Clause 22
Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [Lords]
12:30 pm
Pat McFadden (Minister of State (Employment Relations and Postal Affairs), Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform; Wolverhampton South East, Labour)
It is probably prudent to pause for a moment at this point to talk about part 2 of the Bill, to which clause 22 takes us.
So far we have discussed the establishment of the LBRO. We have discussed its powers in relation to advice and guidance to local authorities; we have discussed the make-up of its board, payments to its members, and so on. Part 2 takes us into slightly different territory: its application to regulated persons that carry out an activity in two or more local authorities. This speaks to the very heart of the Hampton report.
We began this morning’s deliberations by talking about two issues identified by the report as problems in the regulatory system as applied at a local level. One of those problems was inconsistency and the other was inflexibility. Inconsistency is at the heart of part 2 of the Bill. Clause 22 limits access to the primary authority scheme to persons—be they business, charity or other organisation—that are regulated by more than one local authority. The intention is to include multi-site retailers and businesses that operate indirectly across local authorities, including, for example, internet sales operations and manufacturers whose goods are sold by another party in a number of local authorities. It will also include some franchises, where the franchisor has extensive control over the compliance standards of its franchisees.