Speeches by Yang.

“Given that you have the right to exit these agreements right now, as the managing agent, would you be willing to exercise that right if your residents wanted it?”

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

“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 …”

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

“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?”

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

“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?”

“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…”

“These are your public accounts.”

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

“We will look into Will Stone’s suggestion about “the regulation of” rather than “the service charges of” and also the substantive wording. Great; thank you.”

“I am not familiar with the wording for substantive debates. I don’t know whether anyone—”

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

“Sure.”

“Is it a substantive debate, rather than a general debate, that you are proposing? Is that what you are saying?”

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

“Yes, I am very happy to broaden it to regulation of the sector or of the company. Coming off the back of the previous debate on service charges, I thought it would be beneficial to look at the issue from the business perspective and to talk about a specific business and its functioning, as opposed to service charges in…”

“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…”

“Thank you, Chair. FirstPort is the largest property managing agent in the UK, as I am sure you know. The debate would follow a series of informal sessions that different party groupings have had with FirstPort over the last year. Labour MPs, Lib Dem MPs and Conservative MPs have separately had scrutiny sessions with th…”

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