Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the Minister for his reply, not only to my amendment, but to all the other strange amendments grouped with mine, but which have no relevance to it at all. We will not allow that to happen at Report. We will concentrate on the subject that we are trying to talk about, instead of wandering around this rather peculiar Bill. I am grateful for the support of my noble friend Lady Wilcox. As I said, she was going to come to the boil and she started to come nicely. We will expect more at Report and I, too, support her amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is absolutely right; he knows more about estate agents than even I do as a consultant to them. I felt that there was much merit in his amendments. When it came to the matter of the fine, the Minister suggested that £500 was significant to an estate agent. Even with the sort of figures that the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is talking about, let alone for someone who is selling a property in central London, that would hardly fill up the tank of petrol of one of their Chelsea tractors. My noble friend made some very useful points that were equally applicable to my Amendment No. 123, which we will come back to. I have to say to the Minister that I was very saddened by what he said. He said that the report of the Office of Fair Trading, on which this part of the Bill is based, did not look at residential letting or management and that updating the 1979 Act in this respect is not the purpose of the Bill. The purpose of the Bill is the protection of the consumer. I could not care less whether it updates the 1979, the 1981 or the 1953 Act; it is for the protection of the consumer. That is what we are not doing. The whole purpose of my Amendment No. 123 is to give the consumer greater protection. If it means updating part of the 1979 Act and that is not at the moment the Government’s intention, so be it as far as I am concerned. I am grateful to the Minister for the rest of his reply. It was just that bit of wording that got to me. His officials took their eye slightly off what we are trying to do with the Bill, which is to give consumer protection. We will undoubtedly return to Amendment Nos. 123 and 123A. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, must not give up at this stage. I have every confidence that he will be back batting. I look forward to Report stage. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.