Clause 9
Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [Lords]
12:00 pm
Pat McFadden (Minister of State (Employment Relations and Postal Affairs), Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform; Wolverhampton South East, Labour)
I do not want to delay the Committee unnecessarily. We have been talking all morning about the job that LBRO is set up to do and whether it fills gaps in the current regulatory market. One such gap is regarding advice to Ministers, which is covered by clause 9. The Hampton review recognises that many of the difficulties that regulatory enforcement poses for business, arise not from any failing by the local authorities, but from the complexity of the system that they sit at the centre of.
We expect that LBRO will work to bring better co-ordination and intelligence to the way that Government Departments and the national regulators work together in setting the framework for local authority enforcement. LBRO will have an insight into how regulation is enforced by local authorities from the perspective both of those local authorities and the businesses subject to the regulation. It is important that the body has the power to advise Government on such matters, and perhaps to challenge the various players in the field in order to make the system more coherent and streamlined. Clause 9 provides such a power and makes provision for LBRO to
“give advice or make proposals to a Minister of the Crown”
regarding the way that local authorities exercise such functions, the effectiveness of the legislation, whether it would be appropriate for other regulatory functions to be exercised by local authorities and other matters relating to that. That is part of LBRO’s job, and its advice function will be an important one.