Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

I am sorry to detain your Lordships further and will try to be brief, but this is clearly an important point. I shall deal, first, with the intention to oppose Clause 7, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and my noble friend Lord Eccles have put their names. As Clause 7 stands, it gives the power of direction to local authorities, as many noble Lords have said. Therefore, we face a situation in which an unelected, non-departmental body is issuing a direction, which comes with a duty to comply, to elected local government bodies. The Minister may say in mitigation that there are plenty of instances in which an unelected body might have the advantage of a non-partisan approach that is necessary to guide or even instruct an elected chamber. He could argue that we are in such a place. However, I do not believe that he can feasibly argue that the LBRO is independent. He has pointed out today that it is subject to the direction of the Secretary of State, so it is clear that it is not a non-departmental body but an arm of government that implements directions, not all of which, as my noble friend Lord Eccles said, are to be laid before Parliament. It is a flagrant bypassing of the constitutional process. I shall be interested to see how the Minister attempts to defend this in the light of such a departure from traditional procedure. I suggest that this clause is a far cry from two of the stated aims in Clause 5—transparency and accountability. Therefore, I support the demand of my noble friend Lord Eccles that the Minister give us sufficient justification as to why this unprecedented relationship should be created. If he were able to do that, I would support my noble friend Lord Hodgson, whose Amendment No. 34 replaces the original instruction to publish any direction, subject to the opinion of the LBRO, to ensure that it gets into the hands of those who need to know. As it stands, Clause 7(6) only pretends to the earlier stated aims of transparency and accountability. Its promise is cut short by the condition that only the matters that the LBRO considers appropriate are published. I wonder whether what the LBRO considers appropriate for public scrutiny is necessarily what the public would deem appropriate.