Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 67: 67: Clause 24, page 10, line 13, after ““agreed”” insert ““in writing”” The noble Lord said: This is a small amendment, merely suggesting that, given what may hang on the matters of primary authorities, it would be good if the agreement to the nomination were made in writing. Although Amendment No. 71 is related to Amendment No. 67, it is a little more complicated. The point that I am trying to get at it is: how will a ““local”” local authority—an enforcement authority, in the jargon of the Bill—know for certain that it is affected by an agreement? For that to happen, two things seem to be necessary. First, the company concerned—the regulated person—must tell the primary authority exactly how many branches it has. When it opens or closes one, it must give notice. Secondly, the primary authority must then tell all the other local authorities involved that a branch has opened or closed and who is affected. As emerged a little in our discussion of the previous amendment, it is very important that local authorities know clearly which businesses are under which scheme; where they have to give notice to the primary authority before they take some enforcement action; where they may be affected by inspection plans; and where all this apparatus will apply and where it will not. It will be difficult enough for the ““local”” local authorities. We all know that every high street now has a lot of shops—the same is true of trading estates—that are branches of large multiple chains of one sort or another. Interspersed among them are franchised businesses, which we have already seen are rather complicated, and individual local shops which may have only one or two branches locally. They can all have separate regimes. For that matter, if half a dozen shops in the high street represent different chains, each of them may have a different primary authority somewhere or other—the chances are that they will. So in an ordinary, quite small high street, you will have 10 different local authorities governing health and safety, hygiene regulations and all the rest of it, in the different businesses along the street. It will be very confusing once this gets going, if it all takes off as some people clearly expect. It is therefore very important that it is quite clear who is regulated by whom and under which of the possible regimes. Of course it is true that it will not be exactly straightforward because it may be that an individual business will be subject to a primary authority arrangement for part of the enforcement involved in that business, but not for all of it. So some of the local authority officials from the ““local”” local authority who examine the business will be there under a local arrangement, and others will be under a broader, primary arrangement made by a distant authority. It is going to get complicated, so it is important that it is clearly understood who is regulating whom, otherwise the whole thing will dissolve into confusion. I do not claim any great precision of drafting in these amendments, but I hope that the idea is clear: it is to find out exactly who is regulating whom at any particular point in time. I beg to move.