Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 25: 25: Clause 5, page 3, line 36, at end insert— ““(c) regulatory activities should be carried out in a way which ensures regulatory stability”” The noble Lord said: I seek to make Clause 5(2) more exciting by adding another principle, which is about regulatory stability. Let me explain what I am trying to get at. If you talk to people who are involved in commerce or industry at a high or low level, one of their complaints is about the constant regulatory change. While they can accept that from time to time there needs to be a fundamental change, too often the changes that they are faced with are tinkering with the system. The costs of complying with tinkering can be very high indeed, such as management time, even for a small firm, amendment to the IT and HR systems, changes to fixed asset registers and building up compliance records to ensure that the firm has been complying with the tinkered change. In the amendment—I accept that the wording is probably not quite right—I say that the principles to be followed should include the need to try to minimise the rate of change with which firms are having to comply. It is this constant drip, drip, drip, and maybe the individual drips are not that significant, but nevertheless they have to be complied with, and the changes that I described have to be made. What I am seeking from the Government is an acceptance that rapid rates of regulatory change are unhelpful to the regulatory framework and unhelpful to economic progress for companies big and small; and some of the smaller companies find them most damaging and difficult to comply with. If the Minister is unable to accept my wording—I hazard a guess that he will be unable to—he might be able to come back with wording that will enable us to have as a principle to be followed the need to try to minimise the constantly changing framework with which British industry and commerce—big, small and voluntary organisations—have to put up with. I beg to move.