Regulation of Financial Services (Land Transactions) Bill

My Lords, the Government are pressing those involved in lending. At the moment, I cannot give the noble Baroness a detailed, point-by-point explanation of what is happening—who is pressing whom and through what forum—but I will be happy to follow up on it and make sure that she has that information. It is impossible always to deal with things retrospectively. There was not proper regulation, which is a market failure and a failure of the process and regulation at that time. Those are the risks into which people entered at that time. Nevertheless, the Government remain sympathetic to those people whose financial circumstances, as a result of mis-selling, are pretty dire. I am sure that we will continue to do what we can within our remit to press people to try to ease the burden. I shall write to the noble Baroness in some detail about what is happening more precisely in that regard. Flexible tenure products were raised. The amendment to the FSMA will allow for secondary legislation to be brought forward to regulate them in due course. Therefore, if products emerge that require regulation, there is scope for going through only the latter two stages and not primary legislation to have them implemented. Again, the more experience we have on regulation in the area, the shorter we hope the lead time will be to get in any additional regulation under those provisions implemented. It would be the Government’s intention to act if it were required. Parity in respect of those who have provision via local authorities or social landlords was mentioned. The remedy would be the housing ombudsman. The noble Baroness pressed me about the detail of what that might mean in comparison with what would be available to an alternative regime. I shall have to write to set that out, as I do not have the detail on that. I hope that she will accept that as an appropriate follow-up. I hope that I have dealt with all the points raised. I thank noble Lords again for their support for the measure. We now wish to press ahead and implement it as quickly as we can. On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Grand Committee.