Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities) (Amendment) Order 2009

We on these Benches not only do not object to this measure; we positively welcome it. We believe that there is increasing evidence that the sale and rent-back market is becoming a serious scandal. I accept the noble Baroness’s point that the evidence is not very clear—it is a fairly new market—but there is a great deal of evidence that unscrupulous operators are preying on very vulnerable people. In this case, the Government have taken the right decision, and the FSA now needs to step in and regulate this. How will the safeguards and the protections for people work in practice? Compensation after the event is never as good as preventing a transaction that is not right and preventing a rip-off. Clearly, solicitors have to act on a transaction of this kind. Will the Minister—or, rather, the FSA through him—say whether solicitors have a duty of care to their client to warn them that the transaction into which they are going to enter could be illegal, if the order is passed, or certainly not in their best interest? Will the FSA take steps to ensure that solicitors are put on notice so that it is even a question of professional misconduct if they do not properly advise the client? This is a practical point, particularly as—as the noble Baroness said—we are probably talking about fairly low-value houses in many cases. We want to prevent the abuse, the scandal, from happening at the point of sale rather than having an involved compensation procedure afterwards. In general, however, we think that regulation is necessary in this case.