Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

This amendment addresses the LBRO’s potential role in ensuring that local authorities carry out their duties with sufficient professionalism. We believe that this issue is already adequately addressed by the inclusion of the word ““effectively”” in objectives set out in the clause, although we sympathise with the spirit of the amendment. The professional bodies representing the sector—the Trading Standards Institute and the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health—were closely involved in pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill, and we welcome their continuing interest in the LBRO. I pay a compliment to those bodies and to others that carry out such a professional and important job. The regulatory service professions are critical to so many important protections but, all too often, their contribution is underestimated and wrongly attacked. I can confirm that the LBRO will be working closely with those professional organisations in raising the profile and consolidating the importance of the professions, both on the enforcement front line and in the leadership of our local authorities. Sympathetic as we are to the amendment, we do not agree that it needs to be written into the Bill because the word ““effectively”” covers the position as well.