Clause 39
Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [Lords]
5:15 pm
Pat McFadden (Minister of State (Employment Relations and Postal Affairs), Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform; Wolverhampton South East, Labour)
The clause sets out the first of what could be called a suite of powers and sanctions and is specifically about fixed monetary penalties. Fixed monetary penalties will provide regulators with an effective tool, enabling them to deal quickly with low-level examples of non-compliance, rather than pursuing a costly criminal prosecution. Perhaps here more than anywhere, we see the stark contrast between what might be done under the new regime and the policy available under the current one.
Fixed monetary penalties are aimed at factually simple cases of non-compliance, which may or may not involve culpable conduct. For example, they could be used for strict liability offences, where it is not necessary to show intention to commit the offence, but they should benefit both regulators and business. They should also help to address the compliance deficit identified by Professor Macrory. That is important—one of the points that Professor Macrory made in his report was that not only was the system inflexible, but by having only one main tool to ensure compliance, there was actually a compliance deficit. Low-level non-compliance was either not being prosecuted or, in some high-level non-compliance cases, it was resulting in a fine that did not match the crime involved. It was not only a case of inflexibility; it was about not producing the desired results on compliance.