Before the noble Lord sits down, I just want to make a few points. The first is that of course the party that wins in the election will seek to deliver its manifesto commitments. That is absolutely right and it is part of the democratic process, but my point is that there has already been a variation from what was in the manifesto. We are not extending right to buy to housing associations like for like; we are putting in a different, voluntary policy for the perfectly sensible reason that it allows flexibility and addresses some of the issues such as the one affecting Peabody where properties receive no public subsidy. So there has already been flexibility.
The second point is that the intent here is to give people the opportunity to buy their property, so the end is clear: so far as possible we want to give people who live in housing association properties access to purchase their property in the way described. The question I am raising concerns the commitment to the mechanism by which that is delivered. I do not think that the electorate would feel that the Government had reneged on their commitment if they said that the mechanism they thought could deliver this was based
on a set of false assumptions: an assumption of turnover of properties that was twice the actual level and an assumption about the value of those vacant properties that was way over the actual figure. In those circumstances, is it not reasonable for any Government to say, “We have to look again at the means while still being committed to the ends”?