Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

I thank the Minister for his response. This is the beginning of a very long four days—minimum—and the amount of amendments that we have tabled shows that an awful lot of people have an awful lot of worries about what was to be an awful little Bill. It is a very little Bill; after all, it is the third shot at a regulatory Bill. Here we go again. We know how much regulation people are suffering from. We do not want to go back to Second Reading speeches, but we are saying that it is a worry that small businesses spend three days a month coping with bureaucracy when they could be out there running their businesses. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, thought that I was playing around. It has always been a great strength in this House that sometimes the most important things are said with a light touch. I felt particularly in this Room, where we are all rather cheek by jowl and where we will all be together for a few days, that what I was saying was so important that it could cope with the light touch of a girl who went to a girls’ boarding school where we all behaved like that all the time. It is amazing what we get done. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, offered a different way of putting this. All in all, what we are saying as we start is that we are worried that this will create more and more confusion and more and more levels. I should have said that I was president of the Institute of Trading Standards Administration; I am now a vice-president, as is the noble Lord, Lord Borrie. I was also chairman of the National Consumer Council and I am the president of the National Consumer Federation. Therefore, the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, and I know well how all these systems work. I know that trading standards bodies are worried about some of the things that are happening and that LACORS is finding things difficult. When I asked LACORS and the Trading Standards Institute for an organisational chart in our joint meeting, they did not have one to give me, although they have since done their darnedest to produce one for me. I know, because I checked with the Clerk, that it is not appropriate for me to talk to a document that the other Members of the Grand Committee have not received, but I would be happy to show the Minister a tiny glimpse of the simplicity of what this will look like when it is done and to give him a copy of the document. This is what we are trying to work with and what everyone else will be trying to work with. Although I see that I am not going to get anywhere with my amendment, I hope that it has helped us to start airing our serious worries and concerns, albeit in a light-touch way. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 1 agreed to. Schedule 1 [LBRO: supplementary]: