My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Bradshaw and Lord Berkeley, and the Minister. That sounded fairly conciliatory from the Minister. I am not entirely sure that I should seize on “not unreasonable” or “not unnecessary” as indicating approval of my approach. Nevertheless, I think that it was generally positive.
However, probably neither of our amendments is ideal. I hope the main theme that the Minister is taking away from all this discussion is, if you want a reserved power, it has to be very clearly a reserved power in extremis. In order not to get there, you need some provisions of co-operation between the various regulators. All these regulators operate different types of market and you cannot have the CMA being asked to second-guess them every five minutes.
I am not quite as sanguine as the noble Lords, Lord Bradshaw and Lord Berkeley are about some of the other regulators. It may all be fine in the railways, although I am not sure that I would agree with that as a consumer and passenger. Certainly, I have had my rows with Ofgem. I am not very happy about Ofwat and some aspects of even Ofcom, which generally speaking is a better regulator. I also had recent experience of the Northern Ireland regulator that regulates the energy industry except for the main supply of energy in the Province, which is the oil industry and definitely needs regulation.
I am not saying that everything in the garden is rosy with these independent regulators as they stand—it definitely is not. They all need to raise their game. But raising the game by having a prospect of an intervention by the Secretary of State and giving all their powers to someone else seems to be overkill. We must have an upfront co-operation and only a very distant reserve power in any alternative clause that the Minister may propose at a later stage. It would be sensible for him to consider mine and other representations that have been made.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, raised a number of concerns, which are very important for the Government to take on board. The threat of this would undermine confidence in the markets. Key investment markets, such as energy, water, aviation, railways, telecoms and so on are key areas where we need to sustain a degree of confidence in the near permanence of the regulatory system.
The relationship between the regulators and the industry is very important. I am not talking about cosy relationships but about known, established and reasonably long-term relationships. The issue of the EU, which my noble friend Lord Berkeley raised, is also important. We need to be careful when we are intervening and what, at the end of the day, would be quite a draconian power.
I hope the Minister will take this away. It is important that we review the performance of regulators. But we should not do that on a case-by-case basis or because of suddenly saying that they are not doing their job 100%. Other forms of review could be built into the regulation—indeed, the Government are doing that in other areas—rather than taking a power that looks at first glance to be a draconian intervention by the Secretary of State.
I am sure that the Government and their Civil Service can come up with a better form of words for dealing with this if they wish to. It may be something that we should leave until much later. But if they intend to do so, I am happy to give my co-operation to them with my experience with regulators, as will my noble friends and the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. However, this will not work and it could be quite detrimental.
I am grateful to everyone who has participated. I am sure that we will return to this in some form or other at the next stage. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.