Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 72: 72: Clause 25, page 11, line 6, after ““authorities”” insert ““when requested”” The noble Lord said: We pop on to Clause 25, which relates to advice and guidance and the methodology that primary authorities will use in carrying out their role. I seek to ascertain from the Minister how these provisions will operate when they come into force. I understand why under Clause 25(1)(a) advice has to be given to the regulated persons, but in paragraph (b) ““other local authorities”” is a very wide phrase. I seek the Minister’s thoughts on how this will work in reality. For example, does he see the primary authority sending its advice and guidance to every local authority everywhere, willy-nilly, without regard, in order to cover the waterfront? Or does he see the primary authority selecting carefully the local authorities concerned for the advice and guidance to be more targeted? I have referred several times in the Committee to my non-executive directorship of Masters Brewery. We might select Wolverhampton as our primary authority, but our 2,500 pubs all over the country would be in a lot of local authority areas although not in every one. How will guidance given by Wolverhampton be distributed to the relevant local authorities? How will the primary authority know which local authorities are involved? I can imagine a tremendous waste of paper whereby the primary authority, to be certain, sends the guidance to every local authority; each then has to check whether the guidance is relevant to it. An awful lot of unwanted paperwork will fly back and forth. Therefore, the amendment seeks to insert ““when requested””—in other words, the local authority affected will ask the primary authority for guidance. This would mean that the paperwork would be sent only when required, avoiding the risk of another flood of paper that had to be checked by the issuing authority and the authority that received it. Can the Minister explain how he thinks this system will work and why we should not try to target the transmission of information to the relevant local authorities? I beg to move.