My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate and to hear from such eminent experience across the Committee on this issue. On one of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, about how far back this goes: one of my very first jobs in the early 1970s was at an estate agent. It was a family business run by somebody who had trained as a journalist and had a career in journalism, but he did, at least in that case, have the grace to train as a chartered surveyor as he carried on his business as an estate agent. You would have thought that things would have changed a bit over the subsequent years—it is quite a long time ago now—and it is ridiculous that it can still happen that people with little experience or qualification can be in charge of huge sums of other people’s money and property, and I hope that we can move matters on, at least in that respect.
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First, I thank all the noble Lords who have spoken, but especially the noble Lord, Lord Best, for the work he has done to campaign for and promote a more
efficient, effective and secure system of regulation for letting and managing agents over so many years. We are absolutely convinced of the benefits of this and that it will be a hugely positive step for leaseholders, tenants, landlords and, of course, the professionals. There are many professionals who really do not like the rogue landlords and property agents in the business, and all would benefit if this could be put in place. That is why we were delighted to add our name to this amendment, and we strongly agree with what noble Lords have said already on this proposal.
I want to start by quoting the response from the Housing Minister to a PQ on the implementation of the recommendations from the working group led by the noble Lord, Lord Best, which was asked on 15 May last year. The response was:
“The Government is considering the recommendations in the final report on the regulation of property agents from Lord Best’s Working Group. We will continue to work with industry on improving best practice. Announcements will be set out in the usual way”.
I do not know where those announcements got to, but they do not seem to have appeared so far. The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Best, falls clearly into a first category of “If not now, when?” and a second category of “Please, can we get on with it?”. As my noble friend Lady Hayter pointed out, the ombudsman is there for when things have already gone wrong, and this proposal would, I hope, do the ombudsman out of a job by regulating things so that they do not go wrong. The excellent Library briefing on the subject sets out very clearly the timeline and the issues involved. These go back to a Labour Government report in February 2010 and led to the then Labour Government to agree with
“the emerging consensus around the need to regulate letting and managing agents”.
As we have heard, subsequent Governments have blown very hot and cold on this, but there was a significant swerve towards regulation in 2018 when, following an extensive consultation exercise, the Government proposed to introduce a single mandatory and legally enforceable code of practice covering letting and management agents and that a single overarching regulatory structure would be investigated—that is what resulted in the working group led by the noble Lord, Lord Best.
These proposals have been very long indeed in gestation. There has already been so much work, consultation and industry support, not to mention various reports from the Resolution Foundation, Which?, the Office of Fair Trading, the Competition and Markets Authority, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the Property Ombudsman that clearly articulate the need for better regulation. We just cannot see why any further procrastination, dither and delay can possibly be merited. The Property Ombudsman said as far back as 2013 that
“over the lengthy period I have been expressing views on the subject, it has become clear to me that consumer organisations and those sector professional/trade associations such as ARLA and RICS share my view that a form of regulation is very necessary to set a level playing field for those operating in the private rented sector”.
The purchase or rental of a home is one of the key financial transactions in your life. It should represent security and aspiration. You should have the confidence
that your financial commitment is matched by the professionalism and high standards you expect of those you entrust with the technical aspects of the transaction. But we are a very long way from that; we are still, as the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors described it, dealing with the property industry’s “Wild West”, with many offering as little protection for consumers as they think they can get away with and with the confidence of purchasers and renters at an all-time low. That is why I agree with the ombudsman, who said that, realistically, legislation is the only vehicle that can bring 100% of letting agents within the fold.
For landlords, leaseholders and tenants, we have an opportunity to move forward from the idea that just giving everyone a leaflet will make all the issues go away. As the group led by the noble Lord, Lord Best, recommended, we need the following measures, and I have said before in discussions on this Bill that the extraordinary thing is that they are not in place already. Those measures are an independent property regulator; a single mandatory and legally enforceable code of practice; minimum entry requirements and continuing professional development for property agents; and clarifying processes and charges for leaseholders. I am grateful to my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, for his graphic illustration of the issues, which I am sure will have touched on many of us in this Chamber; this includes my own family, with both my son and daughter negotiating the experience of renting through agents in London.
We have the opportunity here to implement the very sound recommendations of the working group of the noble Lord, Lord Best, by incorporating them into the Bill as set out in Amendment 94. I hope the Government will accept this and end the decades of delay we have seen on this issue, but if they do not and the noble Lord decides to return to it on Report, he will certainly still have our support.