Speeches by Yang.

“You do have embedded management agreements?”

“In advance of that change, if residents in those managed estates were to agree now, before the new legislation is brought forward, to leave FirstPort or for the local authority to adopt their estates, would you be willing to accept that?”

“Yes.”

“If you had legal right, as the person in the contract with the freeholder, to exit that arrangement, in those cases would you be willing to let residents and local authorities have their say?”

“You are receiving far fewer management fees. In the last two financial years, your turnover has reduced by something like 30 times. Does that reflect the number of people who are leaving your services because they now have right to manage or because freeholders and developers have decided to quit FirstPort?”

“Your investment does not explain your loss in revenue.”

“I am not sure we are going to make progress on this point.”

“That was not the question. The question was, can you explain your massive operating losses for the last few financial years?”

“Many of my residents in new build estates, including freeholders and leaseholders alike, say that they have had informal residents’ association conversations about trying to leave their current property manager, but they cannot because they have embedded management arrangements in their property deeds that essentially …”

“The experience that many of our residents come to us with is that they ask their local managers on their estates for transparency over invoices and service charges, and they are met, time and time again, with professed ignorance. It is very difficult for us, as representatives, to see whether the people they are speaki…”

“I feel like I am not going to get an answer to the question about the collapse in turnover.”

“Ms Riva or Mr King, would you welcome the Government’s new legislation if it did ban such embedded agreements? Yes, or no?”

“Thank you, Mr King, for coming before parliamentarians again. When we spoke about a year ago about the slowness of replies in various estates across my constituency in Reading, you mentioned that the first response time and the end resolution time has reduced by these proportions. Do you have numbers for what proportio…”

“But you do not know the margins on the profit that you make; is that what you are saying?”

“Is it the same case for you, Mr King?”

“I have your accounts for the last financial years that you have reported your accounts. Mr King, FirstPort has a loss in its last two financial years for which there are accounts of £22 million and £25 million respectively. Could you explain this loss? Is this from a loss of clients, such as freeholders and leaseholder…”

“I am Yuan Yang. I am the Labour MP for Earley and Woodley constituency.”

“Mr King, do you not have a responsibility, as the CEO of your company, for filing your accounts?”

“To Ms Riva and Mr King, my colleague, Mr Dillon, asked if you could tell us your profit margin made on management fees, and you both said that you could not. Do you know your overall profit margins for your whole company?”

“You do.”