Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 103A: 103A: After Clause 33, insert the following new Clause— ““PART 2A Powers of entry Interpretation of Part 2A In this Part— ““authorised person”” means a person authorised by the Minister responsible for the enforcement of an Act or instrument containing powers, and ““powers”” means the powers listed in section (Powers regulated by this Part)”” The noble Lord said: I apologise to the Committee that one-third of the pages of amendments are related to my own. I apologise, too, that I have not been able to be here throughout but, for the first time in my life, I am meant to be divided between human embryology and something more practical like this. The Committee may like to know some of the background to this. I have provided a brief which goes back to one year before the noble Lord, Lord Jones of Birmingham, went into business—1975. The concern at that time was related to ““powers of entry””, as we called it then. I intend to speak to Amendments Nos. 103A to 103K, 109A, 109B, 192A and 192B. I draw the Committee’s attention in particular to Amendment No. 103K, which states: "““Nothing in this Part shall apply to the powers exercised by police officers, members of the security or intelligence services or officers of HM Revenue and Customs””." I do not need to rehearse all of this but if I had a chance of saying, ““I wanted to go to Birmingham and I ended up at Crewe””, I really wanted to go to Crewe. In the research that we undertook we found that of all the powers of entry related to government, no government department knew what its powers of entry, search or seizure were. I therefore introduced a Private Member’s Bill in 2006 which was tabled simply in order to list those powers of entry that existed. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, was the only Minister at that time who gave a proper answer; he said, ““Refer to the Library and to the research on the powers of entry written by Professor Stone, which I had put in the Library myself. I have tried over time with numerous Parliamentary Questions, at considerable cost, to get government departments to advise what powers they have under which legislation. The problem, as usual, particularly in a leap year, is that you have a moveable feast. As Governments change departments, departments within departments and departmental names, no one has a clue what their powers are. The noble Lord, Lord Jones, will probably remember in some of the earlier days—although I think it was before he was there—we consulted the Committee on Invisible Exports, the CBI ad nauseam, every chamber of commerce in the country and all the local authorities to see what their concern was. It was simply this: that there were an enormous number of people who had the power to go into other people’s houses without permission or a court order. Recently, the Committee may be aware, the Prime Minister made a statement on an appropriate day to the Independent that he was going to get someone to look at 250 powers of entry and see what could be done about it. There is no point having a Private Member’s Bill that does not become law. Officials in this great Palace of Westminster and others suggested that my Bill should be grafted or tacked on to suitable government legislation. The various bodies pointed out that the Bill before us today was extraordinarily suitable government legislation because it dealt with local authority powers, as well as with a whole range of other things. One of the advisers to the noble Lord, Lord Jones, who is not here, might like to know that the McDonald’s ““Hamburger University”” has provided guidance in the past about food safety and matters of that sort. The objective of my amendments is to introduce, to some extent, what was called the Powers of Entry etc. Bill in an appropriate place at an appropriate time. Having had a Second Reading and rather hoping that some people might get up and object, I found that no one objected; everyone I have consulted thinks it is a good idea that we should know what the powers of entry are. I wanted to leave in the reference to Customs and Excise, but they have quickly merged with the Inland Revenue and you should not interfere with the powers of the Revenue. Some of the powers of the VAT men and others are outrageous. It all goes back, as Members will know, to the differential price of brandy during the Napoleonic wars. That has been superseded by the fact that every spirit produced in the United Kingdom is cheaper on the Continent than ever before, but it was the power of the VAT man that still worried people. Then we came to the question of the security and intelligence services. They, of course, must be left out. In the Schedule we have 155 Acts that give people the power to go into other people’s houses without authority and without a court order. When these were all government departments and we had nationalised industries such as gas, no one minded, because in a way you trusted government officials. But as we privatise and sell things off, so the same powers are transferred to private sector enterprises; in many cases, foreign-owned. That does not mean that the people who seek to search and enter are foreigners, but our legislation in the United Kingdom gives greater freedom to search and enter than in any other country in the European Union. I am not fully advised on all this, but it is one of the worries. The purpose of these amendments was, effectively, to take a concept and introduce it into government legislation, knowing that government officials and others would probably find a way to object, but knowing that the argument is absolutely flawless, because the first question is: surely it is right and proper that Ministers should know that the powers of entry are of officials in departments or institutions for which they are responsible. That is the principle behind all of this. The amendments are simply to say, ““Look, let’s have a code of conduct””. I would prefer a code of conduct to a code of practice, but in general you need a code that everyone is aware of. You need all the principles whereby people should identify themselves when they enter and if they take documents away, they should not lose them and should provide receipts. All of these are little details. So the purpose of my amendments was simply to introduce this activity into a Bill and to hope that the Government, who are sometimes logical and reasonable, will realise that there is nothing wrong about this—it is a cross-party matter. Should the Government wish to know how many more Acts or pieces of legislation were introduced by Conservative Governments that permitted powers of entry, often without clear thought, I can tell them—even those introduced by the Liberals in ancient times. Of course, this is very much a liberal Bill. Therefore, the question is, if my Powers of Entry etc. Bill went ahead to Committee stage, it would then stand there—and what would I do with it next? I would probably introduce it next year or the year after, or maybe introduce it to my friendly officials in Brussels and make it law in another way. So the background to this is that I know that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, knows more about this than any other Minister. He is the noble Lord who gave the most satisfactory answers. I shall sit down and ask the Government please to consider whether they might accept these amendments, either in their present form or in amended form. I have plenty more amendments that I could table at an appropriate time, but the hour is late and I do not wish to disturb or distress anyone here. I beg to move.