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Mr. Hurst: I declare an interest as a member of the country's most regulated profession, as I am a solicitor in the firm of Law, Hurst and Taylor. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman makes too strong a point. At present, anybody can walk into an estate agent's office and receive sale particulars and sometimes a glossy brochure. Were film stars or other people of note to offer their properties for sale, all the information that the journalist, and probably the criminal, could want is already available without any check whatever from high street agents.

Mr. Davey: I agree with the Law Society, which is worried that the home information packs may contain much more information than estate agents' particulars—details of burglar alarms, for example. Those certainly do not appear in the information provided by estate agents.
 
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The main issue is whether the packs should be compulsory or voluntary. Our amendments Nos. 110 and 111 would have an effect similar to that of amendment No. 88, tabled by the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes), which we shall support if it is pressed to a vote. They seek to make the provision of packs voluntary. We think that if the content of the packs is set out in law so that everyone knows what will be in them, they may well prove helpful to those buying and selling property, so we should let the market decide. By all means let sellers offer the packs as an added competitive advantage to attract potential buyers, but let us not impose them on the market. That might load extra costs on to people who might then be dissuaded from putting their properties on the market, either because they are short of a few readies or because they are merely speculatively testing the market, having seen a property that they liked at the weekend. Making the packs compulsory could freeze the market.

I wonder whether Professor Barker was asked to look at the new clause. She has produced an important piece of work about housing supply and restrictions on its improvement. Many people, not just in the House but outside, think that this new regulation will make the situation much worse. I bet Professor Barker would have been very alarmed if it had been brought to her attention.

Sir Sydney Chapman: I entirely agree with what the hon. Gentleman is saying. Given that the provision represents a radical departure from the present arrangements governing the buying and selling of homes, would it not be wise for the Government to introduce it as a voluntary measure? If it proves to be as much of a success as its proponents claim, it can always be made compulsory later.

Mr. Davey: As the hon. Gentleman may know, the Law Society has its own transaction scheme, which the Minister praised in Committee. It was designed to streamline and speed up the collecting of information for the buyer, and to help avoid gazumping and gazundering. Some 75 per cent. of buyers have signed up to it, on a voluntary basis. It excludes the search, because people declined to pay for it upfront. The experiment has proved popular, but the Government are ignoring the experience of the scheme by seeking to force detailed information on people.

Amendment No. 109 seeks to ensure that a seller who is marketing his own property need not produce a home information pack. We feel that in the age of the internet, people should be encouraged to use the technology to market their own properties if they so choose, and should be exempt from regulation of this kind. I do not see why the Government are against that sort of DIY home selling, which would be a great competitive spur to this particular market.

4.15 pm

New clause 27 seeks to enable someone to market their home when they have an incomplete pack in circumstances in which reasonable efforts have been made to obtain the missing information. That is necessary because the seller will be reliant on other bodies and organisations to access information for the
 
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home information pack. For example, they might need to obtain service charge information from a landlord or managing agent. What will happen if that landlord or agent delays, imposes unreasonable charges or fails to furnish invoices or receipts for payments made for previous service charges, which people often like to see when they purchase a property? If a seller has made reasonable attempts to put together a home information pack but has been thwarted by people whom they cannot control, it seems unreasonable to prevent them from going ahead and marketing their property. I hope that the Minister can give a full answer to the proposition in new clause 27.

Amendment No. 113 takes up a point already made. We want to make sure that the home inspectors who produce the report are independent. There is a real concern that estate agents, mortgage lenders, building fabric warranty providers and financial product providers will all come together in a vertical integration of the market in which the conflicts of interest will be many and damaging to the consumer interest. The Government are arguing that the measure favours the consumer, but if those sorts of company come together, with home inspectors being part of estate agent firms or financial institutions, consumers will seriously lose out. There are some real vested interests who support this new measure, and if the Government were really standing up for consumers they would understand that, and stop that new cartel in its tracks before it formed.

Amendment No. 114 seeks to amend clause 144 to ensure that the people who provide the packs have adequate indemnity insurance. The Government have been crossing their fingers and hoping that the people who provide the packs will be able to get professional indemnity insurance, although they have been told by the market that that will be very expensive and might exclude many people. That could make the shortage in the supply of people able to carry out inspections even worse. I hope that the Minister will give due consideration to amendment No. 114.

Mr. Clifton-Brown : Amendment No. 114 is the most crucial of the lot, because if the home condition inspectors do not have professional indemnity insurance, no reliance at all will be able to be placed on their inspection reports. When one considers the money involved in buying or selling a house, one realises that the possibility of those inspectors' missing some vital defect in a property could involve many thousands of pounds. If that process is not properly insured, the whole system will fall into disrepute.

I do not see how an insurance company will be able to provide that cover unless the inspectors are properly trained and qualified, a point made by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts). That aspect needs careful thought before the Government introduce home condition reports.

Mr. Davey: I am grateful for that point, which the hon. Gentleman made very well. It brings me to amendment No. 115, which is along similar lines. It seeks to allow sellers, buyers and lenders to bring proceedings where they have relied on information contained in the home condition report that then proves incorrect. It is important that that aspect be clarified. If the Government are doing consumers a service—an
 
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argument that I do not really accept—they need to make sure that the reports work. That means not just that inspectors should have professional indemnity insurance behind them, but that if the reports prove incorrect, the consumer knows that they can go to law, without any problems, and seek redress. I hope that amendment No. 115 will be accepted.

Amendment No. 115 and many of the others that I have tabled seek to make a dreadful proposal slightly better, so I hope that even at this late stage, the Government will take a different tack. I hope that they will support amendment No. 88, support the amendments that my party has tabled, support the new clause of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe, but drop the absurd, outrageous, costly and damaging proposal to make home information packs compulsory.

Mr. Kidney: Fundamentally, the Government seek to make the seller responsible for having all the information needed for the transaction at the beginning, rather than the buyer collecting it in dribs and drabs during the transaction itself, as happens now. We are talking about 1.8 million transactions a year, nearly two thirds of which are in chains, with an average of five transactions per chain. So in a voluntary system, just one non-participant in a chain prevents everybody from benefiting from the Government's scheme. Because of our reliance on such chains under the current system, there is a 33 per cent. transaction failure rate, which is extremely wasteful.

We have heard many times about Maria Coleman, the Bristol estate agent who has a voluntary scheme called "Open Book", through which everything is prepared by the seller at the beginning of the transaction. Her hugely successful voluntary scheme has reduced the failed transaction rate from 33 per cent. to just 3 per cent. It has been running for some seven years, so perhaps Conservative Members can explain to me why there has not been a landslide take-up of such schemes. In fact, Maria Coleman has so many problems with others not following the scheme that she supports compulsion.

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