Clause 1
Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [Lords]
10:30 am
Mark Prisk (Shadow Minister, Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform; Hertford and Stortford, Conservative)
I am grateful to the Minister for those brief but helpful opening remarks. He said that the clause is short, but equally—in his words—it is essential. It establishes the Local Better Regulation Office, which we will perhaps shorten to LBRO with your permission, Mr Chope. The provision follows from the Hampton review, which looked at the whole way in which risk-based regulation should proceed. It is, in essence, the Government response to the need for raising quality and improving the narrowing wide variance in how local authority regulatory services operate.
We are looking at not just trading standards, but environmental health and matters such as licensing. There are several concerns, not least the fact that we are being asked to believe that a single organisation—a reasonably small organisation—will be able to deliver a significant change in regulatory practice for nearly 500 different local authorities. Effecting the kind of improvements that Ministers seek, especially for the worst regulators, would need, in my view and the view of many of those involved, a considerable change in the internal management, training and culture of those organisations. We are being asked to agree to a small organisation taking on what is a very significant task. My question to the Minister, therefore, is how will the LBRO deliver that change to so many different organisations?