My Lords, unlike my noble friends Lady Hollis of Heigham and Lord Bassam of Brighton I have not been a housing chairman. The last time I was on a local authority was 40 years ago when I was a mere member of the housing committee. My experience of these matters is more limited than theirs but I want to fix on one word in all this: “review”. What does “review” actually mean here? What will be taken into account by these local authorities? Will they take into account the ability of a tenant to maintain a clean home, their ability to be a good neighbour, ethnic diversity, whether the property is overcrowded, whether there have been complaints by neighbours, or whether they are happy with the employment arrangements for the family involved?
We have some form in this matter. I remember when Lady Porter ran Westminster. She cleared people out of local authority property so that she could sell it off. If I remember rightly, I was one of those who went to the district auditor at the time. The reality is that, exactly as my noble friends said, this will lead to a transient population moving into inner city areas—I have no doubt that in the end they will be crisis areas. At the moment, these areas succeed only because they have a wide social mix. The Government are destroying the social mix that makes these areas work. No doubt the Government will be blamed for that at some stage in the future.