Shared Prosperity Fund: Wales

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

I have great admiration for and friendship with the noble Lord from the previous Government, when I was an Opposition Whip and he was a Whip. These are the conversations that my honourable friend Alex Norris MP is currently having, so I would not like to pre-empt them. I will also be visiting Wales to meet my counterpart in my portfolio, and I will raise that particular point.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

We look forward to welcoming the Minister to Wales. Can he say, more broadly than the fund, what action the Government are taking to spread growth and prosperity more evenly across Wales?

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My noble friend makes an excellent point. The UK Government are committed to addressing regional inequalities and supporting growth across the whole of the UK. Through the Council of the Nations and Regions, we will address this, working with devolved Governments. As well as the shared prosperity fund, we are taking other initiatives. For example, we will continue to support the four city and growth deals which cover the whole geography of Wales. Through the freeports and investment zones programme, we are delivering significant economic interventions into each corner of Wales, with freeports established in the north-west and south-west of Wales, and great progress has been made on establishing investment zones in north-east and south-east Wales. When I visit Wales, I promise that I will learn a few words of Welsh.

Leaseholders: Management Companies

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, we have been very clear, and the Secretary of State was very clear, that we cannot support establishing a new regulatory body at this time and through this Bill. Measures in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill are there to protect and empower leaseholders, along with existing protections, and work undertaken by the industry will seek to make property management agents more accountable to leaseholders who pay for their services.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the chair of the Property Institute. The Government keep saying that they do not have time to implement RoPA; I do not believe it, and they could if they wanted to. In the meantime, at the request of people in the industry, I chaired the committee that set up a code of conduct; is there nothing the Government could do to at least endorse or make that code of conduct mandatory? That would help in making sure that all managing agents work to a high level.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, the Government welcome the ongoing work being undertaken by the industry, and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for the work she has done with her group on codes of practice. We have said that we will consider any code produced by her steering group, and come back to the House.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 1st May 2024 Lords Chamber

Finally, on covering the tasks that a new regulator must tackle, there is the option of delegating some administrative or other functions to designated professional bodies, such as the RICS, already operating for a segment of this sector. So we are ready to go. That just leaves the response that there is simply no time to amend the Bill if it is to pass before the forthcoming general election. The issue has been debated repeatedly over the last five years, and the commitment to professionalise the sector has been reiterated in successive manifestos. Have we now run out of time, or can the Minister report some success, not for the first time, in convincing her departmental colleagues to do the right thing? An independent statutory regulator for leasehold property agents would go an appreciable distance to tackling at least some of the extensive problems of the leasehold sector, and would earn the blessing of so many leaseholders who desperately need a powerful consumer ally. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare a non-financial interest in having worked with the Property Institute and other groups that have supported this area for many years. Also, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, alluded to, I chaired a committee working on one aspect of this matter, which I will come to shortly.

As the noble Lord said, it is quite unusual for this call for regulation to come not only from the consumers who would benefit but from the professionals already working in the field. It is virtually unanimous; in fact, among the organised groups, it is unanimous that this is the regulation under which they would like to work. The agencies and their representative bodies are waiting for this to happen.

As has just been described, in a way the reasons are obvious, not only outside but within this House. We know that, as was mentioned, the Best report was welcomed, I think universally; the Select Committee on Industry and Regulators has called for it to happen; and in the world outside there is still an expectation—a hope—that this might happen. A number of us want an election soon but we could even put it off—if that would be the only thing needed to get this through, we will put up with more of this Government.

It is fairly obvious that housing is not just bricks and mortar. Homes are fundamental to people’s financial and emotional well-being. Get this right, and their own quality of life improves dramatically. Get it wrong, and it is debilitating, stressful and expensive. It starts, of course, with the purchase, or indeed the sale, of a leasehold property, which is a more complicated transaction than simply buying a freehold house. So even at that stage, transparency, clarity, openness and proper explanation by estate agents are essential, and so, therefore, is the need for their expertise in these specialist areas of purchase and sale.

However, even once it has happened and you are living in the leasehold property, that can be a particularly fraught arrangement. With leasehold management there is a three-way relationship between the landlord, the resident—that is, the leaseholder or the owner—and the managing agent. Marriages with three in are always a bit complicated, but in this case, of course, you have the managing agent, who is appointed by the landlord but who has duties and, even more importantly, a close working relationship with the leaseholder. That adds an element of necessary expertise in how to handle it.

As important is the complexity of the law involved in this. It covers particular rights that are different from those associated with a freehold house. There are the safety issues, which have been well rehearsed in Committee. There are consumer issues and fiduciary duties, as well as myriad external bodies and requirements that have to be met. Frankly, managing agency is no task for an amateur. Agents need to be trained in ethics as well as the law and building regulations, and they need to be checked to ensure that they are fit and proper to handle both people’s money and their safety, and to prepare all the legal and other paperwork essential for running a complex operation. That is why we require regulation and oversight of this important profession.

As was mentioned, a code of conduct is needed across the industry, not simply to provide the requirements on agents but, importantly, to enable consumers to understand and thus to be able to enforce their rights. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, a cross-industry group that I had the privilege to chair and whose outcome was welcomed by the department has prepared the code and it is ready and waiting, so the work in setting up this regulatory body would be less than otherwise. It is there, ready and waiting for the legislation to make adherence to that code a legal requirement. That is the key to professionalising the industry and enhancing the experience of all who deal with managing agents—landlords and leaseholders alike.

It is not sufficient, welcome though it might be, to have an ombudsman to adjudicate and put things right when things have gone wrong. We need to prevent problems arising, which means raising standards, ensuring compliance, requiring training and qualification, and continuing professional development in a world of statutory requirements that seem to be changing, not just year by year but month by month, as is the technology involved in building, which we know about.

The Best way is the only way. Let us give the noble Lord what he has been asking for for so long and just get this report into law—let us get on with it. I am delighted to support Amendment 94.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I will add a very brief footnote to the excellent speeches made by the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter.

The point I want to make is that the market is changing. We are moving away from a position where the freehold of blocks of flats was owned by the Grosvenor estates, Cadogan Estates, the Portman Estate —professional freeholders—and they were well able to choose responsible managing agents and keep an eye on them. We are moving away from that to a position where more and more of the blocks of flats are owned by the leaseholders. It is a trend that I that I welcome—indeed, the Bill accentuates that trend—and eventually we will end up with commonhold. Against that background, it becomes even more important that the managing agents should be professional. The background is changing and the need for this is now much more urgent than it was a few years ago.

I very much hope that the Government will be able to respond to the eloquence of the noble Lord, Lord Best, and introduce regulation of managing agents. However, if they cannot, he hinted at two intermediate steps, which I think the Government might be able to take. One is requiring mandatory qualifications. As the noble Lord said, these have already been introduced for the social housing sector and could be expanded to protect leaseholders and private tenants. The second thing the Government could do, which the noble Lord also mentioned, is to introduce the mandatory code of practice, drawing on his working group on the regulation of property agents—this case was well made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter.

The Government could do one final thing which has not been mentioned so far. There is a government document called the How to Lease guide, and they could make that a mandatory document to be shared with consumers who purchase a leasehold property, in exactly the same way in which landlords and agents must provide the How to Rent guide to tenants. Therefore, if my noble friend cannot go the whole hog, I very much hope that she can smile warmly on intermediate steps, which might then pave the way to the final introduction of regulation of managing agents in the very near future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise to the Committee. From what the noble Lord has said, I realise that I probably should have said that I was a leaseholder when I spoke.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to offer Green support for this clear, obvious and essential amendment, which already has strong support across the Committee.

I want to pick up a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, about how both buyers and sellers desperately need confidence and how that confidence is utterly lacking at the moment. A lot of our discussion has focused on the problem of estate management, where there are clear and obviously pressing problems, but to focus a little on sales of properties and the need for some oversight there, I note that, last year, trading standards warned that many agents were not passing on the best offers that they had received from purchasers, as they are legally required to do, because they were getting commission fees from mortgage brokers, solicitors, surveyors and other third parties. They were choosing to go with what would produce a better result for them but a lower price for the seller. The only way that this is generally uncovered is if the would-be buyer who did not succeed in purchasing the property happens to look at the Land Registry sales price, says “but that’s less than I was offered” and creates a fuss. That is a sign of just how utterly cowboy the current situation is without regulation.

A report out yesterday noted that for 34% of the “for sale” stock on some major websites there had been an asking price reduction. People often need to sell for all kinds of reasons—including divorce, bereavement or perhaps because they need more bedrooms for extra children. These are all stressful, difficult situations where delays can cause damage and create uncertainty. We have a cowboy situation out there, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said, the people in the industry who want to do the right thing know that there are cowboys out there who are a threat to them. Therefore, the amendment is clearly essential to making our housing sector less of a cowboy environment than it is now.

Private Rented Sector Ombudsman

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

Of course we will work with the local authorities as the Bill moves forward. The ombudsman will complement local authority decisions and back them up.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the expansion of the ombudsman service. My worry about what appears to be a decision by the Government is that representatives of private tenants, which will be different from the ones dealt with already, will not get a voice if there is no open procurement. I hope the Government will look to representatives of private rented accommodation to ensure that they are involved in the choice of ombudsman so that it fits that particular client group.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, of course we will, but what is important is the tenants, who sometimes do not know where to go. In my opinion and that of the department, it is important that they have one front door and that they get the services they require.

Recall Petitions: Voter ID

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

To ask His Majesty’s Government whether voter ID will be required for a recall petition.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, the Answer is, yes, it is set out in legislation that voter identification is required in order for an elector to sign the signing sheet in person at an MP recall petition.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, at least 14,000 people without ID were not able to vote in local elections, even on a date known to them in advance, so they had time to get ID if they did not have a passport. But recall petitions are sudden, unexpected and speedy, with no national awareness campaign. There is a petition in Scotland with just 40 days to obtain that photo ID, if you do not have a passport, and then to sign in person, as the Minister said. Three Tory recall petitions could have happened; two were saved by the MPs resigning, but one may still be to come. Given that 10% of voters are needed to trigger a by-election, anyone being unable to obtain voter ID in time makes recall less possible. How convenient for the Government. So will the Minister agree that a review is urgently needed if the recall procedure is to work as the Government first intended?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I am sorry to disappoint the noble Baroness but I cannot agree that we should look at this again; it was not long ago that we looked at all this in the now enacted Elections Bill. On the 40 days, I assure the noble Baroness that the election department has been working on the voter identification process where anyone needs a VAC. It also wrote to all the electorate about the process, giving clear instructions that people would require voter ID, and instructions on what voter ID was available for them to use and, if they could not, where they could get a VAC.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 22nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

Debate on whether Clause 213 should stand part of the Bill.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to argue that Clause 213 should not stand part of the Bill, as it has absolutely no place within this Bill. That is partly because it has nothing to do with levelling up or regeneration, but it is also because it gives the Government the right to interfere in the activities of an independent, non-statutory, standard-setting members’ organisation—indeed, a chartered body.

It is strange that, of all the actions being taken around increasing regulation, the target is a respected, self-regulatory body with an independent standards board. I am mystified as to why, if Ministers really want to help the residential sectors—tenants, owners and leaseholders—they are not implementing the report of the noble Lord, Lord Best, on the regulation of property agents which, after enormous work with great detail, has come up with some extraordinarily useful proposals covering areas of considerable consumer detriment. Much work went into that report and I then chaired a group, in full collaboration with the department, developing codes of conduct covering letting and estate agents as well as managing agents.

Indeed, back in 2018, the then Housing Secretary announced measures to professionalise the estate agent market, driving up standards and bringing an end to rogue managing agents. As he said at that time, more than six out of 10 buyers and sellers experienced stress. Therefore, he promised, estate agents would be required to hold a professional qualification, with the Government undertaking to bring this industry up to

“the same professional standards as conveyancers, solicitors and surveyors”.

At that point, the department was really keen on regulating that group of residential agents to bring them up to the quality of surveyors. What a shame that this Bill does not implement the report of the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the commitment given by the department at that stage, which would bring high standards and proper protections to users of all property agents.

Instead, the Bill proposes a statutory power for the Secretary of State to instigate a review of an independent, member-funded, non-statutory body: any time, any place, with no excuse or cause and no threshold for such an intervention. All this comes with no rationale for the interference in such an independent and professional body, whose standards and enforcements are key to the safety of our built environment as well as to the market valuation of property, which has to be free—like interest rates—of any Treasury interference. So what, one might ask, is behind all of this?

RICS was one of the first professional bodies to split off its member representation role from its regulatory function following the Carsberg review, well before the Law Society and the Bar Council did the same. Since then, RICS and its thousands of members abroad has played a vital role in independent standards setting as well as in the enforcement of those high standards. Across the world, regulators and clients depend on RICS standards of ethics and good practice, as well as RICS technical standards. RICS valuers are recognised and admired worldwide and perform a vital service for a swathe of industries. RICS works with Governments, regulators and international standards setters to adopt common, transparent standards. This fuels the influence of UK professionals and business globally, supporting inward investment. About one-fifth of RICS members work outside the UK, many of them in large, global businesses.

It is, perhaps, for this reason that a firm such as Savills worries about the possible end of true independence of RICS and thus a loss of confidence that it is acting in the public, rather than Ministers’, interests. As James Sparrow, CEO of Savills UK, writes:

“A strong and independent RICS remains key for the well-being and effective operation of the real estate sector ... Any actions which have the effect of undermining RICS or compromising its independence as a free-standing professional institution would … be detrimental. ... RICS plays an important role internationally … influencing the development and standards required of the surveying profession globally. Its independence is fundamental to this”.


Indeed, the UK’s global role could well be at risk if RICS and its standards are seen as being supervised by the Government. Self-regulation via a hived-off independent oversight board, chaired by the redoubtable Dame Janet Paraskeva, gives confidence to consumers that standards will not be lowered to satisfy either RICS members or government requirements. It gives confidence to mortgage lenders that a valuation of a property is robust and a figure that they can rely on in considering the security backing to any loan that they give.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, I would simply encourage my noble friend to read my remarks in Hansard. There is no promise in this clause to the effect that the current or a future Secretary of State will initiate a review, but that there should be a power for them to do so. I would encourage my noble friend to reflect on the justification I gave in the terms that I gave it, which is that we are clear that the independence of RICS in operating as it does is not in doubt.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earls, Lord Caithness and Lord Lytton, the noble Lords, Lord Thurlow and Lord Lucas, and my noble friend Lady Hayman, for their contributions on what I think is a rather significant and important issue. I also thank the Minister; “nice try” is how I would summarise what he has tried to do. Much more serious than that, though, I think he gave the game away.

I did not talk about EWS1, quite deliberately, at the introduction of this because I thought it would put the Government on the wrong foot. I felt that that was not a debate we should get into. I must declare an interest, as I live in a cladded building, so I was very involved from day one with the issue of cladding. I remember EWS1 and I remember before that. I remember when the threshold was 18 metres, which affected where I live. The Government asked RICS whether it would say a building was safe below, I think, 14 metres. RICS felt it could not, in all seriousness, give that assurance. I, as a consumer and a resident of a tall building, was reassured that a standard setter—a surveying organisation—did not give in to the Government and did not say that a building would be safe when it was not.

I deliberately did not use that at the beginning of this debate because I did not want to start a ding-dong about something in the past that I thought the Government had got wrong at the time. They were trying to put together a package, which was very complicated after Grenfell. There was the matter of how much money would go towards the buildings that would be affected, and that would come out of a £6 billion fund that was not there at the time. I understand the Government were having difficulties, but it is giving the game away that the Minister has mentioned that, because it is a row that happened then.

RICS may have been completely wrong—it could have been absolutely safe. It could have said that all these buildings under 14 metres that are cladded are absolutely safe. RICS could have been absolutely wrong, and the Government could have been right to ask them to sign off the form. I think we were on Advice Note 14 at the time, so we have been through a lot of these. I, as the consumer, would prefer an independent organisation, even if it is wrong, to tell me whether my dwelling house is safe, rather than the Government, who obviously had a vested interest because of the amount of money they were going to put into it. I was not going to raise that issue, because I thought it was going back. I do think this has given a lot away.

The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, has asked why we need this, because the Government can do it anyway. The Minister has said that the Government have no powers to do anything; even if they set up an inquiry and it proved everything, they still cannot do anything. So the only thing it does is give a chill factor, a threat factor. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, who called it the sword of Damocles. We have had this from the Government before; twice, I have had to deal with it. I dealt with it once before I was in this House, when I chaired the Legal Services Consumer Panel. At that stage, the coalition Government tried to make us—the consumer panel and the Legal Services Board itself—put our websites on GOV.UK. That may not sound very serious, but for an independent regulator of lawyers, it was seen as a real threat to the independence of regulating lawyers. We fought the Government off and just refused to do it.

We then had it again during the passage of the Bill on the mutual recognition of professional qualifications, when the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, was the Minister. The Government were trying to take a power over the regulators to decide whether they should, for example, accept nurses, vets and other professionals as part of a trade deal, so they would have been regulating the recognition of the qualifications of people coming here from another country as part of a trade deal. We saw off the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, at the time, and the Bill was much changed, as he admits. We wrote into that Bill a clause saying that the regulators must remain independent of government. So, here we have the itchy fingers of government trying to tell independent regulators what to do. The Minister says there is no power to intervene, and so there is no interference—but the threat is a power to intervene.

I am not going to answer all the points that have been made, because I think they speak for themselves. The Government will understand the unease around the Committee about this proposal. I do not think they have made any argument for the need for this. Frankly, if the Government intervened in every organisation that had gone a bit awry, we would have them looking at the CBI at the moment, which is another important institution in civic society. It is going through much more of a meltdown than anything poor old RICS did, but I assume that the Government are not going to try to interfere in any chartered institute or anything else, or just an independent organisation that has had some troubles.

I do not think the Government have answered how this clause is going to promote the levelling-up agenda. Indeed, if there is any loss of confidence in surveyors, it will do exactly the opposite. The Minister has failed to give assurances that it will not be used as a big stick to make RICS do their bidding in the future.

I am delighted that the Minister has reported, finally, that there will be a meeting between his oppo in the Commons and the chief executive of RICS. It is a bit late, frankly, when we already have a clause in a Bill—I am not going to push it to a vote now, so within a minute or two it will be in the Bill—to have a meeting. We need this self-regulation; that is the right way for independent regulation. I think the Committee and the Minister will not be surprised by me saying that I will return with an amendment to delete the clause on Report.

Clause 213 agreed.

UK Citizens Resident Overseas: Verification

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Wednesday 29th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, it is inaccurate to suggest that there will not be appropriate checks in place for the registration of overseas electors. In future, as now, a British citizen living overseas who wishes to register as an overseas elector will need to have their identity and their connection to a relevant UK address established before they can be added to the register. Currently, overseas applicants provide their date of birth and their national insurance number to be matched against DWP data. Failing this, if an overseas applicant’s identity cannot be verified by a DWP check, a new step will be introduced before the attestation stage, whereby an applicant must supply documentary evidence for an ERO to verify their identity. I cannot see the problem. As I have said in answer to previous questions, nobody can give money to any political party unless they are registered to elect in either this country or overseas.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

It is fitting to note that Harry Shindler, who campaigned for many years to extend overseas voting, which I happen to disapprove of, died recently. The Minister described checks on whether those people are allowed to be registered. She has not answered the crucial question: how do the Government propose to check that money from people who have not lived here for maybe 40 years is actually their own money and was earned legitimately?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, people who give money to political parties will need to be themselves elected.

Leasehold Charges

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

We will certainly have a social housing regulator once we get the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill through the other place and back through here, and I hope that will be as soon as possible. Regarding the noble Baroness’s other concerns, we will have to be patient and wait for the Bill to come forward.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Best, came up with a recommendation that we thought the Government had accepted: to regulate all property agents, which would cover the managing agents and the questions that have been raised today. I chaired the committee which gave the Government a code of conduct, ready for that regulator to start work. Why cannot we get on and regulate the agents, who are the problem with all the issues that have been raised?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

We are taking very seriously the issue of property agents and are committed to promoting fairness and transparency for tenants and homeowners in this space. The commitment also includes raising professionalisation and standards among property agents—letting estate and managing agents. The Government welcome the ongoing work being undertaken by the industry itself. Interestingly, since the noble Lord, Lord Best’s report, the industry is doing something different and is working better. We will continue to work with the noble Lord and his working group on what more we can do to ensure that property agents are behaving professionally.

Elections: Multiple Voting

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My understanding is that it is made clear that you cannot vote twice in a general election. Indeed, it carries a criminal offence. You now have to prove your residence as part of the electoral registration process, but I will take that point on board.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government have now said that they will allow people who have been out of the country for more than 15 years to go on the register. Presumably, if they have two houses abroad, they will be able to go on it twice. What checks will there be to make sure they do not vote more than once?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

The purpose of the Elections Act was to ensure that we did not have this arbitrary cut-off point. Those living abroad have always been able to vote in elections for up to 15 years, which we have now extended as part of that legislation. People cannot vote in local elections if one of their properties is, let us say, in Spain, so I do not think that arises.

Regulation of Property Agents Working Group

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to implement the recommendations of the final report of the Regulation of Property Agents Working Group, published on 18 July 2019.

[The Minister of State, Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my residential commercial property interests as set out in the register. The Government are committed to promoting fairness and transparency for home owners and renters and making sure that consumers are protected from abuse and poor service. This commitment includes raising professionalism and standards among property agents. The Government are considering the recommendations from the independent working group of the noble Lord, Lord Best, on property agents and we welcome the work by the noble Baroness and the industry itself to improve best practice across the sector.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that. As he suggests, we now have cross-industry and consumer agreement on codes of practice for all residential agents covering letting sale and block management. The whole industry and its users want to see the report by the noble Lord, Lord Best, implemented and the regulator set up. Therefore, in addition to the words of comfort that the Minister has given us, can he go one further and give us a commitment to implement that report for the sake of all people who rent their houses?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I am not able to go any further but I know that the final code is ready, and that is a springboard to action. I am looking forward to engaging with the noble Baroness in due course.