Clause 63
Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [Lords]
10:00 am
Pat McFadden (Minister of State (Employment Relations and Postal Affairs), Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform; Wolverhampton South East, Labour)
The answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question about when the guidance will be published is that we have codes on such things. Our intention would be to publish guidance 12 weeks before the proposals came into effect. That should give people adequate warning of what is involved.
More generally, the hon. Gentleman is right to say that guidance is important. Sometimes businesses pay outside consultants to help them to comply with regulation or a change introduced by the Government. Obviously, we recognise that that happens, but we do not want businesses to do it unless they have to, so we put significant effort into improving guidance.
Let me give an example. The Government have put significant effort into improving the “Employing people” pages of the Business Link website. They are a very good guide for businesses so that they do not have to spend what are sometimes significant sums asking people how they should comply with the law when that information could be made available for free and, we hope, in an accessible and user-friendly way by the Government. The hon. Gentleman is therefore right to stress the importance of guidance, and we do put effort into improving it. We envisage such guidance being available on a regulator’s website, so that a business in that field could check what was expected of it. That is right and fair, and that is what we hope that regulators would do under this provision.