We are debating the extent to which the Government allow local authorities to retain money that would otherwise be payable to support the right to buy for housing association tenants, in recognition of building houses, and that is under Chapter 2 of this part. If at the same time under this legislation separately under Chapter 3 they are returning money to the Government as a result of the rents for high-income social tenants, that is not about the business of funding right to buy for housing association tenants under this part; it is separate. Anyway, it is a digression.
I was not a party to the procedural discussions on Amendment 6 to which the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, refers. As a participant in the debates in this House, it was always clear to me that the Government were viewing sympathetically and would bring back proposals on Third Reading for one-for-one replacement. I never understood my noble friends on the Front Bench to say that they would do so on a like-for-like basis. There is a distinction.
Leaving aside the processes concerned, the Government are quite right not to have brought back an amendment to mandate like-for-like replacement. They should not do so. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, seems to me to be thoroughly defective, because it places in the hands of local authorities the decision whether or not there is an agreement with the Government. It does not give the Government any discretion in that matter—it says the Government “shall enter” into such an agreement. Placing a rigidity on the Government in this respect is wholly undesirable. It would remove the flexibility to replace one kind of tenure with another and the flexibility to respond to the demand for new affordable housing in an area in a way that matches the needs of that area. It would also remove from the Government the flexibility of whether to enter into an agreement with a local authority at all, which is a central part of the Bill.