Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:38 pm on 19 March 2019.
I agree with the concern that Leanne Wood expresses—I agree with it, but we think that our amendments put a better regime in place, subject to the affirmative procedure of the Assembly, to ensure that we have a complete list of default fees that are prohibited, which can be updated as time goes by and which can take into account all other issues that arise. So, for example, the Tenant Fees Act 2019 in England allows for default payments only in a case of late rent or loss of keys, that's true, but it also, where the tenancy agreement contains any provision that has been breached, allows for the recovery of a payment. And so we wish to head off any suggestion that the contracts themselves could be adapted in order to disguise default payments of that sort, and we think that our amendments achieve that in a more satisfactory fashion.