Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 125: 125: Schedule 6, page 60, line 29, leave out ““may”” and insert ““shall”” The noble Lord said: As my noble friend Lord Razzall is recovering from the trauma of following England and losing to the Australian Parliament, I shall, with leave, speak to Amendment No. 125. I declare an interest as a non-executive director of Emerson Development (Holdings) Ltd, a large private property development and housebuilding group, which builds approximately 450 houses each year and operates its own customer charter. I also have a declarable shareholding in Pochin’s plc, a quoted property developer and building services company with a smaller housebuilding division. We support the estate agency aspect of the Bill, although we believe that it does not go anything like far enough. Our approach is similar to the one that the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, so clearly set out yesterday afternoon. Amendment No. 125 would place a requirement on the Government to bring in a redress scheme. That is long overdue. Indeed, organisations such as Which? have been campaigning for more than 40 years for the reform of the estate agency market. By changing the wording from ““may”” to ““shall””, the amendment would ensure implementation. I beg to move.