Advice and guidance

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

I shall be brief. The clause defines the core role of the primary authority as giving “advice and guidance” to the business for which it is the primary authority and to other local authorities regarding how they should regulate the business. Therefore, it is a three-way relationship between the business and what we are calling enforcing authorities in the Bill. This clause allows the primary authority to be the business’s first port of call for advice on enforcement issues with national implications and allows the primary authority to make recommendations about the handling of particular issues that arise in its work to other local authorities.

Under subsection (2), a business and its primary authority may make arrangements to manage their partnership. The Bill does not prescribe what should be included in such an arrangement, but it may include, for example, a memorandum of understanding setting out the rights and obligations of each party. When a business and a primary authority choose to make arrangements, the primary authority must have regard to guidance issued by LBRO. The clause sets out the advice and guidance function of primary authorities, which will be an important part of their work.

I am grateful to the Minister for those initial remarks. As the Minister says, the clause sets out the advice and guidance elements of primary authorities, in particular their role to advise and guide regulated persons as well as other local authorities through the regulations set out in the schedules of the Bill. The Government’s explanatory notes shed a bit more light on the matter. They show that that would mean that a regulated person in the primary authority should make agreements “as they see fit”. That could raise the vexed question of how to strike a balance between improving regulatory practice to lower the regulatory burden on the one hand and ensuring consistency on the other. The Bill is trying to straddle that classic balance between achieving consistency and raising standards individually. What principles does the Minister think that the LBRO will follow to ensure that one business does not gain over its competitors from a less regulatory environment, and if an enforcing local authority fails to follow a primary authority’s guidance, what legal responsibility does it have to the business involved?

On the issue of consistency, which is what this part of the Bill is all about, LBRO acts as an arbiter. For example, the enforcing authority might feel that the arrangements between the primary authority and the regulator—the hon. Gentleman quotes from Government guidance—are actually a bit of a sweetheart deal, as I think I mentioned this morning: that they have entered into a cosy arrangement with each other, with the effect that the enforcing authority does not believe that the regulations are being properly enforced.

Apart from the advice and guidance function of LBRO, it also has an arbiter function, and that takes us back to some of this morning’s debates about advice and direction. In those circumstances, the enforcing authority can appeal to LBRO to look at the situation and see whether the regulations are being properly enforced, or whether the primary authority relationship is not conducive to better regulation with regard to the public interest in the area that the enforcing authority  represents. That arbitration role of LBRO is important. It is something that is not enforced as it might be under the current regime, which is another reason for establishing the body.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 27 ordered to stand part of the Bill.