Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

My Lords, I think that the Committee should accept, as a matter of principle, the point that my noble friend has been enunciating. Indeed, the experience of other regulators, including Ofcom, is that an in-house consumer panel—not strangers to the organisation but working closely with the regulator—is a good idea. Unfortunately, it cannot be called a consumer panel tout court in this Bill because of course there is something called the consumer panel already; that is, the people who make the decisions, the part-timers who are allocated particular jobs and make the final decisions of the CMA. That is all set out in Schedule 4. Perhaps some other means of dealing with my noble friend’s proposition has already been thought of by Her Majesty’s Government.