Diolch yn fawr iawn, Lywydd. Well, this has been one of those agreeable occasions where everybody is broadly in agreement, although I have known many such occasions in the past where everybody has been wrong. But I don’t think that this is likely to be one of them. I’m grateful for the support that has been offered by the Conservative Party and by Plaid Cymru. I can say that we, for our part, accept Plaid Cymru’s amendments to our motion.

It was interesting to hear Sian Gwenllian’s point about how, sometimes, devolved parliaments perhaps can be more enlightened than the parliaments from which they emerged. The opposite can also be true, but I’m in favour of competition, generally speaking, and therefore if we can gain from the experience of other devolved parliaments, it’s a very good thing. So, it’s one of the advantages of devolution, which I’m happy to accept.

Both Jenny Rathbone and my colleague Michelle Brown made reference to the fact that it’s a sellers’ market. This is where the bulk of the problem arises from, of course, because the letting agents and the landlords effectively have the whip hand and the tenant does have an inequality of bargaining power, which enables the letting agents to get away with these fees. I hope that Jenny Rathbone is fortunate in the private Member’s Bill ballot as well. As I know she has been a staunch advocate of these proposed changes for many years, it would certainly be welcome if she had the opportunity to introduce such a measure.

In the course of the debate, some of the more unscrupulous charges have been set out in some detail, and it’s quite clear that they are wholly indefensible. Michelle Brown made a very valuable contribution, I think, to the debate in that respect. So, there does seem to be a widespread agreement on the general principle. I can understand the attitude of the Government wanting to look at the experience of such legislation elsewhere, obviously, and the proposals as they are going to be brought in in England. There is a legal obligation to consult, clearly, before such measures are introduced, but we want to emphasise our belief that this is an urgent matter that needs to be dealt with.

So, if we vote against the Labour amendment today, it doesn’t mean that we think that the Government is unreasonable in proposing what it does, but merely because we want to underline the necessity of getting on with the job as quickly as possible. I hope that we will be able to solve this festering sore, which does affect the most vulnerable in society. We should be careful, of course, of causing the housing market to seize up, and therefore shouldn’t, I think, go down the general route of rent control, but I do believe that unscrupulous fees of this kind ought to be made illegal as soon as possible.