---

Energy Bill [HL]

My Lords, perhaps I may add a little factual information on the profile of the private rented sector. We know from Dr Julie Rugg at the University of York that there are some 1.2 million private landlords. Very few of these belong to the British Property Federation, for which I have a great deal of time and which is doing some very good work, including on this Bill. The vast majority of the 1.2 million private landlords do not belong to any kind of federation. The Residential Landlords Association and the National Landlords Association together have, I think, less than 5 per cent of the ownership from the private landlords sector. We will have to bypass some of those institutions and put in place mechanisms that will reach out to this huge mass of small-time private landlords.