Lorely
Burt: I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss the new
clause because important issues needed to be expressed, as did the
concerns of local authorities, in particular. I am grateful to the
Minister for his comments and, on occasion, the reassurances that he
has given. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
motion. Motion
and clause, by leave,
withdrawn.
New
Clause
5Compliance
plan ‘(1) A primary authority
may, after consultation with a regulated person, publish a compliance
plan in respect of that person.
(2) A compliance plan under subsection (1) shall be
a plan containing information regarding the regulated
person. (3) A compliance plan
under subsection (1) may, in particular, set out information which may
be of use to other local authorities, which may be enforcing
authorities in respect of the regulated person, regarding that
person’s operation
including— (a) processes
and procedures employed by the regulated person to ensure compliance
with legal requirements relating to relevant
functions; (b) planned
improvements in that person’s premises or processes which affect
compliance; (c) planned
employee training relating to
compliance; (d) external
accreditation or audit relating to
compliance; (e) suggested
priorities for inspections and other interventions;
and (f) other information of
use to local authorities in carrying out their regulatory
functions. (4) LBRO may publish
compliance plans and bring them to the notice of relevant local
authorities. (5) The primary
authority may from time to time revise compliance plans following
consultation with the regulated person.’.—[Lorely
Burt.] Brought
up, and read the First
time.
Lorely
Burt: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second
time. The
new clause would broaden the scope of the suggested inspection plans to
enable the primary authorities to publish a broad range of information
about businesses that would be of benefit to other local authorities
when exercising their functions. Furthermore, it would remove the
bureaucracy associated with such plans by removing the requirements for
written notifications and justifications if, for any reason, a local
authority needs to carry out an inspection in response to local
circumstances that fall outside the approach detailed in the published
plan. Clause
30 would have limited value in helping local authorities effectively
co-ordinate and target their enforcement activities. It focuses only on
planned inspections, which are only a small part of the regulatory work
of regulators. The new clause allows for the publication of information
that is far more useful to councils and enables regulated persons or
entities to get information to all councils about safeguard systems and
planned improvements. The clause would also fetter local
authorities’ ability to respond at a local level to local
issues, and it would add a level of bureaucracy that ultimately has no
impact. The
new clause would still require a local authority to have regard to any
published compliance plan, but it would remove the requirement for it
to notify and justify to a primary authority why it acted in a way that
did not fall within a published plan. It adds no value for a primary
authority to stop another local authority acting outside the plan. A
regulated person or entity has the right to complain via a local
authority’s complaints procedure and, if necessary, via the
independent local government ombudsman or judicial review if it
considers that a local council has acted
inappropriately. If
a primary authority can set out in the plan how often inspections
should take place, I am concerned that the plan will lack the
flexibility to deal with the very situation to which Lord Jones
referred in another place. I cite the example of inspectors at the
Tesco store at Olive avenue, Coventry, which is not a million miles
away from my constituency. They undertook five inspections
of the store, four of which were in response to customer complaints, and
alleged that food was on sale past its use-by date. In total, 142 items
of food were found available for sale past their use-by date. Despite
alerting both branch managers and Tesco head office on each and every
occasion, the failings within the store were not rectified. By the
fourth visit, the situation was getting worse and officers discovered
73 items on sale past their use-by date, including 11 that were 10 days
past it. The point of
the story is that Tesco began its submissions by apologising to the
court for its failings and attempting to argue that its due diligence
system was good, even though it accepted that it had not been correctly
implemented this time. It argued that the failings were due to human
error and placed the blame on the store manager. Clearly, the court
decided otherwise, and Tesco was eventually fined £133,400 with
£8,976 in costs. The point is that the local store failed to act
on what was an acceptable company policy. In such cases, the primary
authority could not be expected to know as well as the local authority
which local stores were failing to comply with company policy. It could
therefore set an inspection regime based on the assumption that a
nationally agreed process was being implemented everywhere. As a
result, a local authority might be prevented from undertaking
inspections at a store that was not living up to national standards,
and nothing would be done until an outbreak of food poisoning or, in a
different type of environment, an accident.
Mr.
McFadden: To some extent, my difficulty with this new
clause is similar to my difficulty with the last one. The primary
authority principle tries to give the regulator some sense of clarity
and consistency about what to expect. The inspection plans set out in
clause 30, which this new clause would replace, are part of doing that.
Clause 30(3) gives examples of what could be in an inspection plan,
mentioning
“the frequency
at which, or circumstances in which, inspections should be carried
out;” and
“what an
inspection should consist
of”. The
list is not exhaustive and the Government expect inspection plans to
include other information such as recommendations, enforcement and
information on a wide range of issues relating to a business with which
a primary authority has a partnership. The guide to the Bill, which I
have referred to several times, includes some of those issues,
suggesting details of improvements that a business is undertaking to
improve its health and safety procedures, or details of ongoing
problems relating to compliance that other local authorities should pay
particular regard to. The issues in the new clause can be addressed in
the inspection plan in clause 30. LBRO will take the issues raised into
account when giving guidance to local authorities on implementing the
inspection plans.
I have
another point about the hon. Lady’s new clause. I am not sure
that what she said was correct. She said that the new clause still
required the enforcing authority to have regard to the plan—I am
not sure that it does. It removes the key requirement for local
authorities to have regard to a registered inspection plan when
undertaking inspections and to notify the primary authority before
departing from it. This is not only a replacement
for the inspection plan; it puts a far lower level of onus on the
enforcing authority to pay any heed to it. The Government expect that
inspection plans will help to reduce unnecessary business inspections
and facilitate knowledge sharing between primary and enforcing
authorities. The compliance plan, as set out in the new clause, would
not provide for that, because it would break the relationship whereby
the enforcing authority has to have regard to the plan. Achieving those
aims rests on ensuring that enforcing authorities have regard to an
inspection plan and that they inform the primary authority of the
reasons that they might depart from such a
plan. 2.30
pm The
hon. Lady talked about the need for flexibility, which is absolutely
right. Of course we need flexibility in dealing with, for example, the
problem of selling out-of-date food. That was a fair point. Inspection
plans should always allow for the capacity to respond effectively to
emergencies or, in particular, local circumstances, and plans will need
LBRO sign-off to ensure that they are not unreasonable or totally
inflexible. Through the primary authority principle, and the inspection
plans in particular, we are trying to promote a relationship that
offers consistency to those regulated, and a dialogue between local
circumstances and the primary authority. I am afraid that, on those
counts, her new clause would take us away from the aims of the Bill, so
I hope that she will not press it to a
vote.
Lorely
Burt: I thank the Minister for his enlightening comments.
I still feel that my proposal has many merits, particularly on
information sharing and the spreading of best practice among local
authorities. However, I take on board a number of his points, and I do
not wish to press the new clause. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
motion. Motion
and clause, by leave,
withdrawn. Ordered, That
certain written evidence already reported to the House be appended to
the proceedings of the Committee.—[Mr.
McFadden.] Question
proposed, That the Chairman do report the Bill, as amended, to the
House.
Mr.
McFadden: I thank the Committee for the way in which our
business has been conducted over the past couple of days. In
particular, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford for the
questions that he put to me on clause 65—it was a welcome and
enlightening intervention. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for
Amber Valley, who serves on the Regulatory Reform Committee, for
bringing her expertise to our deliberations. My hon. Friend the Member
for Glasgow, North kept us in line in regard to Scottish law and gave
us some legal advice, which I think in former life might have cost us a
great deal more. Her help was extremely valuable. I resisted the
attempts by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud to divert us into a
discussion on the merits or otherwise of two-tier and single-tier local
government. I would like to thank all my other hon. Friends for their
contributions. I
thank the hon. Member for Solihull, who has been labouring under
extreme sickness—from the sound of her coughing—and I
hope that she gets well soon. She
moved a number of amendments, and raised a number of issues, that were
also raised in another place. They are important issues, and we take
them very seriously. Of course, I also thank the hon. Member for
Hertford and Stortford, who has probed and occasionally pressed with
great skill and courtesy, for the way in which he has conducted the
debate on the Bill and his amendments. I am conscious that there are a
couple of points on which I have said that I will write to him, and I
have not forgotten those. Finally, of
course, I wish to thank you, Mr. Chope, for your skilful,
impartial and enlightening guidance in getting us through the Bill over
the last couple of days. This is, as the hon. Member for Hertford and
Stortford said, an important Bill, if a technical one. In all the
discussion of the individual clauses and amendments, we should not lose
sight of the aims, which, as I have said, are to tackle the two
problems of inconsistency and inflexibility in the current regulatory
regime. If we manage to do that, we have done a significant service to
the general public, to those who are regulated, and we will also have
saved business in the country a significant sum of money—an
estimated sum of up to £200 million—in regulatory costs.
That is important because we want business to concentrate on the
business of doing business, rather than the kind of costs that can
hopefully be reduced by legislation such as
this.
Mr.
Prisk: At the beginning of our deliberations I said that I
would try to be precise in scrutiny and concise in my remarks, and
although I have not been entirely perfect in those terms, I hope that I
have not detained the Committee longer than was necessary. We have had
some useful debates. We have seen at least eight concessions, or
clarifications, from the Minister on the way that the law will work;
they are crucial to those whom it will affect. He has just alluded to
the fact that there will be two or three occasions when he needs to
write to us as a Committee to set out the Government’s position.
We fully understand, and it is important that that is on public record.
When those concessions or clarifications are viewed in combination with
the dozen or more important concessions acceded to in the other place,
it can be seen that Parliament has undertaken its duty of proper,
effective and focused scrutiny.
It falls to
me to extend a few thanks. I should like to thank the Minister for his
considered approach to my probing and pressing on various matters in
Committee. I know that very often people outside this place assume that
Prime Minister’s questions is the sole way that we can do our
business, and although that is important—indeed, very important,
but occasionally some Members get a little carried away, although
obviously not on my side—what is important, nevertheless, is
deliberations of the type that we have had. They have been measured and
considered, and I thank the Minister for that.
I also extend
my thanks to my hon. Friends, particularly my hon. Friend the Member
for Billericay, who has been a tremendous support, and other hon.
Members who have made individual and particular contributions. Could I
also, as the person who has been more than happy to table one or two
amendments, thank the Clerks and Officers of the House, who are
fantastic in the way in which they patiently take us through measures
that are self-evidently nonsensical and turn them into something that
has a semblance of order? I am very grateful to them for
that.
Last but by no
means least, indeed most importantly, I should like to thank you,
Mr. Chope, for the light-touch and speedy way in which you
have regulated our
proceedings.
Lorely
Burt: The Committee has been a shining example of how we
can work together as a Committee, composed of Government and Opposition
parties, in a concise and constructive way to examine clause by clause
a Bill that had already greatly benefited from examination and
amendment in another place. Our work was not unduly onerous, so I
should like to convey my thanks, particularly to the Clerks, who have
laboured with my strange and unusually phrased amendments, and have
turned them into something acceptable. I thank the Minister for the
helpful and constructive way in which he has dealt with the queries and
amendments that I
have raised. Finally, I thank you, Mr. Chope, for your wise
guidance during the
proceedings.
The
Chairman: I have always been in favour of self-regulation,
and what has happened during the proceedings of this Committee is an
exemplary example of self-regulation. I am grateful to the Minister for
his comments, and to the hon. Members for Hertford and Stortford and
for Solihull for what they have had to say. I should like to echo their
thanks to the Clerks of the House, to the police, to Hansard,
the Badge Messengers and everybody who has enabled our proceedings
to move so smoothly. The person who will probably be most thankful for
all this is the hon. Member for Carlisle who will not be troubled as
co-Chairman of the Committee.
Question
put and agreed
to. Bill,
as amended, to be
reported. Committee
rose at twenty minutes to Three
o’clock.
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