Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [Lords]

I shall be brief. I welcome the Bill. It will greatly strengthen consumer protection and make it more transparent and accessible to the public, which is devoutly to be welcomed. However, an opportunity is being missed. This Bill is a useful legislative vehicle of a kind, as the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alan Duncan) pointed out, that does not come along very often—perhaps every 25 or 30 years. It would be wise to make the most of it. I am in a curious position today. I little thought when I entered Parliament that I would end up speaking with the backing of estate agents—not an element of society with whom I normally associate with—but the National Association of Estate Agents will, I think, endorse my brief remarks on the regulation, or licensing, of estate agents, in particular of letting agents. The buy-to-let and private rental sectors have mushroomed in recent years and are particularly prevalent in my constituency. For that reason, I am glad that the Government’s new national tenancy deposit scheme is starting up, as it will be important. It will, for instance, save thousands of my constituents from being—literally—robbed of their deposits by unscrupulous letting agents. Money is being withheld for no genuine reason. Of course, as the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) pointed out, that is not the only way in which unscrupulous letting agents fleece vulnerable tenants. By definition, people in the private rented sector are more vulnerable; they cannot obtain mortgages and do not have the income to get on to the property ladder, so they are at the mercy of letting agents who have all sorts of ways of charging wholly unreasonable fees. In fact some of the activities I have come across can only be described as scandalous. I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Trade has for the moment set his face against positive licensing, but will he reconsider that position during the passage of the Bill through the House? It seems to me that although the redress schemes are welcome and necessary and should be used, far fewer people would have to resort to them if estate agents were licensed. There would then be a reasonable expectation of minimum standards of professional competence and integrity, and a code of conduct would inhibit cowboy elements. There would thus be fewer transgressions that caused members of the public to have recourse to the redress scheme.