Clause 26
Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [Lords]
4:00 pm
Pat McFadden (Minister of State (Employment Relations and Postal Affairs), Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform; Wolverhampton South East, Labour)
I was coming to the conclusion of my remarks on amendment No. 16 at the end of the previous sitting. Essentially, as the hon. Member for Solihull said, those remarks deal with whether the relationship can be forced. That is at the heart of the question.
There are a number of safeguards in clause 26 regarding the primary authority relationship. It mentions, for example, that the Local Better Regulation Office may only nominate a local authority if
“the authority and the regulated person have agreed in writing”
or when
“the regulated person has requested LBRO to make a nomination under section 25(1)...and LBRO considers the authority suitable for nomination”.
We want to give LBRO powers on such matters, partly because we think that there could be unfairness if many authorities simply opt out of the responsibilities that go with primary authority status, and if that work is being done by only one or two authorities. In the vast majority of cases, the relationship will be voluntary—after all, arranging such a relationship will be preferable to forcing it—but we want to give LBRO the power.
Under the amendment, if a business can simply opt out unilaterally, the danger, from a regulatory point of view, is that it could shop around, perhaps looking for its version of the right answer to a particular regulatory question. We do not think that a situation in which the relationship is forced should be the norm, but we do think that, as a backstop, it is important that LBRO can bring two parties together, rather than allowing a continual opting out of the primary authority relationship for a business in a multi-site—