I thank the noble Lord for his intervention, because that is exactly the point I am making about having a degree of hypothecation. In other words, it should not just go into the general purposes fund. I hope the Minister will comment on
that, because there is a question of trust and transparency in this. If these things are to be robust, they will need that.
From my observations, I know that what the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, said about the instances and the impact in some of these hotspot areas is true. However, we need a bit more data to get the visible, empirical facts. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, referred to that, and I entirely agree with him. We also need to identify the likely economic outcomes of certain actions. Letting platforms were referred to; we need an analysis of how they operate for some bits of businesses but not others, because they are doing lettings direct or whatever it may be, to get some idea of how that is functioning.
There is a bit of incoherence here. For a while, conversions into residential accommodation in rural areas were often subject to the condition that they could not be occupied full-time. They had to be occupied, effectively, as holiday accommodation. Usually, they could be occupied only for something like 11 months of the year continuously, because local authorities did not want to give consent for new, independent dwellings in the countryside; there was an objective not to add to them, which I understand.
When I attended a meeting on second homes at Exmoor National Park, it was asked why there was a reduced council tax assessment for people with second homes. It transpired that only by having the bait of self-declaration could they identify how many second homes they had in the area, so that is how they did it. I say incoherence, because one really feels that the world has gone mad in some of these situations.
There is a good deal of misinformation about what is perceived to be the vast profitability of short-term lettings. When I had the privilege of being on the Built Environment Committee, I ran a little exercise, which established what I knew: that I would be better off in headline income letting full-time on an assured shorthold tenancy. However, that would probably be not to a local person but to some writer, artist or someone who wanted a nice location. The real reason behind this is that, if you are dealing with an old stone cottage which requires constant maintenance and a lot of refitting—never mind that you may have energy issues and things breaking down; things go wrong in old cottages more than they do in new ones—you are constantly in and out. The only way you can keep control of that is short-term letting, because you can take a week out and get in there and fix the boiler and all the other things that have fallen apart. It is really not for the faint-hearted.
When you compare the weekly headline rents for short-term holiday lettings with those of an ordinary assured shorthold tenancy, you are not looking at like for like. You are not dealing with fully serviced accommodation, where all the linen and services are paid for, and where somebody just walks in and all they have to do is buy their own food and go, with all the cleaning and everything else being done in-between. All that costs money. One of the greatest litmus tests of health and well-being in these rural areas is whether you can get a cleaner or someone to fix your windows.
That is the real test of what is happening in the economy. With that, I will sit down and wait for group 10.