Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 5: 5: Before Clause 53, insert the following new Clause— ““Standards of competence (1) Section 22 of the Estate Agents Act 1979 (c. 38) (standards of competence) is amended as follows. (2) For subsections (1) and (2) substitute— ““(1) The Secretary of State shall by regulations made by statutory instrument designate any body of persons as an approved body to which people engaged in estate agency work, including both the sale and lettings of residential property, must belong. (2) The approved bodies must make membership conditional on signing up to rules and codes of conduct including rules which— (a) prescribe minimum competency standards; (b) ensure that firms have adequate professional indemnity insurance and, as appropriate, client money protection insurance; (c) require a minimum level of professional development per year; and (d) require membership of a redress scheme.”””” The noble Earl said: My Lords, I make no apology for bringing this amendment, which I moved at earlier stages, before the House. I thank the Minister for his letter between Report and now. I shall not repeat the arguments that I made before. Suffice it to say, there is a major problem, which has been recognised by all; the Minister’s noble friends Lord Grocott, Lord Davies and Lord Dubs have all tried to address the problem of bad estate agents. The history of the Office of Fair Trading is not a good one; the OFT has shown a great deal of inertia and a lack of appropriate action on this. There is enormous consumer dissatisfaction with estate agents, and it looks from the reports of the Ombudsman for Estate Agents that about one in four is likely to be the subject of a complaint. What do the Government do about this? Nothing. They bring in a redress scheme, such as the one that has just been heavily condemned by my noble friend Lady Wilcox with regard to another sector of the industry, but they are not attacking the necessity to license and regulate estate agents. It is absurd and hypocritical that the only unregulated sector in the property-buying business is the estate agents’. Mortgage lenders, financial advisers, conveyancers, solicitors and surveyors are regulated; estate agents are not. Unless the Government accept this amendment, they will be condemning the consumer to a further period of being open to be cheated by estate agents and losing thousands of pounds. I beg to move.