Can I again place on record why we'll not be supporting Plaid Cymru's amendment 62 in this group? Again, I don't think it strikes the right balance between tenants and landlords, and, as I said previously, trying to build a housing market that is fair to everyone ought to be central to what we are doing. By defining default fees as specifically as this amendment does and by deleting a breach in the terms of the contract from a qualifying default, I think that this would leave landlords vulnerable to actions that could be the clear and deliberate fault of the tenant and leave the landlords without any effective means of response. 

As the Government said at Stage 2, there may be other legitimate situations where the contract holder is at fault and where a landlord may seek repayment from the contract holder over the course of a contract, and these may differ from contract to contract. Such a restrictive limitation to a contract as the Plaid amendment suggests would be harmful to the relationship between contract holders and landlords. And landlords may be extremely reluctant to let their properties in this way with such a restriction.

However, if I could talk to the other amendments in this group, both Plaid and the Government have put forward similar amendments in relation to the prescribed limits on default fees. In this regard, I will be supporting Plaid Cymru's version, namely amendment 63 and its consequential amendment 59, because I do think that any prescribed limit that is set in regulations should be subject to the utmost scrutiny.