Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 46: 46: Clause 29, page 14, line 15, leave out ““exercises”” and insert ““proposes to exercise”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, Amendments Nos. 46 and 47 aim to ensure, without excessively eroding the powers of local authorities, that the primary authority is useful and effective and that multi-site businesses are keen to enter into such arrangements. Government Amendment No. 45 is very welcome and goes some way towards satisfying us, but it does not explain what happens next. Under the Bill as drafted, a primary authority and the business for which it is the primary authority will draw up an agreed inspection plan relevant to the company. This is intended to be a painstaking activity that goes to the heart of the business and its operations. It will take time, effort and resources on both sides—business and the authority. The plan will then have to be agreed with the LBRO and be brought to the attention of local authorities, which will be obliged to have regard to it. It is in the event of a disagreement with this plan by a local enforcing authority that the problem arises. As drafted, even following government Amendment No. 45, the Bill means that the local authority will need to notify the primary authority before it undertakes an inspection outside the terms of the plan and to give its reasons for doing so. But that is the end of the matter. If the plan can simply be ignored, or if that is the perception, our contention is that that will undermine the value of drawing up the plan in the first place. The odd thing about how the Bill is drafted is that this is in contrast to what happens when a local enforcing authority wishes to take enforcement action against a business. In that event—and perhaps the Minister can confirm this—it must notify the primary authority and the primary authority can direct it not to take the action if it is inconsistent with advice that it has previously given the business, subject to appeal to the LBRO. So we have a situation where the primary authority cannot veto the inspection but can then veto any enforcement action that arises as a consequence, thus rendering the inspection a waste of both the local authority’s and the business’s time. Even more than that, it might be argued that an inspection plan, agreed with a business, constitutes advice to the business on its procedures and that the primary authority has an obligation to reject any proposed enforcement action taken following rejection of the advice in the inspection plan. We have to remember that an inspection plan is about regular inspections. It is not about an inspection that is to follow up a specific complaint or suspicion of an offence having been committed. That is an enforcement activity over which the primary authority actually has a veto. In any event, the inspection plan could make provision for such one-off inspections and there is no reason to believe that a professional primary authority would reject a proposal for an inspection outside the plan if there were good reason for it. That is not the point. What we want to deal with is the situation where a local authority is, for no good reason, simply disregarding a plan that every other authority is going along with. Our amendment is an attempt to bring these procedures into harmony and to enhance the workability and effectiveness of the whole primary authority principle. It would do so without undermining the ultimate authority of the local enforcing authority. That local enforcing authority would advise the primary authority of its desire to conduct an inspection outside the plan in advance. The primary authority could agree, as it may well do if the reasons are satisfactory, or it could disagree, with reasons, and ask the local authority to review its decision. The local authority could decide not to go ahead or it could decide to go ahead. In the latter case, it would have to advise the primary authority, which might then suggest that it agrees to let the LBRO arbitrate. A local authority that is certain could agree but, at the end of the day, it could still go ahead if it insisted. We do not envisage that this would be a long drawn-out process. Rather it should be a matter of days with a streamlined procedure. I beg to move.