Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 1: 1: Schedule 1, page 34, line 16, at end insert— ““( ) At least 25% of the ordinary members shall have current or recent direct significant experience in local government.”” The noble Baroness said: The amendment takes us—a little oddly right at the start of our consideration of the Bill—to the first schedule, which provides the detail of what is much more easily expressed as LBRO than the Local Better Regulation Office—as I said when I spoke to the previous amendment, I find the order of the words quite curious. The amendment deals with the criteria for membership. Other amendments dealing with membership have also been tabled but have been degrouped from this one. I am aware of the appointments that have been made to the company that already exists and from which the statutory organisation will take over. This is not, however, simply a matter of who is appointed at the very beginning; it is a question of who are the members throughout the life of the organisation, whatever that life may be. I hope that current members would not need this to be said, but I will say it anyway as a matter of courtesy; this is not an attack on any of them. The Liberal Democrats’ main concern about Parts 1 and 2 is that—the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, has already alluded to this—we may end up with a greater burden on local authorities rather than a reduction of the burden. I therefore felt it important to ensure that the board members of the LBRO were as well informed about the practice of local government as they were about the theory. Life in a local authority is not always quite as tidy as Whitehall and academia sometimes think that it is. The members of the LBRO need to understand in their gut as well as in their head the impact of what they are undertaking. My amendment therefore proposes, "““current or recent direct significant experience in local government””," on the part of at least 25 per cent of the ordinary members. I beg to move.