Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

I shall address the two points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Cope. The first was about the ““patchwork”” concept on the high street, which I thought he put extremely clearly. I developed a picture in my mind of exactly what he was trying to get at. Yes, the patchwork has changed; instead of it being across multi-site businesses, we are now going to have a different approach, perhaps in one locale. It does not necessarily follow, however, that the single-site small shop will get a bad deal. It might be that the inspecting authority is inspecting only the one shop and is not part of any inspection plan. If good or bad deals are to be had—and I doubt that we will get that much movement from consistency, but if we did—it does not necessarily follow that small businesses would get a poor rub of the green. The other point I want to address, which one or two Members have raised, is that it is important that we take the hostility out of the implementation of regulation. The media, local authorities, politicians, and indeed so many vested interests in this country start from the view that business is ““at it””; that it is wrong, it is in the bad box, it is on the naughty step, and for some reason we have to be here as saviours of the nation. It is important that we get business into the whole regulatory formulation framework. That is what this is about. I am reminded of when I was at the CBI and I went to see a business in Yorkshire. They said that the day before they had had an inspection officer from a certain government agency, a young lady sitting in reception who said, ““I’m behind on my targets this month—I’m going to do you today””. And her department duly did. I said that I would take up the matter, and the businessman said, ““Don’t do that, please, because she’d be back next week and she’d do it again””. We are trying to achieve an end to that. It destroys value and productivity. The implementation of regulation as opposed to regulation itself is something that France and Germany do better than us. Clause 28 makes provision for a primary authority to draw up an inspection plan containing recommendations for how other local authorities should inspect a business for which it is the primary authority. That is intended to bring greater consistency; co-ordination for the first time of regulatory enforcement for businesses that adopt a primary authority scheme and, I hope, greater compliance with the recommendations given by the primary authority in its role. Where a primary authority has made a plan and the LBRO consents to it, the primary authority will be required to bring it to the notice of other local authorities. We hope that we will develop consistency in that way. On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, about whether legislation is the way to go because what we need is attitudinal change, I completely agree with him. We need cultural and attitudinal change. However, as long as I have been in business, which is nearly 30 years, I have seen many people talk about needing such a change but I have rarely seen people come up with ideas that work. This is constructive and trying to achieve something. At least this is trying to take us down the right path. Perhaps for once we will see legislation leading our social mores rather than the other way around. I hope that this system will support the sharing of strategic information between authorities, and that it effectively means a lighter touch by local authorities across the country in areas where businesses are known to be compliant. I said earlier that regulation is there to protect business as much as the public, because it is there to protect the businesses that behave themselves and are good businesses against those that are not. I hope it will bring better information sharing about the real regulatory issues that need to be dealt with. Inspection plans will play an essential role in all this. It will encourage a more co-ordinated and strategic approach to regulating multi-site businesses at a local level. I move that Clause 28 stands part of the Bill, and I commend it to the Committee on the basis that at last something positive is going on to effect that attitudinal and cultural change that is, at the end of the day, the only solution. Clause 28 agreed to. [Amendment No. 98A not moved.] Clause 29 [Power to charge]: