Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

I fully expected the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Borrie. He and I have discussed this matter at various times and in various places around the House and in the Chamber. Indeed, he took a different view from me on the matter of the home information pack. It looks as though my view and not that of the noble Lord is winning at the moment, but we shall wait and see what happens in time. Things might change, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, will agree with me that the surveyor’s element of the home information pack was perhaps not the brightest of the Government’s ideas in the past couple of years. The noble Lord said this was a wonderful thing and would be undertaken by highly qualified people to increase standards and make them more exacting. That is absolutely not what I am after; I am not saying that everyone should be a surveyor to be an agent. I believe that every estate agent should be a member of an approved body, which is totally different. That is a low level of regulation that will not add to the cost, to which both the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, and the Minister referred. What I found interesting about the speeches of both noble Lords is that if that is their attitude and belief, why have we got regulation for the financial market, for lawyers, for surveyors, and for everyone else? What is the point of it? You cannot say, ““This is applicable to those sets of professionals, but we are not going to touch these dreadful estate agents. There is no justification for it. It will ramp up costs and will be a closed shop””. What do you think the lawyers are if not a closed shop? They are far worse than estate agents. I am not saying that we want to bring the level up to a full surveyor standard. Indeed, I had to retrain to become a house surveyor under the home information pack scheme. To me, that is as important a job, or would have been had the Government not decided not to implement it—I hope there are not too many ““nots”” in the middle of that sentence—as that of the person who handles the transaction for and on behalf of the client as an estate agent. That is the person who needs to belong to some organisation, because it is the peer-group pressure within that organisation that will help to raise standards and give the consumer confidence. I am grateful to the Minister for his reply, which I shall read with care. He said that integrity, not lack of knowledge, is the cause of complaints. Was it not integrity in the City that caused the problems? Was it not the integrity of the lawyers? One has only to read the history of Brougham Hall—a book has been published about that—to see how the lawyers and the accountants behaved then. They may be members of approved bodies, but that does not stop there being a lack of integrity in such firms. Sadly, you will never stop a lack of integrity—I wish one could—because it is part of human nature. I really believe it is necessary for agents to be members of an organisation. The National Association of Estate Agents has set up a code that is not as high a standard as the one needed to become a surveyor, but it is a recognised code and a set of standards of which the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, would approve. I do not want to go any higher than that. I do not want to ratchet it up or to cause expense, because organisations such as the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the National Association of Estate Agents already exist and are ready to do the job. I hope that the Minister will be able to spare some time between now and the next stage so that we can get together to see if we can find some common ground. Although I understand his arguments, if they apply to agents, they should apply to the rest of them. We ought to take away all the consumer confidence that we have built up by having this regulation for the other bodies. I return to the case of my daughter. Why does she have to go through all these financial service exams? Is that not a closed shop? Is that not exactly what the Minister is arguing that we should not have with estate agencies? I am grateful for the Minister’s very full response and for the tepid support of my noble friend Lady Wilcox. I have absolutely no doubt that it will come to the boil by the next stage. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.