Clause 65
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)
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for asking me that series of questions, which will allow me to elucidate on the rationale behind the clause. Hopefully, I can give him some answers. He asked several questions, including whether the purpose of the clause was accountability or letting the public know who had contravened. It is a bit of both. It is right that regulators, who are being given a significant new sweep of powers under this part of the Bill, publish information about how they are exercising those powers. That is a good in itself. As to naming and shaming, there can also be a public interest in knowing whether an organisation has contravened and has reached the end of the process. We can go back to the example of a business releasing toxic waste into the environment. I do not know why the public should not know about a business that has been found guilty of such an offence, has received a civil sanction—it may have appealed but has not been successful—and has reached the end of the process.
My hon. Friend then asked, why exempt those on appeal? That issue has arisen in other Bills as well. Is it in the public interest to know when charges have been levied but the person has not been found guilty in the end? There is a reputational issue at stake for business. We have talked about appeal processes in the context of the Bill. The regulator may impose a civil penalty, but the penalty gets overturned on appeal because the regulator was wrong. In those circumstances, is it fair for the business to be named in the report? In the end, when the process has been completed, the business has not been found guilty of anything. Therefore, subsection (3) is fair.