Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

My Lords, I appreciate that, but the point is that if the Bill goes through in its present form, unless the ombudsman scheme is the one uniformly adopted for redress we will have several schemes being approved. Surely, as the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, indicated, it would be better for the existing ombudsman scheme to be the one approved by the DTI and with which everybody will comply? I shall touch on two further points. I mentioned that the noble Baroness referred to letting arrangements. As she indicated, there will not be many opportunities for legislation on this topic. While I know that the inclusion of provisions on residential letting would not necessarily fit that easily into the framework of the Bill, there is no reason in principle why the practices that need to be regulated, and which apply equally to residential selling, should not also apply to residential letting. As the Bill passes through this House and another place, I hope that the Government will take the opportunity to address that. The second point of detail I want to mention is one that nobody has referred to: the Government need to reflect on the case of new-build properties. Many of them are sold directly by the main developers in this country and not through estate agents. The developer will put up a show house on the site and will employ Sharon or Tracy to sell properties from that show house. However, all the practices deemed necessary to enshrine under protection in this Bill apply equally to residential developers, but I do not think they are currently caught by the provisions because they are not estate agents. The Government need to look at that. In conclusion, this is a well-meaning Bill, but in the case of consumer protection it seems to have been emasculated by rather typical Whitehall turf wars, and in the case of estate agents, while it is high in aspiration, it is handicapped by timidity.