Clause 34
Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [Lords]
4:45 pm
Pat McFadden (Minister of State (Employment Relations and Postal Affairs), Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform; Wolverhampton South East, Labour)
There are two amendments that one can guarantee will be moved during the passage of any Bill. One is the amendment that turns the word “may” into “shall” and the other will raise negative and affirmative order-making powers. Therefore, such an amendment was always going to come up.
Clause 34 is specifically about the order-making powers under part 2 of the Bill. There are various other order-making powers that are subject to affirmative resolution procedures, which we will discuss in part 3. This is about the order-making powers in part 2. There are four specific order-making powers in this part. The first of these, under clause 24, allows for the legislative scope of the primary authority scheme to be defined for Scotland and Northern Ireland. The next two orders in clauses 28 and 29 allow for exclusions and exemptions to the primary authority scheme to be specified. We discussed those in the debate on clause 29.
Finally, schedule 4 allows for detailed provision to be made for procedures in which matters raised by the primary authority scheme go to arbitration. The Government made it clear in their submission to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee that we believed these to be essentially technical matters, and that the negative resolution procedure was appropriate in those circumstances. None of the powers can be used in a way that would either extend the scope of the Bill or make other amendments to primary legislation—there is no sense of a Henry VIII power. We therefore believe that the negative resolution procedure is appropriate.
Two issues were raised in the debate on this in the other place. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee did not comment on the negative resolution procedure. However, that was on the condition that the orders establishing Northern Ireland and Scotland’s scope should not specify functions that did not already appear in schedule 3, which we discussed this morning. This is still about those headings set out in the enactments in schedule 3 about trading standards, fire safety and so on. It does not go broader than that.
There was also a view expressed in the other place that it should be made clear that the exemption orders should be required to exclude cases in which serious harm might result from the delay that the primary authority provisions could create. We are happy to make both of those changes, which are reflected in the Bill. We will shortly be consulting on the orders and will focus the consultation on enforcement specialists in local authorities and businesses, because they are likely to be highly technical, as I have said.
There is always a debate about whether orders should be subject to the negative or affirmative procedures. We certainly do not take the blanket view that the negative procedure should be used throughout the Bill. As I have said, order-making powers under part 3 will be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, but we feel that the negative resolution procedure should suffice in relation to the orders covering the issues in this part of the Bill—particularly because the matter has been discussed in the other place and considered by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee.