause 7 [Powers in relation to infrastructure]:

[Amendment No. 50 not moved.]

Clause 7 agreed to.

moved Amendment No. 51:

moved, as an amendment to Amendment No. 51, Amendment No. 51A:

May I clarify whether the noble Lord has moved Amendments No. 51A and 53A?

I have moved the first one, and perhaps the second one if that is what I have to do, as an amendment to the noble Lord’s amendment.

Let us stick with the first one. Amendment No. 51A has been moved as an amendment to Amendment No. 51. We now need to deal with that amendment before we go back to Amendment No. 51.

I would like to speak to Amendment No. 51.

We need to deal with the amendment to the amendment first.

I will deal with Amendment No. 51A very briefly, because the noble Lord did not make a great meal of it. It deals with parish councils. I assure him that because parish councils are not planning authorities, they are not implicated in our provision for relationships with authorities.

Will the noble Lord now withdraw his amendment to the amendment?

I have to say that I think that this procedure is odd because I thought that we just dealt with the whole group together, but never mind; we will do as we are instructed.

I am also doing what I am instructed to do.

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment No. 51A, as an amendment to Amendment No. 51, by leave, withdrawn.

I support the amendment moved by the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart—in particular, the first part of it dealing with consultation and taking account of the views of local authorities. Like the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, I think that this should be in the Bill, rather than just a probing amendment.

I shall give the Committee a practical example of how things can go wrong if consultation does not take place. In doing so, I declare an interest as president of the Campaign to Protect Rural England and as a resident of south Warwickshire, where one of the so-called eco-towns will be situated, if they are ever built. I take issue with the term “eco-town”, as did the noble Earl. It is a catch-all label used to make something a little bit greener when it may not necessarily be all that green. I prefer the term satellite commuter town, because that is really what they are.

The noble Baroness will probably be aware that the proposals to build eco-towns—I am really speaking about the Long Marston eco-town in Warwickshire—have attracted strong local resentment and hostility at individual and local authority level. That is for all sorts of reasons, but the one I want to dwell on is the question of consultation raised in the amendment. The original proposal to create 15 new satellite community towns was never properly put out for consultation. The decision was taken without consultation. There was no consultation on the Government’s decision to have “about five” eco-towns—the position in one of their papers in May 2007. In September 2007, again without consultation, that was doubled to 10 eco-towns. There was no consultation on the selection of the 15 eco-towns on what is now called the shortlist, and no reasons were given as to why those 15 towns were chosen above any of the others listed.

More importantly, and directly relevant to this amendment, the Government did not consult the relevant planning authorities or other statutory consultees on whether the selected sites complied with the statutory development plans. That seems absolutely extraordinary, which is why this part of the amendment should be in the Bill; otherwise, the HCA will simply be top-down and do whatever it wants, as covered in one of the earlier amendments.

The noble Baroness may be aware—if not, she will be now—that both the relevant district councils, Stratford-Upon-Avon and Wychaven, voted unanimously about 10 days ago not to put forward for planning approval the proposal for an eco-town at Long Marston, which has been quaintly renamed Middle Quinton. How does that square with the obligations that the Government have set out in various codes of practice, in their statutory requirements and in the Cabinet’s code of practice on consultation; or with the Secretary of State’s claim in a press release on 20 May that,

“the selection of eco-towns”—

is—

“not a secretive process where decisions will be taken behind closed doors, but one that will be absolutely open and transparent … Is this a good location or not? What other facilities would the community need? Where should the transport links be placed? Your views on this are vital—because this is the future of your community we are talking about”?

That was the right honourable Caroline Flint.

I am afraid that so far rather the reverse has happened with eco-towns. There has been no transparency and very little consultation. The Government, in their own planning policy paper, PPS 1, have said:

“More effective community development is a key element of the Government’s planning reforms. This is best achieved where there is early engagement”.

We have not had early engagement; we have not any engagement.

The same document says:

“Plans should be drawn up with community involvement and present a shared vision and strategy of how the area should develop to achieve more sustainable patterns of development”.

That simply has not happened. I can currently speak only for the Middle Quinton development, but I know, having made contact with the subjects of other proposals, that people there feel equally out of the loop on government consultation. They have little information, and no visits from Ministers, to show them the disadvantages of these proposals.

It is important to use this example to support the amendment, because the intentions may well be there but I am afraid that they do not seem to be happening in terms of facts on the ground. I hope that the noble Baroness will be able to respond to some of the concerns expressed, in particular about the lack of consultation over these so-called eco-towns.

I also take this opportunity to add my voice to the request of the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, on the question of claw-back on the increased value of MoD land. Long Marston—or Middle Quinton, to give it its preferred name by the developers—is MoD land. I am sure that if it is developed, there will be a claw-back, but perhaps the noble Baroness could confirm for the record that the Government will get a cash benefit if MoD land is developed for eco-towns. However, is there not the faintest whiff of the banana republic about this? If the Government are going to benefit financially from giving developers planning permission in the teeth of strong local opposition, there is something a little strange about it; I shall not use the term “banana republic”. It does not resonate terribly well with the people who are involved. With those words, I reiterate my support for the amendment and ask the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, to consider bringing it back on Report so that it is put into the Bill.

I thoroughly support the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Cathcart, and I should like to add one footnote. The year 2000 may be the first instance of the term “brownfield” being used in legislation or guidance, but it has an older pedigree in strategic and tactical debate. I recall that many years before 2000 a firm was established in my constituency which published a regular newsletter called the Catalyst and offered site-soil analysis services as a preface to planning and site use. Brownfield was very much part of the jargon even then.

I support absolutely what my noble friend and others have said about gardens. There is an element of coincidence in that the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, who unusually is not in his place, was in another era the Member of Parliament for Stratford-upon-Avon. Although my noble friend Lord Cathcart alluded to gardens in a rural capacity, however one places Stratford-upon-Avon in that regard, my understanding is that the gardens issue is wholly live there. In what is an iconic town, the deleterious effect of the development of gardens is very noticeable. However, that is a coincidence.

On flooding, my former neighbour, the retired disabled agricultural labourer to whom I alluded earlier and who was the oldest person in our hamlet who had been born there, said of a private housing development two villages away that, “They’ll rue the day. There’s always been flooding there”, and of course they have. The opportunity cost of maintaining ancient rural knowledge and country lore through the disappearance of farm labourers is worth a parody or even a threnody of Thomas Hardy or AE Housman’s A Shropshire Lad. At the other end of the spectrum from my retired disabled agricultural labourer neighbour, I recall the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who is normally the soul of geniality and good sense, having one of his rare sense-of-humour failures when on one occasion yet another noble Lord raised the flood risks in the Thames Gateway, where so much housing development has been contemplated and where there does seem to be an element of perversity on which I am sure the Minister will be able to set our minds at rest.

The professional advice on the flood risk, however, seems to be pretty comprehensive. I see a virtue in the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, on the subject of floodplains. Amendment No. 77 is a happy antidote to the gardens problem already described. Moreover, in an era of climate change, it is a potential stimulus to the employment expansion of the expertise to which I referred in the initiative in my former constituency.

Finally, I turn to the caveats that the Minister, Caroline Flint, expressed, to which my noble friend alluded. I think that I am at this moment the only person in the Committee who has served in the other place. The noble Lords, Lord Graham and Lord Howarth, have and they have contributed to other parts of the debate. But there is no moment that a constituency Member of Parliament dreads more than when you are having a meeting on a contentious issue and a person at the back, who almost certainly you recognise, raises the one question that you do not want raised. At a meeting which was reasonably placid until that moment, you can watch the infection run contagiously the whole way around the room. Therefore, if the Minister, Miss Flint, has given the assurances she has, all I that I can say is that I hope that she is not too often on the platform when the disagreeable question is asked.

Perhaps I may throw one more thought into this discussion on which the Minister may care to comment. Over the years, we have had a progressive tightening of housing densities. In the good old, bad old days when life was civilised, when I first began in local government, and my noble friend first began in the business of government in the other place, 10 houses per acre was considered to be high-density development. But now, the standard has been raised to 50 houses per hectare, which is 20 houses per acre, which gives rise to a lot of the pressures and reactions that we are hearing about. One consequence is that people are trying to make historic development—heaven help us—into modern development with a completely different density where the original architectural layout was for a completely different purpose. This is a real issue; perhaps the noble Baroness would take it into consideration in her response or give it some thought and come back later. It relates very much to the amendments tabled by my noble friend.

This has been a long, complex debate because the amendment addressed three different but related issues. First, I shall turn to consultation and then address back gardens, green spaces and flooding. I made it clear at Second Reading—I do not think that Members of the Committee are in any doubt about our sincerity—that there is no way in which the Homes and Communities Agency will achieve its very ambitious, necessary targets if it does not work in partnership with local authorities. We have made absolutely clear that this is a condition of its success. Sir Bob Kerslake, who addressed us and sat in on one of the sessions, is committed to making a success of it, because he is a very sensible man.

The words of the amendment that the HCA will,

“consult with, and have regard to the views of, the local authorities”,

go without saying. Without that commitment, it will not be able to do its job. It is the key delivery partner and it would not be effective if it did not do that. In the vast majority of cases it will be dealing with in its relationships with social housing providers and local authorities, it will work through informal consultation as part of that partnership.

The questions raised by the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, and the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, have been specific and about a specific set of circumstances. I appreciate that they have taken the opportunity to raise them now. I shall try to reassure Members of the Committee. I have listened closely to the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke. I sincerely believe—I said this yesterday in the Chamber in response to a Question—that the concept of an eco-town is extremely significant and is not like anything we have done before.

In our generation, we are facing the great challenge of building differently for our social infrastructure and communities, which must withstand climate extremes. It is not just a question of mitigation and how we build differently and protect our communities, but of, through eco-towns, pioneering ways to enhance biodiversity, our habitats and our ability to improve, not just withstand, climate change and what has happened to our environment. These are not satellite commuter towns.

I appreciate the responses coming from different parts of the country to the challenge of having an eco-town identified. The invitation went out; we had 57 responses; and we made a judgment on which of those 57 were sustainable. The majority were rejected because they did not show evidence of innovation and sustainability. We are still at a very early stage. These are potential sites; we have to look at each of them to see whether they will deliver for the local community—not just whether they will show exemplary opportunity from which the country as a whole can learn but whether they will suit the needs of the local community. They must be something that the local community owns, is involved with and is committed to.

The noble Lord will know that we are now consulting on the 15 potential sites—it is sites, not schemes, that we are looking at. That consultation is proceeding alongside an extensive sustainability appraisal and an attempt to draw out a policy statement that will be a planning document to determine whether the criteria that we want for eco-towns will be fully met. If they are not met at the final stage, the planning application will not be sustainable. It will have to meet the material consideration of the planning document, along with everything else, including the development plan.

If a current development plan is not there because the LDF is not ready, the old plan will guide our judgment, as will the regional spatial strategies. The whole point about eco-towns is that they are part of the planning process; they are not extra to or alongside it. I heard what that the noble Lord said about how people feel that they have not been consulted in that instance; I hope that they have. Consultation is of the essence of our planning system and we prepare for it in every way. Consultation is built into all the different stages. It can take different forms. Bidders should be offering their plans in detail to the local community to be scrutinised, challenged and interrogated and local authorities should be doing their job of informing local people about the choice in front of them.

That is the beginning of the process; nothing is a fait accompli. When those decisions are eventually made—I have no idea how many there will be; there could be five; none of us has any idea at this stage—there will be opportunities throughout the process for local people to have their say.

I look forward to that process, but is the noble Baroness saying that she does not yet know whether eco-towns will be built at all? When the policy paper was issued, there was no consultation about whether there should be eco-towns, but simply some sort of consultation about what they should be. The decision appeared to have been taken that there would be five and then 10 eco-towns. Is the position still that there will be 10 eco-towns? Secondly, the noble Baroness said that local authorities and local people must be involved, but the consultation process ends on 30 June. Two local authorities have stated their position, reflecting the wishes of the people in their community. Does that count for anything in the Minister’s thinking?

I will check the first point. On the other point, of course local involvement counts. All the responses that we get from local authorities will be taken seriously. They are an important part of the debate, an important signifier, and will be taken into account. On the question of whether there will be eco-towns, we have said that there will be five by 2016 and up to 10 by 2010. That is where the policy sits.

The point that I want to make is central to the debate as a whole. We need to go back to the principle that planning has always been an accommodation of local and national interests. We have in the HCA an opportunity for the first time to give local authorities a single point of contact—a single conversation. That means that throughout the process we listen very carefully to what people are saying. It cannot be otherwise.

Back gardens are an equally sensitive issue. Simply, I cannot improve very much on what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said. We have a special regard for all aspects of green space. PPS 17, which I am sure we will talk about, deals with planning for open spaces, sport and recreation, and sets out guidance and the expectation that local planning authorities will protect all open spaces that communities need.

In PPS 3, on planning for housing, we have for the first time put a new emphasis on the importance of green spaces alongside the importance of access to gardens and housing developments. Nothing has changed for many years in the powers of local authorities to protect gardens. The classification of gardens as brownfield sites goes back to the 1990s. Local authorities have exactly the same powers that they have always had to draw up policies that protect gardens.

PPS 3 gives local planning authorities even greater flexibility on the kind of housing that they wish to see in their areas. It strengthens the tools that local authorities already had under previous policy to turn down inappropriate developments on former residential or garden land. That means that local authorities can set strong and specific local policies that protect gardens in particular areas. For the first time, they can set brownfield targets that apply only to back gardens. They can separate them from other forms of brownfield sites such as derelict land, and can identify the need for gardens and other green spaces in plans for new developments.

I do not dispute that there is a lot of pressure on local authorities these days, but any local authority worth its salt can draw up a specific policy for the protection of gardens, which many have done. There is nothing to stop them doing so. If we were to reclassify them, we would have to take issue with the whole notion of curtilage. I will not weary the Committee with why that is a problem. I am prepared to write a very long letter about the history of curtilage—the relationship between land and buildings—but all I can say is that if you try to reclassify it, you might end up with never being able to extend your house to build a granny annexe. It would cause a lot of problems for people who wanted to make responsible and appropriate changes. I take the point that local authorities must be challenged, if necessary, to take care of these sorts of issues.

I shall deal with flood assessments and Amendment No. 77 at the same time. I have unusually harsh words for the amendment, which is a mixture of the unnecessary and the confusing. It is unnecessary because English Partnerships already performs this task and will continue to do so. The National Land Use Database aims to provide an inventory of the national stock of vacant and/or derelict land and buildings. Its objective is to provide a consistent and comprehensive up-to-date record of previously developed land and buildings in England that are available for development. I am glad to say that we already have this in hand.

The amendment confuses the brownfield argument. Previously developed land is of course a priority for housing in PPS 3. We have exceeded our national targets. We had a target of the 60 per cent development of brownfield land, and we are now reaching 75 per cent, which is very good. That does not, however, mean using brownfield land at all costs. Developments may be more sustainable in greenfield sites. For example, if a hypothetical application comes in for a care home on a greenfield site at the edge of a market town, where the residents can walk to the local shops, bus station or whatever, there is an argument that that is a more sustainable and appropriate site than building a home on a brownfield site with no access to shops, services and community. So you cannot be categorical and say “brownfield better; greenfield worse” every time. That is the problem of categorising brownfield in this way.

Of the Minister’s 75 per cent, what is the current gardens figure?

I do not know. We have been asked this question. Because we do not require a return to be made within that definition, I do not have that information. I will take advice about that and, if I can give any sort of ball-park figure, I will come back to the Committee with it.

Flooding is an important issue and the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, powerfully raised the issue of its impact. We put forward up to £180 million to try to help with some of those tragic situations; that is vital. The point about PPS 25 is that it gives us, for the first time, a hierarchy of risk, which we identify in terms of where we can build with modification. How do we assess the nature of the risk and what do we have to do? As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has said, you cannot not build on flood areas in this country; you must assess the risk. That is where the Environment Agency comes in. PPS 25 gives us a much more accurate tool than we have ever had before.

In addition, the Environment Agency crucially works closely with local authorities, which must do the flood assessment with it; that cannot be the job of the HCA. I take the noble Lord’s point, however, that we must make a proper response to the Pitt report.

I am conscious of time. In conclusion, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, that density is an issue. It exacerbates all the issues we are talking about. However, the challenge is to build for higher densities and include space; think of the Italian piazzas or Kensington crescent. We can do that with intelligence.

I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, about MoD land. It is not as he says at all. We must get good value for our own public land, which is making a big contribution to how much, where and how we can build. I am sorry that the noble Lord is not in his place, but to put it as he did, in terms of a degree of exploitation, was unnecessary and inaccurate. I hope that, after that long debate, the noble Earl will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

That was a very long and useful debate. On the first amendment on eco-towns, no doubt the Minister read in the press about the noble Lord, Lord Rogers of Riverside—who was chairman of the Government’s urban taskforce or something—talking about eco-towns a couple of days ago:

“I think eco-towns are one of the biggest mistakes the government can make … They are in no way environmentally sustainable”.

He went on to say that the Government should concentrate on the regeneration of towns and cities, rather than developing greenfield sites. He then cited the US Green Building Council, which apparently demonstrated that building more accommodation in a dense urban centre was far more efficient than an eco-home on a greenfield location. He went on to say that there is a need to increase the density around public transport, not creating a new town where you must then create a new transport system. Urban areas already have transport systems and infrastructure in place. By building your eco-communities in an urban setting, you are making use of the facilities and the infrastructure that are already there. I will come back to infrastructure in a moment.

There is an odd argument here. When food prices are going up and we are talking about world food shortages, why are we building on agricultural land? Some of the building will be on MoD land, but why are we building on agricultural land? We should not be doing that. We need our agricultural land to produce food. It cannot be a green, sustainable answer to concrete over our most productive arable land in order to create communities. We live in an increasingly wasteful, throw-away society. Some 750,000 or 1 million homes are empty. Why are we not concentrating on those? What will be the unit cost per house in an eco-town? It will probably be £80,000 or so. What is the cost per unit of getting an empty home back into use? It is probably a quarter of that figure. Given that the Government have a finite amount of money available over the next three years, I argue that their money would be much better spent in ways other than building eco-towns. I think that the sum of £8 billion was mentioned the other day with regard to the money that the Government will allocate to providing affordable housing. At £80,000 a shot, that is 100,000 new homes over the three-year period. If that finite amount of money were allocated to getting empty homes back into use at, say, £20,000 a shot, you immediately have not 100,000 but 400,000 homes in use. That might be a better way to use that money. There are other ways of dealing with this.

I was heartened by the response on gardens. I shall read what the Minister said and perhaps take that back to my council and get it to toughen its stance in that regard. I was also heartened to hear that English Partnerships is already pursuing this policy as regards brownfield sites. The amendment seeks to ensure that the policy is carried over into the HCA.

As regards flooding, I am trying to get the Department for Communities and Local Government to discuss the Pitt report with Defra to see what laws or rules and regulations need changing or amending. PPS 25 may need toughening up. Certainly, some of the existing rules and regulations will need to be amended. It is no good Defra doing this on its own without talking to the Minister’s department. The amendment seeks to get everyone to talk to one another to get the right answer. However, at this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendment No. 51B, as an amendment to Amendment No. 51, not moved.]

Clause 8 [Powers to deal with land etc.]:

[Amendment No. 52 not moved.]

Clause 8 agreed to.

[Amendment No. 53 not moved.]

[Amendment No. 53A, as an amendment to Amendment No. 53, not moved.]

Clause 9 [Acquisition of land]:

moved Amendment No. 53B:

We resist these amendments, but for good reasons which I shall explain carefully. The first amendment relates to the exercise of the HCA’s compulsory purchase powers. Clause 9(2) sets out that:

“The HCA may acquire land compulsorily if the Secretary of State authorises it to do so”.

The amendment moved by the noble Baroness seeks to ensure that the Secretary of State’s authorisation can be given only for specific cases. I hope that I can reassure her that the amendment is not required. Compulsory purchase orders can only be applied to land specified in the order. Individual CPOs must be submitted to the Secretary of State for confirmation, and I can assure the Committee that nothing in the Bill will change that. The Secretary of State will not be able to give the HCA a general consent to make CPOs as and when it pleases; they would relate very specifically.

Amendment No. 54A concerns the compulsory purchase of land belonging to a house. The law as it stands, which I am sure the noble Baroness understands better than me, addresses the situation in which a local authority wishes to compulsorily purchase only part of or a piece of land, perhaps consisting of a park or garden attached to a house, while the owner is able and willing to sell the whole of the relevant land, including the house. According to the current legislation, if the local authority is to be required to purchase all the land, the Lands Tribunal needs to be satisfied that the land cannot be purchased,

“without seriously affecting the amenity or convenience of the house”.

The same provision, including the “seriously affecting” test, is made for the HCA in Schedule 2, so we plan to carry over what is currently there.

Before the noble Baroness responds, I have a question on which the Minister is entirely entitled to plead the fifth amendment, in American terms. I do not know where the Government have got to with their intentions to change the rating system, so that if someone has a good view they are going to pay higher rates than they did before. I am curious about what happens—this is relevant to the amendment moved by the noble Baroness—if, as a consequence to something that happens to a neighbour or whatever, you lose that good view. Do your rates then go down?

I have a feeling that this is a debate that has raged many times in your Lordships’ House in many permutations in the context of local government finance. We have moved on from rates, we have had the poll tax and now we are in the council tax era, although we still have business rates. I am going to plead the fifth amendment on this one. I owe the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, an explanation on his earlier question; I think it was on design issues and planning. If he will let me, I will put the two points together in correspondence. If I recall—the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, was there, I think—we accepted an amendment to an earlier Planning Bill where we tried to incorporate design issues into planning issues. That may even have been prompted partly by the noble Baroness, which might in part answer the noble Lord’s earlier question.

I do not think that I will get into the subject of views. I am grateful for the Minister’s offer. I made a note that on this amendment I wanted to probe the distinction between,

“seriously affecting the amenity or convenience”,

and “material detriment” to the land, and I sent it to his office, because I hoped that that would make it clear what I was after. I am conscious that officials trying to understand amendments that have been put down must have to go through all sorts of mental hoops. I would rather reduce those and be clear. If there is any other mechanism that the Government can suggest for those of us who are raising points that are nearer the technical and political end, I would be very happy to use that mechanism. It is a waste of everyone’s time, and it must sometimes be a waste of officials’ energy.

When the Minister writes, I would be grateful if he would give me the reference with regard to the need for the order to be specific about the land, which was the answer to his first point.

I shall try to ensure that we do exactly that.

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

moved Amendment No. 54:

My Amendment No. 65 is grouped with my noble friend’s amendments, and I concur with all his points. We sat through both the Commons Bill, which as he reminded us was only in 2006, and the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill, which gave extra protection to town and village greens. My amendment explores why, when the Government brought in legislation that has provided the useful additional protections for those open spaces they very much needed, we are now setting up the HCA which, according to Clause 9, suggests that it can do anything with regard to planning permission and despite all the other enactments.

The Minister will probably reassure me by saying that the HCA will have to pay regard to issues of protection. As drafted and as I read it, provided that the agency accords with planning permission—it is a planning authority as proposed in the Bill—despite all the things we spent ages discussing and agreeing on in your Lordships’ House, it can drive a coach and horses through them. I hope that the Minister will tell me that I am wrong about that.

I rise with my conscience on my sleeve. I played no role whatever in the Commons Bill and I am therefore extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer. I drove through that village the other day, having gone modestly out of my way out of sheer curiosity about the noble Baroness’s hinterland. I am grateful to them for their vigilance, not least in this instance.

Perhaps I may explain why. The Wiltshire Record Society publishes an annual volume about something of a statistical or historical nature that has occurred in Wiltshire at any time in the past 1,000 years. In 1982, its volume was devoted to the judicial notebook of the magistrate of the hundred, which our village in Wiltshire was, for the years 1744-49. Either the magistrate or his clerk had kept a manuscript note of every one of those cases. Five hundred cases came in front of him during those five years, at the time when the war of the Austrian secession was going on. They were taking about 100 cases a year or a couple of cases a week. The society has 300 subscribers, including four Japanese universities, and prints an edition of 150 volumes which can be bought by the general public on an ad hoc basis. My favourite general knowledge question to people in the village is: what was the most frequent crime in our hundred between 1744 and 1749? The answer was the theft of firewood. It was patently clear that this was entirely due to the enclosures. I am not saying that that would necessarily be the problem in the 21st century, although there are moments when I wonder. Nevertheless, those who protect these spaces are people to whom we are greatly in debt. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

Yes, this is an interesting point. Perhaps we should fast forward to 1970 and the great Great Bentley referendum on the future of our village green. Yours truly was once pitted against his mother in a debate on whether we should have a village hall built on our common, Great Bentley village green. She lost the argument and I won, and no village hall was built on our village green. Subsequently, it was built on a village allotment. So this is an issue about which I have some strange historical knowledge. Great Bentley village green is the largest village green in England, as my mother always proudly told me, and has been protected since the time of the enclosures, to which the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, made reference. At the time, I did quite a lot of research on this.

This amendment is extremely impressive and one which I rather enjoy. We should thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for raising this issue because it is important. Our village green is 42 acres and has been there for well over 200 years. The village fought hard to protect its common land when enclosures took place, and rightly so. Today, the issues are different but equally as important. Clearly, the value of open space in any community is very high indeed. This debate is helpful because it enables us to tease out some of the important issues relating to the HCA’s powers over commons, open spaces and allotments. The Government and I share wholeheartedly the determination of noble Lords to ensure that these provisions are absolutely right, and I hope that what I say will not only demonstrate that but perhaps put some minds to rest. It will also give us a period of reflection in which to ensure that we have got right the read-across between different pieces of legislation. Amendments Nos. 54 and 66 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and Amendment No. 65 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, provide us with this opportunity.

It has been rightly argued that allotments, open spaces and commons should be subject to special protection, and attention has usefully been drawn to our earlier debates on commons. The Government agree about the need for protection, and the HCA will not simply be able to seize any land. It will be able to acquire land by agreement between the parties or by compulsory purchase, but only in support of its objectives. Moreover, if it is by compulsory purchase, the Secretary of State will have to confirm the compulsory purchase order. If the agency is compulsorily to acquire any land forming part of an allotment, open space or common, a different statutory procedure to the standard procedure will be used.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, referred to the Acquisition of Land Act 1981, which is where the procedure is set out. It requires that a compulsory purchase order relating to the purchase of such types of land must be subject to a special parliamentary procedure that includes a public inquiry and the laying before Parliament of its findings. Allotments, public spaces and commons will remain subject to the highest form of protection in respect of compulsory purchase.

As I have said, we are determined to get these provisions right, and it is fair to say that the amendments have prompted my noble friend and I to consider whether there might be a gap in our proposed legislation. The noble Lord made the case that that might be so, and while we do not necessarily share his view, we will double-check. We propose to take another look at the protection of special land in this Bill with a view to ensuring that we do not inadvertently create a loophole that could undermine the protection of such places. If the noble Lord is content to withdraw his amendment, we will come back to the issue on Report, although obviously there will be discussions between now and then. We will ensure that all the necessary protections are in place because we certainly do not want to undermine the value of commons, allotments and open spaces.

My further recommendation is that if you run into trouble with a campaign, you should hold a local referendum. That always ensures the proper protection of commons. It is what we did.

My general understanding is that if a compulsory purchase order is used to buy land that is designated common land or, perish the thought, the noble Lord’s village green in Great Bentley, part of the terms and conditions of the purchase would be that additional land would have to be acquired to replace what was being taken over for some other use. I would like an assurance that that will continue to be the case.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, made this point. I am quickly scanning through the clause. I am sure that there are protections and that there has to be replacement. We can perhaps clarify that in correspondence.

I am grateful—

The answer is yes.

I am grateful. I think that the answer is if you get a dispute about your village green, you should make sure that you are on the same side as your mother; or if you are the mother, you should make sure that your kids are on the same side.

Precisely.

I am grateful for what the Minister said, and I look forward perhaps to having some correspondence with him. There are two general questions. First, I am not clear at all about whether, if the HCA owns a common as owner, it is or will be subject, either through the Commons Act, regulations, or whatever, to the same regime as any other owner of a common. If it is not, what are the differences? That is the first question, which underlies the first amendment.

On the second amendment, I am grateful for what the Minister said about equivalent land being provided from a compulsory purchase. The question is whether, if land is not compulsorily purchased but purchased by agreement, it is possible to legislate that the same provisions for equivalent replacement land should apply. That question may not be about the HCA at all; it may be about public authorities generally compulsorily purchasing or acquiring commons by agreement for development. Like the other issues that have been raised, the HCA and the Bill offer a convenient opportunity to raise the issue. If the HCA acquires common land by agreement for development, it ought to provide equivalent common land. The advice that I have from the Open Spaces Society is that that is not in the legislation at the moment. Can that therefore be looked at?

I thought that I had dealt with that in my first response. For the ease of the Committee and to try to make progress, I will set some of this out in writing and share that with other Members of the Committee. If the noble Lord reads what I said, I think that it covered most of it. In general, there is no difference between us here. I think that the understanding of the noble Lord is the same as mine.

We are obviously interested in the outcomes and want to be satisfied about them. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 9 agreed to.

Schedule 2 [Acquisition of land]:

[Amendment No. 54A not moved.]

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Clause 10 [Restrictions on disposal of land]:

moved Amendment No. 55:

I have Amendment No. 55A in this group, which seeks to define “best consideration”, in that it should be,

“assessed having equal regard to social, economic and environmental benefits”.

The issue of best consideration was debated at some length in the Commons, and I want to pick up some of the points from that debate. The Minister said that the restriction on the disposal of land was needed to safeguard the public purse. It seems to me that the thinking has moved on so that the public purse is regarded as being more than just a matter of immediate cash. Looking not very far into the future, “sustainability” covers far more than just cash, but if that is how the Government are thinking, it will achieve cash savings. I am sure that the Government are not as old-fashioned in their thinking as that seems to indicate. I did not want to put into the collective mind of the Government that even if one is looking only in monetary terms at what is best consideration, the criteria and the factors are more than society accepted in the relatively recent past.

Secondly, the issue of general consent was raised. The Secretary of State has the power to give a general consent. Like the noble Lord, I want to know what factors might be in the Secretary of State’s mind, and what comfort the Government could give on the basis of examples since 2003 of when a general consent has been, or could have been, given to local authorities. What is the current thinking on this?

My amendment is perhaps a little tougher than the noble Lord’s, and tougher than I am allowing for in these remarks. I am conscious of the time and the need to make progress, and it may be appropriate to come back to the issue of principle on Report, when Members of the Committee have better understood the Government’s thinking on this. Reading Hansards, I am not thus far persuaded that the Government’s thinking is where I would want to see it.

I also support these amendments. Will my noble friend the Minister take this away and have a look at current practice in both the Housing Corporation and English Partnerships? These clauses are a step back from how those organisations currently operate. A couple of examples may be of assistance.

When we were trying to pilot community land trusts over the past 18 months, it transpired that the Housing Corporation could have gifted land to the community land trust in question but the Housing Corporation had no land. English Partnerships had land, but could not gift it to the organisations. We were in a really ridiculous situation. A case study made us think about bringing both the land and the funding together. We had hoped that the new organisation would then have the ability to do what neither of us could do for perverse reasons.

The second thing that strikes me about this clause is that English Partnerships disposes of land at less then the best price, and for good reasons. Sometimes, when we—I am sorry; I should not say “we”. I have not been with that organisation for six months, but after six years I keep saying “we”. When English Partnerships takes land to the market and evaluates the bids for it, it takes explicit account of the quality of those bids. It does not just sell for top dollar so that any old tat is built on land, taking no account of environmental quality standards, space standards or whatever. It takes that land to the market with a clear development brief, and developers know that they have two hurdles to leap. They first have to leap the quality hurdle, and people will look at the best price thereafter. It is not simply a case of writing the biggest cheque to be able to acquire surplus or EP land.

This clause does not currently take account of, first, current practice and, secondly, what we were trying to do in bringing the organisations together. Will my noble friend consider having another look at this? I am now confused about the intent of these clauses.

I have Amendments Nos. 56 and 57 in this group, as an attempt to provide examples of the sort of circumstances in which it might be sensible for the HCA to dispose of land for less than it can get on the market. I am conscious that the Bill refers to the amount that may “reasonably be obtained”. That is altogether too vague a phrase. What may be “reasonably obtained”? Is it simply the amount of money you can reasonably obtain for open sale in the present market conditions? Or does it take into account exactly the kind of issues that the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, usefully raised—this is a very useful set of amendments—that were referred to by my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Ford? If the purpose of the HCA is to achieve regeneration, it has to be put in the same position as English Partnerships is in at the moment.

Looking at it from the other end of the tube at a very local level, I know that English Partnerships disposes of land for nothing, in effect, because it puts it into a regeneration package that the public sector can operate. However, the HCA may not be able to do that. I am probing what “reasonably” means and whether it involves taking account of these other factors, but if that is the case it should be made clear because the phrase “best consideration” suggests an approach based merely on economics. Therefore, my Amendment No. 56 is concerned with regeneration schemes and specifically the ability to dispose of land to local authorities that are involved in such schemes in partnership with English Partnerships, and with the HCA in future, as a means of enabling these schemes to go ahead. If the HCA has always to insist on obtaining the maximum value for the land, a lot of these schemes will never go ahead. I cannot believe that is what the Government intend. The wording of the relevant measure seems to be wrong.

My Amendment No. 57 probes whether a reasonable consideration for land takes account of its existing planning status. It is one thing to say what that land is worth given its existing planning status, whether it be housing, industrial or amenity land. However, on the other hand we know that lots of companies in this country will buy land at its present value and “land bank” it on the basis of what they think might happen in 10 or 20 years’ time, or over a much longer timescale. Some land banking is very long term indeed. Companies may be prepared to pay over the odds for amenity land if they believe that they can get planning permission for housing on it in 20 years’ time. That is exactly what the big development companies do. They put that land in their land bank and register it in their accounts. The value of the land goes up, contributes to their profits and everybody is happy except the local communities because the land is occupied and owned by a company that may not look after it. The company may just sit on it in the hope that at some time in the future it may be able to develop that land.

The purposes of the HCA should be considered as regards disposing of land to local authorities. Further, the HCA should take account of the existing planning status of the land as opposed to its possible planning status in 10 or 20 years’ time that speculative purchasers might take account of. If the HCA cannot dispose of land in appropriate ways to appropriate bodies for less than it can get on the open market, it will not be able to do its job.

My noble friend, who moved Amendment No. 55, and the noble Baroness, who moved Amendment No. 55A, made common cause in expressing curiosity about what went on in the mind of the Secretary of State. If I may say so, if that curiosity were to become endemic, it would on the whole be a dangerous, not a good, development.

I am prompted by the debate about best consideration to ask a question that I do not expect the Minister to be able to answer on this occasion, although I should be interested to hear from him if he is able to follow it up. However, the issue may have come up in the debates on best consideration in the Commons, in which case his advisers may have something to add. In listening to the debate about best consideration, I was conscious of the general principle in charity law—I am not a charity lawyer—that the trustees of a charity have a responsibility to secure the best return or the best price for something that belongs to them in the interests of the charity. I wonder whether there are any caveats or considerations in charity law that influence whether the trustees can take something else into account rather than simply the value of the land. As I say, I am perfectly happy to wait until a later stage for an answer to that.

Since we are in Committee, I wonder whether I can come back on something. I have found some notes. The Minister in the Commons—this picks up on the points that have just been made—made the point about Clause 4(2) providing that the HCA’s powers,

“are to be exercised for the purposes of its objects”.

As the objects—or objectives—of the HCA under Clause 2(1) include securing regeneration, supporting the creation, regeneration or development of communities and their continued well-being and contributing—this might not have been in the Bill when the Minister made the comment—to the achievement of sustainable development, I am puzzled about whether Clause 10(1) overrides those matters, or whether they in fact temper the term “best consideration”. I hope that question is clear.

This has been a very useful debate, and I am grateful to all participants, who have been very helpful, in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, with her experience of English Partnerships. I am sure that most noble Lords will be aware that, in most circumstances, the agency will be able to dispose of land in any way that it considers appropriate in accordance with its objects or objectives. However, Clause 10 carries on the current requirement for English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation, that if the agency wishes to dispose of land that was acquired through compulsory purchase, it must first obtain the consent of the Secretary of State.

Clause 50 qualifies that to the degree that it allows the Secretary of State to issue a general consent setting out the circumstances in which the agency may dispose of land without seeking specific consent in each and every individual case. As I understand it, officials have now begun to produce a draft of what that general consent order might look like. Perhaps, as this is Committee, I will outline what it will cover. The four proposed tests will be, first, that the disposal of land is for the purpose of the objects of the Homes and Communities Agency as set out in Clause 2(1) of this Bill; no surprises there. The second test will be the disposal of land meeting value-for-money requirements, which is fairly straightforward. The third point is that disposal of the land does not constitute unlawful state aid under Article 87 of the Treaty of European Community. Fourthly, the unrestricted value of the disposal should not exceed £400 million for disposals undertaken through an open and unconditional bidding procedure, or £5 million for other disposals.

That is some of our thinking, and we are going to consult on that with key stakeholders. That is where we have got to on the general consent regime. I suspect that in most cases the purpose of the amendments is to provide for more detail to be given on how the arrangements will work in practice. I have given some flavour of that, and I hope I can now give assurances that will satisfy noble Lords in this debate.

First, I shall deal with Amendment No 55. This amendment seeks to place an obligation on the Secretary of State when considering whether to give consent to the HCA to dispose of land for less than best consideration to take into account the benefit to the community where the disposal takes place. In a sense, this amendment pushes at an open door. Of course, that is what the Secretary of State will want to do and the potential benefits will be part of the proper consideration. But I am sure that the Secretary of State will also want to take into account the cost to the community of selling the land for a lower value than could have been reasonably obtained. I should stress also that “best consideration” is a term with a meaning. Generally it is understood to mean the best market value that can be obtained. Case law shows that matters of wider public benefit may be taken into account only if the benefit has a monetary value that can be assessed. We accept this because without it there would be no transparency of process for the public purse.

The amendment refers only to the benefits that may be brought to a community via a less-than-best consideration land sale and does not make reference to the cost to it of not obtaining the best possible price. What we have to consider is that every pound below best market value is money that does not go towards the wider objectives of the HCA. Given the significant role that the HCA will have in delivering new homes and generating older places, and working with communities to deliver solutions appropriate to the locality and the needs of local people, it is vital that in choosing to sell for less than the best price, the agency is assured that the wider public benefits it obtains as part of that sale at least offset the benefits that it will not be able to deliver elsewhere due to the lower return. On this basis, we think that Amendment No. 55 is unnecessary and that the current balance in the legislation is probably about right.

Amendment No. 55A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, represents the other side of the same coin. As I understand it, the amendment seeks to ensure that in determining which offer to accept for land, the HCA should give equal weight to the social and environmental benefits of an offer as it does to the economic benefits. The noble Baroness argues that there are circumstances in which gain for the pure best financial value might not be the right thing to do and we do not disagree with that. However, I can offer an assurance that the amendment is unnecessary because, as we believe we have drafted it, Clause 10 already empowers the HCA not to accept the highest bid for its land subject to the Secretary of State’s consent. We do not want unnecessarily to fetter the activities of the HCA by requiring it to come to the Secretary of State on each and every occasion that it considers it can better achieve best value for public money by selling at a lower than best market price. I am sure that when I mentioned Clause 50 earlier, the noble Baroness will have picked up on our intention to create a general consent by setting out where disposal would fit into the specific circumstances without having to seek an individual consent. The general consent can address issues of wider public benefit, including the need to obtain better value for money for the public sector as a whole as well as ensuring proper accounting and reporting responsibilities, and, as I said earlier, compliance with state aid rules, the raison d’être for which is widely understood by Members of the Committee.

Finally, I turn to the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, which I think he described as being probing amendments. The purpose of the first of the amendments, Amendment No. 56, would enable the HCA to sell land at less than best consideration or land which it has compulsorily acquired to local authorities for purposes which meet the agency’s objects without seeking the Secretary of State’s consent.

The noble Lord has argued today and on other occasions that local authorities are best placed to meet the needs of local communities and ought as a consequence to be treated as a special case when it comes to purchasing land from the HCA. I do not have any difficulty with the first part of that argument—indeed, my noble friend has assured the Committee that the agency will be working very closely with local authorities and regional partners to identify the best way to deliver those priorities.

However, I cannot agree that the HCA should have a blanket ability to provide subsidised land to local authorities, which would be the effect of the amendment. I see no justification for local authorities to be able to buy cheaply from the HCA, any more than any other organisation providing community benefits. The HCA cannot itself buy land cheaply and would need to be assured that the discount it was offering to a local authority would provide sufficient community benefit to at least offset the benefit that it would not be able to deliver elsewhere due to receiving a lower rate of return.

Moreover, if the HCA wants to sell land at lower than market price to a local authority because of wider public benefits in pursuit of its objectives, it may do so if it can demonstrate that the benefits have a sufficient monetary value to equal the market price. That is subject to the Secretary of State’s consent, but, as I said, the provision of a general consent will obviate the need for the HCA to seek permission in each case. We have given our commitment to working with stakeholders to provide a general consent that will enable the agency to dispose of land at less than best consideration where we feel that that is appropriate, while also protecting and providing for sufficient financial control to protect public investment. We will of course consult on that.

I understand what has been said about general consent, which is very useful, but I am not clear about what the noble Lord said. When assessing whether a piece of land can be sold to a local authority for less than the open market value, do you have to have a monetary test of the benefits that come from community use, community benefit and so on? I thought that he said earlier that that was not necessarily the case, but he now seems to be saying that it is and that a bogus sum—bogus is my word—has to be put together showing that the benefits add up to the cost of the discount.

What I said is that if the HCA wants to sell at a lower than market price to a local authority because of what are perceived as being wider public benefits in pursuit of its overall objects, it may be able to do so if it can demonstrate that the benefits have a sufficient monetary value.

How do you put that kind of monetary value on a park or piece of open space, a community centre or similar facility on land that otherwise could have high-value housing?

The local authority would in any event have to value its assets, so I do not see why it should not be able to make a best estimate of that. In its audit function and financial control, the local authority would need to come to a view on the value of land or public space. Those things are very important in how local authorities conduct their finances. I take the point that the noble Lord is making.

Can we have a letter about this so we can understand it? I can go on asking questions all night, but we will not get anywhere. Perhaps the Minister could write explaining how that will work, in particular, how the gap between the price of the land being transferred to the local authority and the market value is calculated and assessed.

I am terribly sorry to come in at this stage, but my noble friend is putting an important point. The Minister said that the local authority will be deciding. I see a lot of people with extensive local government experience in the Committee and in my experience the local authority sometimes cannot make that choice. The district auditor can make that choice, quite contrary to what the local authority would have chosen. It would be useful if the Minister could include in his letter the guidance that the Government would give the district auditor in this case.

I suspect that it is something on which the Audit Commission would issue guidance, rather than the Government, but I take the point. Clearly, to deal with this issue, it would be of value if we set out more detail for Members of the Committee. We must ensure that there is probity in this process, to which I think all of us would sign up.

The noble Lord also has argued that the HCA should be able to take into account the planning status of any land it wishes to sell in assessing bids it receives for that land. In the past, he has argued that the HCA should be able to disregard any bids that are unusually high relative to that planning status, as they are likely to be attempts to “land bank”: to hold land fallow until planning permission can be secured and the value or usefulness of the land increases. In those circumstances, the noble Lord makes the point that going for what may be considered to be the pure best financial value may not necessarily be the right thing to do. The noble Lord may be right and we would agree. However, the amendment is not necessary. Whether land has planning permission, and the nature of that planning permission, is bound to have an impact on its market value. As I have explained, the HCA is already empowered not to accept the highest bid for its land, subject to the consent of the Secretary of State.

On the noble Lord’s point about would-be purchasers speculatively paying over the odds in order to land bank, in a sense, that is their business. The HCA can decline the offer either by accepting a lower bid, but one where the public benefits have an assessable monetary value—

Perhaps I may make a suggestion to my noble friend. We are going down a route that may not lead us to a very sensible place. The amendment flies in the face of current practice. It is not unusual for a public agency to put out a development brief on land that does not have planning consent and explicitly expect the developer then, in meeting that development brief, to take account of the planning risk in the price. I go back to what I said earlier: it is really important that, in writing to the noble Lord and the Committee, we should also take account of absolute current practice and past practice because we might inadvertently be causing a real problem in terms of where we get to. I urge my noble friend to do that.

I thank the noble Baroness for her helpful intervention. I was coming to that point. We are very conscious of the need to take account of current practice.

To summarise, Members of the Committee should be reassured by the points that I have made about how wider benefits can be taken into account. To pick up on the point of my noble friend Lady Ford, we have a commitment to draw up a general consent regime which is determined to satisfy and to safeguard public assets. We should reflect on the need to protect best practice in this field and take account of the need to ensure that we do not leave a gap that does not help us at all.

The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, asked a question about charity law that I ought to be able to answer, because I remember some debate and discussion about it when we did the Charities Bill twice. That is a slightly more complex question, and it is wide of the debate today, but the position would probably be that it would depend on what the trustees were trying to do in their particular charity. However, if we can find an answer for the noble Lord in due course, we will, and I will write to him on that.

I think I have covered most of the issues. If I have not, I am sure Members of the Committee will remind me; we have already committed ourselves to providing some answers in writing. This has been a useful debate and discussion. I have tried to suggest in my response that there is more flexibility there, and that we can use the general consent approach to provide for that and take into account the issues that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, have rightly raised about the right conditions for disposing of land and assets at a lower-than-best consideration.

It strikes me that the Minister may be more comfortable about the general consent than some of the rest of us are. Obviously, he is rather closer to the current Secretary of State. If the considerations—forgive the pun—that a number of Members of the Committee have raised are capable of being reduced to writing in the general consent, I would hope that they were capable of being reduced to writing in the Bill. At the very least, however—because I cannot see that we can avoid coming back to this on Report—I ask that the work being done on general consent is shared with noble Lords so that it can inform that debate. That may be asking a lot of officials, but this is a hugely important point. With real respect, the Government might find it easier and quicker to get a general consensus rather than finding that we divide on something when there is actually no division between us on the issues.

It has been a useful and enjoyable debate, if only because I have my noble friend Lord Brooke advising us not to penetrate too far into the murky mind of a Secretary of State. That seems to be very sound advice. The Minister began with some fairly good capitalist principles, but then wrapped them up in so many layers of obfuscation than we all finished up more confused, rather than having our minds cleared.

There were two issues. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, raised one, which the Minister has not really satisfied us on: whether Clause 10, particularly subsection (1), is in a sense contradictory to, or overrides, Clause 2(1)(c) dealing with the purposes of the Homes and Communities Agency. We will have to look at that difficulty very carefully. The noble Baroness, Lady Ford, said that the way in which the Bill was drafted appeared to be a step back from what is already actual practice. If that is the case, we must be very concerned about that. With the greatest respect to the Minister, we did not get a satisfactory answer on that.

We will need to return to this issue, if only because we must have clarification. There is not a great deal of division between us, but I do not think that any of us are quite clear on either what the Bill means or what the Government intend. However, for now I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendments Nos. 55A to 57 not moved.]

Clause 10 agreed to.

This is a convenient moment for the Committee to adjourn until tomorrow at 3.45 pm, when we shall be less obfuscated.

The Committee stands adjourned until Wednesday 4 June at 3.45 pm.

The Committee adjourned at 7.39 pm.