Clause 8 - Home condition reports
Homes Bill
5:45 pm
Mr Nick Raynsford (Minister of State, Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions; Greenwich and Woolwich, Labour)
I confessed in a previous sitting to my terrible problem with double-barrelled constituencies. The words East Worthing and Shoreham have at last reached my lips, and I apologise to the hon. Gentleman for getting his constituency wrong.
The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham began by saying that the home condition reports would be too limited and inadequate, and that leitmotif returned at the end of his remarks. He also said that they would lull buyers into a false sense of security. Early in his speech he came up with the simple fact, which we endorse, that a great majority of buyers now obtain no survey or home condition report at all. They enter into what is almost certainly the biggest financial transaction of their life with no information. Far from agreeing on the advisability of encouraging people to obtain some information, the hon. Gentleman took the opposite view and said that the idea was wrong. He then resorted to attacking the proposal on the ground that it would increase cost. However, following his logic and obtaining a more thorough and rigorous survey would cost even more.
What do the Opposition want? Do they want people to be well informed when they take a decision, or ignorant? Do they want them to have a reliable and informative report on which to base a judgment about the need for a further survey? If several important matters in a report received a rating of 4, clearly, any potential buyer would be well advised to obtain further information, but at least the preliminary information would be available.