I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. I have listened intently to all of them. One of the things that I have discovered as a Cross-Bencher is that—to put it bluntly—you are on your own. You have to make your own judgments based on the arguments and listen to the debate very carefully.
Let me explain my underpinning dilemma here. We have two manifesto commitments. The one that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, spoke about is the commitment to fund the replacement of a property sold. The other, to which the Minister alluded, is the manifesto commitment to fund the extension of right to buy. As we all sit here now, we do not know whether those two commitments stand together. Quite extraordinarily, during the whole passage of the Bill we have still not been able to answer that question.
This leaves us with a real dilemma. I should say that before I was a Sir Humphrey, I was an accountant. I would not employ me as an accountant now, but that is what my past was, and one of the things that I like to see is the numbers adding up. We are now faced with a real dilemma in this situation about a proposal that simply does not enable two contradictory things to happen. So the judgment we have to make is where we place the positioning of the amendment in relation to that. It remains my very strong view that what I have put forward here simply seeks to say that if you reach an agreement on one-for-one replacement—not like-for-like but one-for-one—it is not unreasonable to say that the funding should be there. I am perfectly comfortable with a range of funding being brought in to do more, but at a core level it should do what it says on the tin: fund a replacement.
The second part of my amendment simply says: give consideration to social rented housing. It is hard to see how anyone could see that as objectionable in
any part of this House or the other place. So, having agonised and listened through this debate very carefully, I have very reluctantly concluded that I would like to test the opinion of the House on this issue.