Thanks to the Minister for her statement today, and thanks also for the briefing earlier on. As you mentioned, we, UKIP, have been supportive of this kind of move. We did cover the issue of letting agency fees in one of our own debates last year, so it's an area where we are sympathetic to the issues faced by tenants in the private rented sector. On that occasion, all three opposition parties did support moving towards some kind of restriction in letting agency fees. So, it's good to see that the Government is now moving in that direction. 

There have been a lot of problems with things that are often called 'administration charges'—a term that is often a coverall term to cover a variety of sometimes questionable fees. Sometimes, as you mentioned in your statement, the administration charge appears to be much higher than the real cost that will have accrued to the letting agent for carrying out that particular service. Perhaps more worryingly, sometimes tenants—or, to use your own terminology, contract holders—don't even understand what they've been charged for because, at the moment, a key issue is that a lot of these charges are not very transparent. I was glad that you used that term in your statement.

On the other hand, we are also mindful that there has to be a balanced approach, and you've mentioned that the Registered Landlords Association were heavily involved with the consultation, which I think is good, because I suppose, in a way, there are two sides to every story. We need to have a private rented sector as more and more tenants are actually drawn, sometimes by financial imperative, into this sector, and also by the lack of alternatives. So, we need to have a private rented sector and we don't want to make the regulations so onerous that landlords and letting agencies cannot flourish, as long, that is, as their charges are legitimate and they are transparent. So, we have to be wary, as we proceed with this Bill, of unintended consequences. I know a couple of people have used that phrase today already.

The obvious one, I guess, is that, as charges are banned, rents will rise instead. I know Scotland is the ready example, given that they've already moved to restrict letting agency fees. So, it's interesting that there's already this slight contention over the narrative from Scotland over whether the rents have increased there as a result of letting agency fees being restricted. Or is it more the case that they haven't risen as much as they have in England? So, I think we do need to look closely at the evidence from Scotland because it seems to already be in dispute what the evidence actually is.

The upfront burden on tenants was mentioned by David Melding, and one of the things that the RLA have called for is some kind of insurance scheme over deposits—one problem being that tenants are often charged a deposit for moving into a new property while they're still waiting for the deposit to come back from their old property. The RLA see the possibility of an insurance scheme so that these deposits could be transferred between the landlords. So, I wonder what thought you've given to that precise proposal.

The RLA are also calling for more flexibility over bonds where tenants, for instance, have things like pets. I think this is becoming a big issue. Lots of people want to keep pets, which is fair enough, and lots of landlords won't accept tenants with pets. We need to make sure that people with pets can get into tenancies. So, sometimes it may be the case that landlords need to be able to charge extra in terms of the bond to cover things like the cost of cleaning up when the tenancy finishes, because clearly, if you do keep a dog, then it probably is going to impact on the cost of cleaning. So, I think we need to look at that kind of aspect with this legislation.

Bethan Sayed raised the financial education issue, which she has often raised, and I think that you mentioned that that could be incorporated with Rent Smart Wales. So, I'm very interested in how the information is going to be disseminated, if you could give that more thought going forward. I know you seem keen on it, but I'd like a bit more detail on it going forward. Thanks very much.