My Lords, I shall speak in favour of Amendment 62A and the wider group in which my amendment sits. I declare my interests as chair of Peabody and president of the Local Government Association. The purpose of this amendment is to put beyond doubt the financial issue on one-for-one replacement. This is a crucial point and in making it I am following the imprecation of the former chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Margaret Hodge, to follow the money. My background, as noble Lords may be aware, is as an accountant by training.
I shall follow up three issues we discussed on Tuesday which are very relevant to this amendment. The first is the nature of the properties we are talking about in relation to forced sale. I acknowledge that it was very late in the evening, but the Minister referred to these as “surplus properties”. These are most definitely not surplus properties; indeed, they are the antithesis of surplus properties. They become vacant but there is a massive demand to take up those vacant properties. The reasons are very simple. Higher-value properties—I emphasise the word “higher” because this is a relative
concept in different areas, not an absolute concept—are either larger properties, or bungalows, as we have just heard, and they are most commonly in areas of higher demand. Anybody who has worked in a local authority, as I have, will know that these are keenly sought after, to the point that tenants who are desperately in need of bigger properties will spot somebody who has left a property and come and say, “Is it possible for me to take that one up?”. So, we must be very clear that these are absolutely the most in-demand properties. That is why they end up being described as higher value, in almost all cases.
We had a long debate about the possibility of an equity loan, which I am absolutely convinced is technically capable of being done. The resistance to this proposal comes from the fact that it does not accord exactly with the Conservative Party manifesto. I am seriously concerned that we are ending up with what might be called manifesto fundamentalism. John Maynard Keynes said, “If the facts change, I change my mind”, and the facts at the time this proposal was developed have now been proved to be palpably wrong. So there is a case for thinking again, creatively and flexibly, to deal with what may be the single most divisive issue in the Bill.