Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

It goes without saying that of course we would expect the primary authority to give advice to other local authorities when requested to do so. Our fear is that the amendment would limit too much the primary authority’s role or ability to be proactive in its role as adviser to other local authorities on the treatment of particular businesses. For instance, where a business has acknowledged a problem in a particular area and is doing its best to put it right, the Bill allows the primary authority on its own initiative to bring this to the attention of other local authorities, or other relevant local authorities, and recommend, for example, a lighter-touch approach to enforcement in particular areas. The primary authority’s right to direct an authority not to proceed with an action could be founded on advice of this sort. The noble Lord’s amendment is too limiting. Limiting the primary authority’s advisory role with other local authorities to an ““on request”” basis may substantially reduce the potential benefits of the scheme for business. Local authorities will have expertise in a wide range of enforcement issues associated with the business. The authority may bring any relevant matters, including advice to the business, to the attention of other local authorities. The register to be held by the LBRO, its database of primary authorities, will be sufficient as a means of bringing that to the attention of other local authorities. The noble Lord asked a good question: will a primary authority as a matter of course give advice across the board to all other local authorities about all matters, even where it is not relevant to those authorities? The answer to that is, clearly not. It will have to make its choice as to which local authorities are relevant for those purposes. I am pretty convinced that that is what will happen. The danger of the noble Lord’s amendment—I recognise it as a probing amendment at heart—is that if it is just done on request, some advice that would be very useful to enforcing authorities will never get there.