Localism Bill

My Lords, perhaps I should start by declaring that I am a landlord of a property that is let through a letting agent in London, and it is in the register of interests. I shall take the amendments in reverse order. I have a great deal of sympathy with the thrust of Amendment 93, spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, although I feel that it is overly prescriptive. No doubt in the private rented sector in particular there is enormous pressure, and we all know that that pressure is going to build and be exacerbated by what his Government are doing on housing benefit. It will put pressure on homelessness in that sector in particular. Of course there is bad practice, and we should support propositions which look to protect vulnerable tenants. He also made the excellent point that the organisations to which tenants traditionally may have looked, such as Citizens Advice, are under pressure because of funding. Again, I have great sympathy with Amendment 92, but I would like to read the technicalities a bit better. The thrust of it is that it would give the courts some added leeway before actual possession is obtained. In the current climate, if people are being thrown out of their properties, that must be something which should gain our support. On Amendment 91, I believe that just before we left Government, we did have proposals coming forward to do just what the amendment is seeking. The noble Lord may say that we took too long to get it done, but again I support regulation. It is interesting to note that good providers in the field, the good letting agents, also support this. They know that their reputations can be tarnished by bad practice out there and that they can be undercut by unscrupulous letting agents. We need some proper regulation in this sector. I am therefore broadly supportive of the thrust of all these amendments. However, given where we are with the Bill, at the Report stage and just about to move out of the housing environment, it will not be until Third Reading that we get to this. I do not know what the Minister will be able to say in winding up the debate that will give us any assurance about progress, but along with the proposers of these amendments, we would like to see progress on all three fronts.