Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I strongly support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham. In doing so, perhaps I may say that when we discussed the previous group of amendments the Minister was very kind about the things that I have tried to do in my life. Only a few of us are here across the parties, but we have people with immense experience of different sorts. I hope that the Government understand that and recognise that we are trying to improve things—certainly in this part—and are not opposing the Bill out of hand. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, is certainly one of the people with that experience. She spoke about small registered social landlords. I agree with her that that sometimes causes a problem, especially if it is in a part of the country where they do not have many properties and they are mainly based somewhere else. That can cause a difficulty. I want to speak in support of social landlords who exist after a large-scale stock transfer has taken place in an authority. They are not small players in the area but a very important part of the local scene. They are running what used to be, and what people still call, council estates. In some cases, they are running the whole of the previous council stock; in other cases, in bigger authorities, it may be just part of it. In either case, they are running what people think of as council estates and, regardless of that, are important providers of rented housing and social housing in the area. In those circumstances, it is very easy to get into an uneasy relationship between elected councillors—the ward representation side of local councillors—on the one hand and registered social landlords on the other. If there has been a stock transfer, typically, the council will have representation on the board of the housing association. So at a strategic level, at the level of looking at investment patterns in the authority and overall housing and allocation policies, the authority is well represented. But from the point of view of the ward councillor, it is very easy for the new landlords, the new housing association, to say, ““It is nothing to do with you any more””, and have a slightly offhand approach. The proposal of the noble Baroness would go a long way to assist in that and create some accountability. At the moment, from what I am told by my colleagues in other areas around the country—I am not speaking about Pendle here where the relationship at the moment is very good—there are problems. I support the amendment, which I think would go a long way to solve the problem.