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Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

My Lords, I support the amendment. I declare a recent interest, in that I have been asked to become a member of the council of the Ombudsman for Estate Agents, and I have accepted that invitation, although I have not yet taken up any duties. I feel sure everyone would agree that if we are regulating or providing redress in relation to estate agents, letting agents working out of the same establishments should have the same cover. The new proliferation of unregulated lettings agents is a strange phenomenon which, sooner or later, is certainly going to require some regulation. This must be the moment at which it would be easiest to incorporate that into legislation. As the noble Lord, Lord Lee of Trafford, made so clear, the buy-to-let market has increased private lettings from 9 per cent of the total stock in the UK to 12 per cent since 1979, when this early definition of what an estate agent did was set out in the Estate Agents Act 1979. Things have changed completely over the past 30 years, and frankly it is simply a mistake to omit the managing and letting of properties rather than the sales thereof. I was proud to play some small part in bringing the tenancy deposit protection scheme, as it is now known, into being. As the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said, it covers only tenancy deposits, which is a relatively small part of the total workload of those who are handling lettings. It certainly does not go nearly far enough to embrace what is needed in terms of regulation of new letting agencies. I am told by the Brent private tenants’ association that there are now, in the mushrooming of these new lettings agencies, four lettings agents within 50 yards in Wembley, all operating in competition having been set up virtually overnight to take account of the growth in the market of private lettings. Surely it is relatively easy to correct in this new measure what is, in effect, the mistaken description of estate agency that dates back to 1979. I strongly support the noble Earl in his amendment.