Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

If possible, one of my aims is certainly to appease the noble Baroness, but I am not sure that I shall succeed. On the interesting discussion aroused by this amendment concerning the number and type of European regulations, I shall include in the letter that I have already promised to write about this issue—found in Clause 4 but also relevant to this clause—some comments about what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Cope, and the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles. We say that the amendment is covered by the word ““consistency”” in any event. I went back to the 1997 report of the task force in which the principles of good regulation were first published. Let us look at it in slightly more detail, particularly at the task force’s subsequent publication, The Principles of Good Regulation, where each of the five principles was expanded upon. The task force stated that the principle of consistency demands that regulation should be predictable to bring consistency and regulatory stability. So the inclusion of consistency in the LBRO’s objective means that the LBRO is already required to secure that local authorities exercise their regulatory functions in a manner that ensures regulatory stability. Therefore, we do not believe that the amendment is necessary because we believe that it is covered already by the word ““consistency””.