My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have participated in this debate, particularly the Minister. This Second Reading on the Bill occupies the third slot on a Friday and I much appreciate his contribution. I greatly admire the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, who is a champion of leaseholder rights, and I wish her more power to her elbow as she continues to seek clarification on the mess here. Australia sounds very interesting in that respect. I quite agree with her that this issue needs considered thought and piloting, although I believe that we have a very strong pilot. Scotland has always been reluctant to pilot certain things for the United Kingdom, but there has been a highly effective pilot in this case. I will come back to that.

The noble Baroness also raised the issue of rent. I do not want us to go too far down a cul-de-sac on this. She is right that rents may not come down, but the overall cost of renting will. I emphasise again that the biggest point I want to convey to the Government is the financial shock at the beginning of a tenancy, which is almost unaffordable for a lot of people. As I said earlier, the poorest 17% have to decide whether to eat or heat their premises after paying some of these exorbitant and, I believe, still very arbitrary, sums.

I turn to the ability to complain about an inventory that is not forthcoming and the ability to shop around to avoid slippery letting agents. I can shop around for a landlord and for the area where I am going to live. I can shop around for the rent and the deposit. However, the letting agent is imposed on me, because that is the landlord’s decision. The arbitrary sums they may charge are also imposed on me. The Property Ombudsman may fulfil many of the roles to which the noble Baroness referred, but complaints in this area have gone up substantially. That may be a sign of its success as an organisation, but it is also a sign that people are making complaints. Surveys by organisations such as Citizens Advice reveal that a lot of people do not know that they have that opportunity to complain. We are all familiar with that conundrum in public policy. I thank the noble Baroness for her support for the Bill. We can tease out and examine some of these areas. I completely agree, for example, that an inventory is a really important document that enables a landlord to check what remains in a property when a tenant moves out. However, it is perfectly possible for the letting agent to charge the landlord for that.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, the noble Lord, Lord Tope, who is now in his place, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for their continued resilience in campaigning on the deposits issue and on electrical safety checks. We think that the little word “must” would be a very good thing to include. The Minister said that the DCLG has now contacted Electrical Safety First. I will work on an assumption that that took place in the last 24 hours, unless he indicates otherwise. He nods assent, so I assume that is correct. It is good that this debate has generated that kind of involvement, because there has been a very clear promise to work with Electrical Safety First. That body is very keen to get shifting and to help out in this area, so that is good news.

I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby for his comments. Like him, I have heard stories about landlords everywhere charging people £380 for the pleasure of viewing a property, with the implication that they may or may not take that person on as a tenant. We are not plucking these arbitrary sums out of the air—they actually exist. If anything, the sums are arbitrary on the part of these letting agencies who think that they can get away with this.

He has also asked whether we can explore the impact with regard to rogue landlords—a definition, by the way, that I never want to debate again. I was here for the original debate; I thought that it was ridiculous and I do not want to participate in any debate of that nature. For me, they are rogue landlords and I completely agree with everything that the Minister at the time said. I am very clear on that, let us never debate it again. But we do need to explore this and Committee stage is the perfect opportunity to do so.

I thank my noble friend Lord Foster for describing some of the achievements that were made under the previous Government; revenge evictions were an excellent example. I have a friend who made a complaint about her landlord and was then taken down a very nasty route. This is an incredibly important issue. You are so powerless in that situation; if you are on a very low income, you cannot shop around and you cannot make a choice, yet you have a landlord who is making your life almost impossible—and, for my friend, that was with two young schoolchildren who needed to be near their school. I am delighted that revenge evictions are now outlawed.

Regarding the transparency issue, I refer to some research done by Citizens Advice. It asked some of these questions, now that we do have transparency and are trying to go down that route. The vast majority of agents, even when asked, do not supply financial information. It is correct that complaints should be made about that and there is a simple, straightforward way to deal with this. I have already described a very large, residential private sector landlord who said that they employ only letting agencies who do not charge a fee to tenants. As a private sector, residential landlord, they expect to pay a fee and they expect it to be transparent. They can negotiate, shop around and make a decision about which reputable letting agents to use. The tenant has no power and no choice in that matter—that is the most important principle that I would like to convey. Given that there are 4.4 million—and increasing—customers in this market, it is also the particular area that I think the Government would do well to take another look at, to see whether there is potential for change. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for his support in all these areas. I share his surprise that a little word such as “must” is not included regarding electoral checks. This is an excellent opportunity, with a very small four-clause Bill, to look at some of these issues, especially on landlords and letting agents.

With regard to what the Minister said about signing up and the database, I hope that in Committee we will be able to explore in more detail how a database could be accessed. It does not mean that you know where a person lives, who their children are, or any of that kind of detail, but you might know that there is a traffic light scoring for that person and, at the moment, they have a red light. It might be as simple as that. The friend of mine who had very substantial issues with her landlord cannot for the life of her understand why it is not possible to get a reference check on a landlord, given the experience that she went through. As I said before—I do not think that there was a response on this—if it is possible that employers who flout the national minimum wage legislation can be included on an open register, it must be possible to explore this for landlords.

On Clause 2, regarding what was said about transparency, in the Citizens Advice survey, 81% of agents’ offices are not publishing full information about their fees. I agree, we could all go to the Property Ombudsman and make a complaint about every single one of these examples. But there is a very simple solution: no letting agent fees to tenants and the costs absorbed by landlords.

Why was there no impact in Scotland? Why was there no substantial increase in rents? Why was there no substantial problem with the letting agency industry, which, by the way, is an entirely uncredited and unqualified industry, and pretty much unregulated? It is the difference between £25 and £150. It is thin air. Will it have an impact on letting agencies? At the moment it costs them only £25 to do a credit check and they charge £150 for it. No, because it is such a mark-up. That explains why in Scotland, according to the research from Shelter, there has been no hike in rents, no reduction in the letting agency sector and no increased costs to landlords as a result of this. The difference seems to be because the sum is so arbitrary.

I know that there was some talk about fixed costs. My understanding, having read up in this area, is that under trading standards that is a little bit complicated. Again, I am happy to explore that but I think in a free market and under trading standards fixed costs in this area might go against some of the other things that the Government may hold dear. It would be worth making sure that we are clear in that area.

In conclusion, this is a very simple single principle that I am pushing here with regard to the letting agents. It is perfectly possible to do. The impact is minimal, if not non-existent, where it has been done before in Scotland. It is worth very serious consideration by this House. There is very little that we can do about some of the more significant housing issues but this is something that with a very small change in legislation we can implement and make a massive change. As I said at the outset, the substantial up-front costs of moving for people who have very limited resources are what we need to focus on when we are considering this Bill.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

House adjourned at 1.27 pm.