Member

Moving on to Amendment 128, which is also a probing amendment, in Scotland, of course, this is coped with—in my direct experience—simply by having a larger deposit. The deposit in Scotland is two months. I am afraid I have rounded two months down, which is why I have increased the deposit to eight weeks. But this would provide a level of cover. In Scotland, it drives the way in which landlords present the properties. So, you present properties with hard floors so you have much less of a problem with things such as infestations, and you present properties knowing that you are probably going to have to replace bits of wood lower down on the wall that might have been chewed. Therefore there is in Scotland an operational market that has worked on this basis for some time, and I felt that was a reasonable introduction of a separate idea which would allow for the landlord to have some comfort when he was allowing a pet into the house.