Home Information Pack Regulations 2007

My Lords, perhaps I could try to dispel some of the ill tempered comments aboutthe professions. My interest is that I used to teach property law, so I hope that I have sufficient detachment to see the effect of property law on buying and selling. We could, perhaps even startingin this House, change the law, but there are complications that cannot be overcome, because in recent years property law has been seriously affected by informal family and third-party rights—the rights of divorced wives or other people living in the house. Your Lordships will well know how complicated landlord and tenant law is. Unless one abandonsall humanity, British land law will remain very complicated, so house sales will also be complicated, as others have said. I want to make a few short points. The first is that, given the difficulties that I have described, there is now no point in the HIP in itself, if we leave to one side the energy performance certificate. It is unfair to say that the professions are trying to hog the matter for themselves. Bearing in mind the announcement this afternoon, I feel that there is nothing as dangerous as a half-dead animal, which will hit back and sting before it is finally dead. In the next few months, the situation will be, especially for first-time buyers, even more costly, stressful, complicated and deceptive. Secondly, the energy certificate must be a good thing; indeed, it is an obligation. However, it still needs careful attention. As a member of the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee, I received a great deal of most useful information, out of which a few points arose. It is hoped that the energy performance certificate will lead to savings in energy costs, but the cost of the certificate, which may be a few hundred pounds, will not be recovered for something like nine years; the financial outlay that buyers and sellers will have to make now will not be recovered for a long time, by when there will no doubt be other energy considerations. Another point is that, if the certificate is to be provided every time the house is sold, in many cases this will be too often—that is, less than 10 years. However, some people do not sell their family home for 20, 30 or 40 years, in which case there will beno energy inducement; there will be no need to geta certificate and no need to think about energy improvements. Tacking on the energy certificate to house sale does not make sense. Finally, I was not reassured in studying the material before the committee that there will be sufficient checks on those who make the energy inspection. I did not think that the qualifications and security issues attaching to those people who enter the house were sufficiently taken into account. There seemed to be no assurance that the accuracy and helpfulness of the energy certificate would be properly checked. In other words, the certificate might not be worth the paper it was written on, even if all the training goes forward; there is not yet sufficient infrastructure for that. I therefore simply want to add my voice to those who have said that the home information pack should be abandoned and that the energy performance certificate should be taken forward, but in a way that focuses solely on saving energy and has nothing todo with buying and selling houses, which in Englishlaw, going back as it does 1,000 years or more, is complicated, but complicated for good reasons.