Clause 25
Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [Lords]
12:45 pm
Pat McFadden (Minister of State (Employment Relations and Postal Affairs), Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform; Wolverhampton South East, Labour)
The clause is important because it deals with the establishment of primary authorities. As I said, it is important that all businesses operating across multiple local authorities have some access to this scheme. The Hampton report highlighted two problems. First, not all local authorities are prepared to take on the role, leaving some businesses without an effective regulatory partner. The hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford talked about the importance of that. Secondly, the division of labour between local authorities is sometimes unfair, with some councils taking responsibility for a large number of partnership schemes to the advantage of local authorities elsewhere that may host none.
The clause is designed to tackle those problems by giving businesses more certainty and allowing LBRO to facilitate a fairer distribution of responsibility for hosting the primary authority partnerships. The relationship of primary authorities and enforcement authorities is at the heart of part 2 of the Bill. The clause and those that follow are particularly important in setting up that relationship.