Thanks to the Minister for bringing her Bill to this stage today. UKIP agrees with the general principles of the Bill. We've spoken in the past of our wish to ban unwarranted letting agency fees and this Bill does address that issue as part of its general thrust of making it easier for tenants in the private rented sector. Yes, there are currently many unwarranted fees. Leanne Wood mentioned the issue of disproportionate fees, where tenants are charged large amounts for tasks that cost comparatively little. Perhaps even worse than the disproportionate fees is the issue of the lack of transparency when tenants are sometimes charged for things and they don't even know what they're being charged for. So, we do need to address these issues, and this Bill should make the fees in the private rented sector a lot easier to police.

We do have to be wary of excessive regulation, of course, and we do have to keep an eye on the possible unintended consequences. Other Members have mentioned the possibility of rents rising. We did hear from many different people on the local government committee in our inquiry, as our Chairman, John Griffiths, elucidated earlier. There was no clear evidence that arose during the inquiry that, after Scotland passed similar legislation in 2012, there was a rental increase that was connected to the abolition of the fees.

There were a few issues that were kind of loose ends. There was an issue over passporting security deposits, which we raised with the Minister during the inquiry, with one problem facing tenants being that they may still be waiting to get back the security deposit from the property that they're vacating while at the same time being asked to come up with the security deposit for the property they're intending to move into. So, it was raised by at least one member of the committee that, if the intention of the Government was to make life easier for tenants in the private rented sector, then developing some kind of passporting scheme for the deposits would have been a welcome part of the Bill. I appreciate the Minister has said that the Welsh Government is looking at this, but it would be interesting if she could enlighten us further on that aspect today.

We also could do with some clarity on a couple of the specific recommendations. David Melding, I thought, went into some of the shortcomings in the Bill very well, when he looked at the specific recommendations, and I agreed with him on each of those recommendations. The raising of the fixed-penalty notices—the doubling of them—is a welcome development, but, as David mentioned, that may not be enough, because if you have landlords or agents with many properties, they may not find that that's enough of a deterrent and they may deliberately carry on charging fees even if they face a possible £1,000 fine.

I think recommendation 14 is perhaps the most baffling shortcoming of the Bill, as I see it. I can't remember, Minister, what you said the rationale was as to why we couldn't have a system enforcing the repayment of unwarranted letting agency fees. I imagine, or I vaguely recall, it was some legal issue, but perhaps you could enlighten us further as to that when you speak again at the end. Diolch yn fawr iawn.