Lord Maude. Transparency. Open Markets. Private Redress. (644)

To Francis Maude and the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Secretary.

For Clarity - Attempt 644.

644. Lord Maude. Transparency. Open Markets. Private Redress.

Dear Lord Maude and Mr Clark,

Lord Maude, in your article for today's Telegraph,

"Tories must embrace capitalism to prepare Britain for Brexit and reconnect with the young"

you don't say how the entrepreneurial young (who are predominantly Remainers) will embrace your vision of transparent and open capitalism.

Mr Maude, what are, "open" markets? How do they differ from dysfunctional markets? Or captured markets? Or rigged markets? And what happened to the revolution in transparency you once promised?

You once stated that,

"not releasing data is a last resort." 

(www.gov.uk/government/speeches/francis-maude-open-data-and-government-transparency-speech-in-sao-paulo)

Transparency was to be at the very heart of your reforming agenda.

What happened to derail it?

Ombudsman Services:Property really is a last resort for the consumer. They release very little data and their so-called, "financial awards" are derisory.

A redress scheme that doesn't release much in the way of data is like a Bible with only a couple of commandments or capitalism without effective regulation - a sinner's paradise.

Shouldn't the market in private redress and private civil justice be a beacon - world class, a gold standard of probity and excellence with free-flowing data on its performance, readily available to the consumer?

How is it then possible that one such scheme, TPOS is able to award complainants on average £531 and yet another - Ombudsman Services:Property (appointed by the regulator RICS) only a miserly 50 quid?

Q. Lord Maude, where was the transparency  and openness you promised when we asked the government monitors of this government approved scheme what had happened to its Customer Satisfaction Reports and were told - incorrectly - that the same questions would be asked by the new research company monitoring OS:Property's performance?

   Q. Lord Maude, where is that data and why is it being withheld?

To reduce financial awards from £1.511.76p in 2010 o 50 quid by 2016, to us, appears to be incredibly enterprising on the part of the OS:Property  and seems to create a lot of wealth for their inefficient fee-paying surveyors.

 

It must be saving inefficient and inept surveyors millions - in classic economics aren't weak and inefficient firms supposed to go the wall to be replaced by those who are efficient?

This is a classic win-win situation for poorly regulated surveyors who, according to the OFT, have created practices that do not work in the customer's interest. Those practices would now appear to have extended to the less than open market in private redress because there was no effective regulatory oversight to prevent it from happening.

Let's be open about this, this is a dysfunctional, poorly regulated rigged market that has captured the, "redress" end of it and very effectively brought pay-outs down to 50 quid. It must save the industry millions whilst at the same time protecting inept and incompetent surveyors who would have otherwise reformed or gone to the wall.

  
   In short, RICS regulated surveyors' inefficiencies have very efficiently been dumped on     to their dissatisfied and, now newly impoverished and very stressed clients, who in    good faith paid   a  service, didn't receive it and subsequently became the victims of          
   private civil justice.

This is capitalism at its very worst. Otherwise things would be very different.

   As Christopher Hamer the former TPOS Ombudsman once said, "Why don' regulators get
   it right in the first place?"

Q. Lord Maude, why doesn't RICS - for the public good - get it right in the first

   place is it to protect their inefficient Members who would otherwise go bust?
   Q. Lord Maude, what place has such practices in open market capitalism?

Q. Lord Maude, isn't time politicians were open about the rigged market in private redress?

Q. Mr Clark, why is there such a wide variation in private redress between the schemes operating it? Why are TPOS average financial awards - £531 when Ombudsman Services:Property's only 50 quid?

Yours sincerely,

Steve Gilbert - Workstocknumber - 510458.

The Ombudsmans61percent Campaign is at: www.blogspot.com - Ombudsmans61percent and www.facebook.com Ombudsmans Sixtyone-percent.