Housing and Regeneration Bill

My Lords, I appreciate the way in which the noble Earl has tried ingeniously to come back with an amendment which he thinks we might accept. I hope it does not sound churlish of me to say that we still cannot accept it on a point of principle. The amendment still prioritises its proposed objective over the other nine, which is a problem for us. Since the Committee stage, and since the noble Earl tabled his amendments, a statement by a coalition of interested stakeholders has drawn attention to their anxieties, which are exactly the same as those I expressed in Committee. They do it more authentically because they are going to be affected by this and involved in making it work. The National Consumer Council, tenants’ organisations and the CIH argue that the amendment would undermine tenants’ rights, send the wrong signal to tenants and tie the hands of the regulator. It is significant that they welcomed everything else the Government have done but have issued a red flag of warning regarding this amendment. I am sure that the noble Earl has brought forward the amendment with total integrity, and the noble Baroness has returned to some of the arguments that took place in Committee. I do not have many new arguments, I am afraid, but I believe that those I have are sound. Objective 10 is not a drafting point; it is a deliberate decision to make the objective to minimise interference as important as all the others. Of course we want the regulator to proceed proportionately to minimise interference; we have said that throughout our proceedings and that must be in the culture and expectation of the way the regulator works. The objective is included because it expresses the balance that we want to achieve between driving improvements among poor providers while minimising the regulatory burden for good providers. We are conscious that overburdening a regulatory system drives out good, and that is the last thing we want to do when we are trying to stimulate the market, not suppress it. Making this an objective does not diminish the fact that minimum interference is a working principle, as it is with other regulators, but demonstrates that the regulator should positively aim for it. I believe, as those very important stakeholders have said, that it would be wrong to require the regulator to start by asking how he intends to minimise interference by providers. His task is to start by asking how he will address and resolve the weak consumer position of tenants. That is his job. The amendment, albeit with the best of intentions, seems to send the wrong signal about what the Bill, the system and the regulator are trying to achieve, so I am afraid that I cannot accept it.