Clause 50
Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [Lords]
9:15 am
Pat McFadden (Minister of State (Employment Relations and Postal Affairs), Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform; Wolverhampton South East, Labour)
Clause 50 takes us on to a slightly different issue from that of stop notices, which we have been discussing so far this morning. It comes at the issue of regulatory compliance from a slightly different angle. The clauses and amendments that we have discussed so far have dealt with the options available to a regulator to ensure compliance, and stop notices are part of that. Clause 50, however, offers an option to the regulated, rather than just the regulator.
The clause enables a Minister to make an order allowing a regulator to accept enforcement undertakings offered by a person or business subject to regulation. An enforcement undertaking is an undertaking or promise by a person or business to take certain actions. It is not something that can be imposed by the regulator, but an option that is available to a business that is found to be in contravention of the regulations. The clause takes forward a key recommendation of the review by Professor Richard Macrory and allows businesses to volunteer action to put right any harm that has been done.
Under subsection (1), the regulator may accept enforcement undertakings only when it has reasonable grounds for suspecting that an act or omission by a person constitutes a relevant offence. In practice, that is likely to mean that the business is offering undertakings during an investigation for an offence. Subsection (3) outlines the type of action that an undertaking must cover, which
“must be...action to secure that the offence does not continue or recur...action to secure that the position is, so far as possible, restored to what it would have been if the offence had not been committed...action (including the payment of a sum of money) to benefit any person affected by the offence, or...action of a prescribed description.”