My Lords, I will add a very brief footnote to the excellent speeches made by the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter.
The point I want to make is that the market is changing. We are moving away from a position where the freehold of blocks of flats was owned by the Grosvenor estates, Cadogan Estates, the Portman Estate —professional freeholders—and they were well able to choose responsible managing agents and keep an eye on them. We are moving away from that to a position where more and more of the blocks of flats are owned by the leaseholders. It is a trend that I that I welcome—indeed, the Bill accentuates that trend—and eventually we will end up with commonhold. Against that background, it becomes even more important that the managing agents should be professional. The background is changing and the need for this is now much more urgent than it was a few years ago.
I very much hope that the Government will be able to respond to the eloquence of the noble Lord, Lord Best, and introduce regulation of managing agents. However,
if they cannot, he hinted at two intermediate steps, which I think the Government might be able to take. One is requiring mandatory qualifications. As the noble Lord said, these have already been introduced for the social housing sector and could be expanded to protect leaseholders and private tenants. The second thing the Government could do, which the noble Lord also mentioned, is to introduce the mandatory code of practice, drawing on his working group on the regulation of property agents—this case was well made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter.
The Government could do one final thing which has not been mentioned so far. There is a government document called the How to Lease guide, and they could make that a mandatory document to be shared with consumers who purchase a leasehold property, in exactly the same way in which landlords and agents must provide the How to Rent guide to tenants. Therefore, if my noble friend cannot go the whole hog, I very much hope that she can smile warmly on intermediate steps, which might then pave the way to the final introduction of regulation of managing agents in the very near future.