I am here. I apologise for not joining the Committee earlier but we had some kind of IT glitch.
I want to look at another important aspect of who the responsible person can or should be. The problem that I want to guard against is the absentee responsible person: the anonymous set of initials from a remote managing agency with a non-responding website and no phone lines, or the international property holder registered in the Cayman Islands or Bermuda. I want to press the Minister to commit to ensuring that every responsible person is a real person, not a company or a corporate body, and that that person has a functioning terrestrial address and a phone number based in the UK—in short, that they can always be held accountable, can be assessed and if necessary trained to deliver their statutory obligations, and has the skill and intention of communicating effectively with residents in the properties for which they take responsibility. We do not want to add absentee responsible persons to all the existing problems of absentee landlords. I look forward to the Minister’s response.