Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

My Amendment No. 94 has been grouped with this, and I want to come at it from two different backgrounds. I hope I shall not repeat a lot of what has been said already today; I shall try not to. I have a different concept about the whole issue. The Government are placing an undue emphasis on businesses. I was a founder member of the Select Committee on the Merits of Statutory Instruments, which is still adorned by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles. We took evidence about regulatory reform, and it was all about making life easier for businesses. There was an occasional mention of voluntary organisations, but not very often. On reflection, the purpose of regulation is not to make life difficult or easy for businesses; it is to protect the public. That is why local authorities have been given regulatory powers. They are not given them for fun, but for the protection of the public—yet the public are almost never consulted. I know it is not easy to consult the public, but we have already had mention today of the consumer council. The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, knows all about that. There is also Citizens Advice, along with other organisations. Have the Government actually grasped that this is all about protecting the public? Are they going to make an effort to ensure that the Bill will be drafted in order to deal with that issue? It is why the exceptions to going to the primary authority are so extraordinarily important. At Second Reading I gave an example—and I hoped this would be familiar territory to the noble Lord, Lord Jones, in view of the suffix to his title—of some West Midlands pizza parlours. Incidentally, I tell him that Culross is nowhere near there; it is in Fife, but never mind. The point was to show that there needed to be powers to deal urgently with matters that required attention, like public health. That is in the Explanatory Notes to the Bill. There are another four examples of exceptions in the Explanatory Notes. In the recent guide that has grown to seven, so things are improving. We have been told today, however, that the Government will not be able to produce a draft of any of these statutory instruments before further stages of the Bill. When I sat on the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee, one realised that a confetti cloud of statutory instruments always follows legislation these days. It is all very well the noble Lord, Lord Bach, saying he thinks we will all have a lovely time discussing this when the statutory instruments come before the House, but he failed to remark upon the fact that you cannot amend statutory instruments. The only thing you can do to correct any mistakes or failures in them is to consult beforehand, which must include in these instances consultation with people who represent members of the public, who are meant to be protected. That does not always happen, but I hope it will this time. I shall take another couple of examples, the sort of cases that trading standards departments have to deal with. The first is doorstep salesmen of dodgy insurance policies. The moment they step across a local authority boundary, they are a regulated person under Clause 20(1). They therefore come within the Bill. Are we going to make certain that the trading standards department that discovers that this is going on, and that old -age pensioners are being defrauded by such people, does not have to go to the primary authority to take enforcement action? It probably is so, if you look at the exemptions that are listed in the guide. I expect that the delay involved in consultation might inhibit effective evidence-gathering or investigation of a breach. That is new; it was not in the original Explanatory Notes. It is, of course, absolutely correct. What about the people who come around—I am sure they are a business—who always have a leftover part of a tarmac job that has been done for a public authority, and who will put it upon your drive, usually for cash? They go away and then the tarmac does not set very hard. Enormous sums are involved, which is usually not explained beforehand. This is the sort of thing that the public need to be protected from, and trading standards departments are there for that purpose. Are we sure that the exemptions that will be produced by statutory instrument will cover the full range of such circumstances? I am reasonably content with what is set out in the guide, but I am not sure that it has been consulted on fully and that it is agreed by everyone that it is adequate. In particular, I cannot see why there is no provision in the Bill to deal at least with what we all know is going to be required. A health and safety provision, which I discussed at Second Reading, is bound to be included. If the matter is urgent, something will have to be done and there will be no time to consult the primary authority. There will be others circumstances of that sort as well. The less we have to set out in statutory instruments, which cannot then be amended, the better. Why not put it all on the face of the Bill? We are beginning to crystallise the sort of circumstances where consultation with the primary authority will not be necessary, so let us proceed as fast as we can with setting out as many of these circumstances as possible in the Bill. We can then discuss them in Parliament, where it will be possible to amend them. Let us not leave them to statutory instruments which cannot be amended. I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Bach, that this needs to be considered. The provision as it is at the moment leaves everything to completely vague and undefined statutory instruments. That will lead only to the usual arguments about whether they are adequate and whether they ought to have included something else. I hope that he and his advisors will think again about making these provisions a little more firm and concise, thus making sure that we really have covered the ground. The amendment in my name is of course only inclusive; it does not say that there cannot be a power to produce a statutory instrument to add more things. However, I am asking that we do not produce statutory instruments to deal with all the things we know we are going to have to deal with in this context; they can go in the Bill. If necessary, powers can then be taken to add to them. We ought increasingly to take this approach because of the flurry of statutory instruments with which Parliament is constantly beset, and about which the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, and I know all too well. I hope that there may be a little more progress on this than simply to say, ““We will know what is in the orders before the end of the Bill””.