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21 Jan 2008 : Column GC1
Grand Committee
Monday, 21 January 2008.
The Committee met at half-past three.
[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (BARONESS McINTOSH OF HUDNALL) in the Chair.]
Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]
(First Day)
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall): I remind the Committee that, in the event of a Division in the Chamber, the Committee will adjourn immediately the Division Bell sounds and will resume after 10 minutes.
Baroness Wilcox moved Amendment No. A1:
The noble Baroness said: This is a probing amendment to draw the attention of the Committee to the apparent disparity between the stated aims of the Bill in the Long Title and the clause that immediately succeeds it. Despite the Bill promising deregulation to make provision for,
the office to facilitate that is named the “Local Better Regulation Office”. While Her Majesty’s Government may have pulled the wool over the eyes of the noble Lord, Lord Jones of Birmingham, they have not succeeded with us on these Benches. Better regulation is not deregulation. I also suggest through this amendment’s removal of the adjective “better” that, as the office stands in the Bill, “Local Better Regulation Office” is a misnomer for something that will produce more hideously complex and heavily bureaucratic regulation.
While the Bill promises a change from Her Majesty’s Government’s past record on regulation, I fear that no such promise will be fulfilled. This is the third piece of supposedly deregulatory legislation to pass through Parliament since 2000. In 2001, Her Majesty’s Government introduced an Act that produced only 27 deregulations in four years. In the same period, more than 600 new regulations were introduced. How can a Bill that creates a fantastically complicated primary authority partnership, which potentially allows one local authority to have jurisdiction over another, even pretend that it is deregulatory? I believe that the Bill will cause resentment between local authorities, resentment between big businesses competing to secure the best primary authority and resentment from small businesses in relation to their larger competitors, which will have an unfair chance to choose their primary authority. All that resentment will burden the Local Better Regulation Office with more complaints to field and more and more disputes to oversee.
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I wonder whether I am being unreasonable to suggest that, cast in this problem-fixing role, the office will be inhibited from proaction in either properly implementing better regulation or seeing whether better regulation could be implemented. As I said at Second Reading—I shall reiterate it—all that the Bill does is to introduce more regulation in an optimistic bid to mend a broken system. I would be much reassured if the Minister could tell me where in the Bill is the impetus to deregulate. I do not find it anywhere. I beg to move.
Lord Borrie: I oppose the amendment. It may have been tabled—I apologise if I am incorrect—to have a bit of fun at the beginning of our debates. Almost the whole Bill, perhaps with the exception of Part 4, is concerned with better regulation. The Bill sets up the Local Better Regulation Office, which will try to achieve, by way of monitoring and review, the better co-ordination of regulation that otherwise might be inconsistent from one local authority to another, for example.
The Better Regulation Task Force, which has been in existence for some years, used to be called the Deregulation Task Force. However, it was realised that that was something of a misnomer, because sadly, if only the noble Baroness would recognise it, regulation is needed across a whole range of matters, whether health and safety, food standards or consumer protection, an issue that has, I know, always been close to her heart. If the amendment is not frivolous—in a way, I would prefer that it was—but is meant to be serious, much of Parts 1 to 3 of the Bill, which are concerned with making regulation better, would not have any sense. To call the LBRO the “Deregulation Office” would be to misname it, given its job according to the Bill.
Viscount Eccles: I wonder whether the Minister agrees that, within the definition of “better regulation”, you could include less regulation than you might otherwise have.
Baroness Hamwee: That is exactly the point that I was going to make: better regulation must encompass deregulation. Rather than spending time on the road down which the noble Baroness tempts us, I should like to observe that it might have been desirable to call the new office the “Better Local Regulation Office”, rather than the Local Better Regulation Office, as that would have described what its job is to be.
Lord Bach: I am grateful to the noble Baroness, regardless of whether she was trying to have some fun, for moving the amendment and allowing me the opportunity to attempt to explain why the Local Better Regulation Office has been established and, indeed, why the Government chose to name it as they did. As the Committee knows, in 2005 Philip Hampton, in his important report, reported to the Government on the enforcement of regulation in the UK. He noted that local authorities regulate an extremely diverse range of issues and he drew attention to the debt that we all owe local authorities
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Local authority regulatory enforcers sit at the centre of this system, which has grown up over decades and has been shaped and reshaped by numerous Governments, including the noble Baroness’s, through initiatives and regulators. The system is inevitably complex, even very complex. Because of this complexity, local authority regulatory enforcement, as I think is generally accepted—
[The Sitting was suspended for a Division in the House from 3.37 to 3.47 pm.]
Lord Bach: I was telling the Committee that the system that has been set up is complex and local authority regulatory enforcement has not always been as effective as it might have been. LBRO has been established to address that problem and to drive forward essential improvements in local authority regulation services. Its core aim is to support local authorities to regulate more effectively. It will be judged, of course, on its ability to reduce burdens on business and to build the capability of local authority regulatory services to deliver what has come to be known as the better regulation agenda. LBRO will work with local authorities to build on the many examples of good practice that are already emerging on the ground.
In addition, LBRO will use its statutory functions to ensure that local authorities comply with the principles of better regulation and to prepare and publish a concise list of national priorities for local authority regulatory services. While the organisation will have to work alongside national regulators and central government to achieve its objective, and may well advise the Government to implement deregulatory measures, its central concern—here, I am repeating myself—is to ensure the implementation of the better regulation agenda at the local authority level.
There are about 400 separate local authorities’ regulatory powers. Sometimes, hardly surprisingly, those powers are used in a conflicting or uncertain way. We argue—we very much hope that the Committee agrees with us—that it is better for those that are regulated and for the regulators that this organisation exists. I emphasise that regulations are vital for a civilised society generally, so just to look to deregulate and not to use deregulation as part of the better regulation process would be an error.
We are committed to regulatory reform. The noble Baroness’s Government were committed to regulatory reform. As the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, told us at Second Reading, this is not easy. These are not easy measures, but all Governments have to do what they can to make sure that regulations are better. We have listened to businesses, the public sector and voluntary organisations and we are currently undertaking one of the most radical reform agendas in the world to strip away unnecessary and burdensome regulations.
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In moving the amendment, the noble Baroness seemed to attack the idea of the primary authority. I would be disappointed if she and her party maintain that attitude because, as I understand it, the idea is very much supported by a number of those who have been in touch with her and with us. I did not detect from her Second Reading speech that she was unutterably opposed to the primary authority, but when we get to that stage in the Committee’s proceedings—who knows when that will be?—I look forward to hearing what she says about it.
I am in danger of making a Second Reading speech. I refer noble Lords to the speech made by my noble friend Lord Jones of Birmingham at Second Reading, who put much better than me—
Lord Bach: I insist. He put much better than me the advantages of better regulation. I thank the noble Baroness for raising this issue and I ask her to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Wilcox: I thank the Minister for his response. This is the beginning of a very long four days—minimum—and the amount of amendments that we have tabled shows that an awful lot of people have an awful lot of worries about what was to be an awful little Bill. It is a very little Bill; after all, it is the third shot at a regulatory Bill. Here we go again. We know how much regulation people are suffering from. We do not want to go back to Second Reading speeches, but we are saying that it is a worry that small businesses spend three days a month coping with bureaucracy when they could be out there running their businesses.
I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, thought that I was playing around. It has always been a great strength in this House that sometimes the most important things are said with a light touch. I felt particularly in this Room, where we are all rather cheek by jowl and where we will all be together for a few days, that what I was saying was so important that it could cope with the light touch of a girl who went to a girls’ boarding school where we all behaved like that all the time. It is amazing what we get done.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, offered a different way of putting this. All in all, what we are saying as we start is that we are worried that this will
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I know that trading standards bodies are worried about some of the things that are happening and that LACORS is finding things difficult. When I asked LACORS and the Trading Standards Institute for an organisational chart in our joint meeting, they did not have one to give me, although they have since done their darnedest to produce one for me. I know, because I checked with the Clerk, that it is not appropriate for me to talk to a document that the other Members of the Grand Committee have not received, but I would be happy to show the Minister a tiny glimpse of the simplicity of what this will look like when it is done and to give him a copy of the document. This is what we are trying to work with and what everyone else will be trying to work with. Although I see that I am not going to get anywhere with my amendment, I hope that it has helped us to start airing our serious worries and concerns, albeit in a light-touch way. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Schedule 1 [LBRO: supplementary]:
Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 1:
“( ) At least 25% of the ordinary members shall have current or recent direct significant experience in local government.”
The noble Baroness said: The amendment takes us—a little oddly right at the start of our consideration of the Bill—to the first schedule, which provides the detail of what is much more easily expressed as LBRO than the Local Better Regulation Office—as I said when I spoke to the previous amendment, I find the order of the words quite curious. The amendment deals with the criteria for membership. Other amendments dealing with membership have also been tabled but have been degrouped from this one.
I am aware of the appointments that have been made to the company that already exists and from which the statutory organisation will take over. This is not, however, simply a matter of who is appointed at the very beginning; it is a question of who are the members throughout the life of the organisation, whatever that life may be. I hope that current members would not need this to be said, but I will say it anyway as a matter of courtesy; this is not an attack on any of them. The Liberal Democrats’ main concern about Parts 1 and 2 is that—the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, has already alluded to this—we may end up with a greater burden on local authorities rather than a reduction of the burden. I therefore felt it important to ensure that the board members of the LBRO were as well informed about the practice of local government as they were about
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on the part of at least 25 per cent of the ordinary members. I beg to move.
4 pm
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts: First, I declare an interest as a director of various companies, both private and public, at least some of which are on the Stock Exchange list. They are all shown in the Register of Members’ Interests.
I have some sympathy with the noble Baroness’s point and the objectives of her amendment. The way in which the structure of the LBRO has been laid out in parts 2 and 3 of Schedule 1 is very loose and quite difficult, and may over time be open to some form of abuse and cosiness. However, I think that her amendment suffers in two ways. First, there is a technical problem, because using percentages on small boards produces some odd results. Let us say that the board is finally constituted of six members—it can have between five and 10 members. In that case, 25 per cent would mean two members from local government. Percentages are probably the wrong way to go about this. I would prefer to see it expressed as representation from the area that the noble Baroness is concerned about, which is local government.
My more fundamental point is that it is not just local government that is concerned with the impact of the Bill. A minute ago, the Minister, in his opening, quasi-Second Reading speech, reminded us that the intention of the Bill is to reduce the burdens on business, so it would be appropriate for there to be some representation for those who are going to be in the regulated community: commerce and industry in our cities, towns and villages across the country. They will have real-life, practical experience to offer about how LBRO is working, or not as the case may be.
Secondly, there are several clauses in the Bill concerned with links with Wales: Clause 10 is entitled “Advice to Welsh Ministers” and Clause 16 is entitled “Guidance or directions by Welsh Ministers”. In addition to having all that stuff, which is slightly ex post in the sense that it is the cart after the horse, it would be better to find a way to have some Welsh involvement in the LBRO.
While I am extremely sympathetic to what the noble Baroness is seeking to achieve and I agree that we need more precision about how the LBRO will be constituted, I would like the amendment to be less prescriptive about percentages and to include a chance to bring in some of the other people who will be affected, particularly those in Wales and in the business/commercial community.
Lord Borrie: I, too, am sympathetic to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who mentioned more than once the need for people with real experience of local
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Given the significance of this Act, as it will be, in relation to local government, I find it difficult to imagine that the Minister’s choice will not inevitably include people who have experience of local government. However, like the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, I feel that other people who are regulated—businessmen, commercial people and people from businesses of all kinds—probably ought to be represented. In addition and—if I may be forgiven for saying so—perhaps even more important are people who can be said to represent the public, in whose interest the regulatory scheme is meant to be. Those who are being regulated may be represented, but it is important that people representing the public in general should also be on the LBRO.
The wording of the amendment is surely much too prescriptive and restrictive in its approach. It is perhaps difficult to follow the sense of “recent”, “direct” and “significant”; lawyers such as the noble Baroness and I could argue for a long time over whether anybody came within those interesting categories. That emphasises that the wording is too restrictive. There must be an element of trust in those who make the choices. It is inconceivable that local government, both elected and official members, would not be well represented not just now but into the indefinite future.
Lord Lyell of Markyate: The amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, gives us an opportunity to ask about the local aspect. I sympathise with her objectives. One of my worries about the Bill is that little discretion will be left to the elected members at the level of the locality.
I declare an interest as a small farmer. Farming is highly regulated, and necessarily so. But leaving that aside and looking at the wider environment, one often hears grumbles about a particular official overdoing things. In those cases, people can talk to their local councillor and the message feeds back. A lighter touch often, and sensibly, arises. I would be grateful to know, now that we have the Local Better Regulation Office—everybody recognises, although you have to read the Bill pretty carefully, that it is actually central and national—how these local concerns are to be fed into the system. I am afraid that diktats will come from on high; perhaps that is an unkind way of putting it for the LBRO. The Hampton principles will be asked for.
I notice that Professor Macrory says in a lot of his writing that penalties are not big enough and costs should be required. One can see Ministers under
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Baroness Wilcox: We support the thoughts of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. Having listened to the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, my noble friend Lord Hodgson and my noble and learned friend Lord Lyell, I can see that this is perhaps not exactly the right way to have done this. However, we are on to something. The amendment would ensure that at least some members of the new Local Better Regulation Office would have experience in dealing with the demands and rigours of local government.
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