Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 26: 26: After Clause 5, insert the following new Clause— ““Duty to secure compliance with principles Where a local authority has been granted powers under Part 3 of this Act, LBRO shall have the duty of ensuring and certifying that authority is compliant with section 5(2) of this Act.”” The noble Lord said: When he recommended the introduction of administrative penalties, Professor Macrory said that they should be introduced only for regulators that were consistently Hampton-compliant. The Government have not included any such requirement in the Bill, even though the Prime Minister, when Chancellor, accepted the report in full without, incidentally, taking any further consultation with stakeholders on behalf of the Government. This amendment seeks to put that right. I had felt that this could have been achieved by requiring the LBRO to certify compliance with the code, but as the Minister rejected this in the debate on Amendment No. 21, this amendment presents an alternative approach to that problem. It is the view of many in business that administrative penalties as set out in Part 3, including fixed penalty fines, could end up as parking-ticket style fines which do little to encourage compliance. The requirement that they should be issued only by those who have adopted a Hampton culture, where prosecution and punishment are a last resort, is therefore an essential safeguard. This is even more important for the hundreds of local authorities who cannot be monitored effectively by central government. This Hampton approach is supposed to be embodied in the code of practice and the principles set out in Clause 5(2). I beg to move.