Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

My Lords, I speak against government Amendment No. 41. That amendment removes the ability of the Local Better Regulation Office to delegate its functions under Schedule 4 to another person as it considers appropriate. Perhaps I may jog your Lordships’ memories back to day three of Committee. Noble Lords will remember that that aspect of the Bill was debated by the noble Lord, Lord Cope, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. The noble Lord, Lord Jones, answered the debate at col. GC 249 and, in his usual sympathetic style, agreed to review this part further and to look at ““delegation””, ““responsibility”” and ““function””. The Government’s proposed solution is to remove that paragraph from Schedule 4. It is an unsatisfactory solution as, while it addresses the point made that the Local Better Regulation Office should not be able to delegate or discharge its responsibility to another, at the same time it now makes the reverse possible, as the Local Better Regulation Office could now not delegate at all. The noble Lord, Lord Jones, said that this provision is, "““critical to the success of the scheme””.—[Official Report, 28/1/08; col. GC 248.]" The Local Better Regulation Office is a small body and the arbitration role that it undertakes under Schedule 4 has the potential to become burdensome, to skew the resources away from other tasks and not take advantage of expertise in other organisations capable of ably assisting. The Trading Standards Institute and the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, have expressed their concerns about this amendment and the impact it could have on the Local Better Regulation Office to engage with organisations such as themselves and the Local Authorities Co-ordinating Office on Regulatory Services to fulfil its obligations and responsibilities under the Bill. No one is suggesting here that the Local Better Regulation Office should be able to discharge its responsibilities to another, as could be interpreted from the original text, but the pendulum seems to have swung the other way to force this new body to be much more insular and not to take advantage of the expertise that exists within these other organisations. My question to the Minister is: are the Government able to reconsider and to provide an amendment that addresses the concerns that were communicated in Committee without removing this paragraph completely and frustrating the clear intention that the Government had here?