My Lords, I thought for a moment that we had doubled our numbers and increased the interest in the dry but very important issues raised by the noble Viscount, but I was wrong. He rather threw me at the end by saying that he was expecting us to approve the orders today. Perhaps he could very quickly give me an answer on that, as I do not think that that is what we are doing today; I think that we are considering them. The approval comes later and, of course, one cannot bind what I and my colleagues might wish to do when the orders are put to the House for consideration, so we may have to go through all this again. The noble Viscount should not get too carried away at this stage with his rhetoric, which I did enjoy.
The noble Viscount mentioned the pleasures that he had had on the ERR Bill and I was, again, slightly confused by that, as there were occasions where the Minister was distinctly uncomfortable about some of that Bill and may remain so deep in his heart, given the way it was taken over into other areas under his direct responsibility. Some of the points that were brought in remain, in our view, poorly drafted and badly exercised in terms of consultation and process and not up to the standards that we would expect in this House. However, we are where we are. It was always a pleasure to debate the issues with the Minister and I pay tribute to him not only for being a model of what is required at the
Dispatch Box but also for being able to generate a vast number of letters that inflect, add to and complete the questions that are sometimes asked but are not able to be answered in the process. For that I thank him very much. To have that on an almost regular basis makes my days in the office much more exciting.
The noble Viscount challenged us by saying that he would make these speeches exciting; I am afraid that I cannot do that myself. I have a number of questions but, as he said, these are not novel or unexpected statutory instruments. We knew that they were coming down the line, but what is novel and unexpected is that they are so close to the start of the CMA to which they refer, which comes into force in a matter of days rather than weeks, as would normally be the case. I suspect—although I have no evidence of this—that the fact that so many colleagues from the department are here suggests that there has been a bit of a problem in getting some of the details of this correct and that it has come close to the wire. Maybe I am wrong on that but, as the noble Lord went through it, it was clear that the orders are very detailed indeed and that there must have been some difficulty in getting them right.
The points that I want to make are very limited. One question on the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 (Competition) (Consequential, Transitional and Saving Provisions) Order 2014 is whether the Minister can explain a bit more for the benefit of the Committee the discussions that took place with the devolved Administrations. Although this is a reserved matter and therefore not a matter of competence in those areas, the impact that it will have and the suggestion that the Government were legislating at a time that might impact on the devolution and independence discussions going on in Scotland raise the question of what exactly would happen. I understand that there were no Sewel requirements but I would like to have a sense of that, if others have some thoughts on it.
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The Minister’s point about the responsibility for the implications that arise from the order falling largely to the National Trading Standards Board raises questions that have arisen before in other areas about whether the Government have thought carefully about the cost implications. When he comes to respond, perhaps the Minister can explain whether there are proposals to do that in any way that mirrors the work that we heard about in previous discussions in recent weeks about applying a particular local authority’s responsibilities so that, as is the case in some competition issues, one local authority takes the lead for the whole of the United Kingdom. In the case that we have been discussing in other places, the issue was an England-only one. I would be interested to know to what extent the responsibilities that would fall to a local authority on a matter that is on a UK basis would apply across a border or borders, as there obviously will be different arrangements north of the border in trading standards.
Turning to the Enterprise Act 2002 (Protection of Legitimate Interests) (Amendment) Order 2014, I was grateful to the noble Viscount for taking us through
the acronyms that exemplify what is being done in the process. Perhaps surprisingly, I do not have much of interest to say about the order itself, which seems absolutely right: it has been foreshadowed, we knew that it was coming and we accepted that this is how it would be expressed.
I was intrigued to read in the Explanatory Notes put on the web earlier two or three references to changes, which seem to me to raise an issue related to previous errors. I wondered whether, when he responds, the Minister could give us a bit more detail about that. In the section that relates to Article 2 in Schedule 1, it states that the order affects amendments made by the ERR Act,
“to the applied provisions of the Enterprise Act. Article 16(7) corrects an error in paragraph (i) of Schedule 1 to the 2003 Order”.
I do not want overly to delay the Committee, but it would be interesting to know exactly what that bears on. Later, the notes state:
“Article 18(2)(a) revokes a provision applying section 69 of the Enterprise Act, because section 69 was repealed by the Communications Act”.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to find out exactly what impact that had. It would be helpful if the Minister could give us a brief sentence or, if that is too difficult, write one of his letters, which I would be very happy to receive and read in more leisured times. Those are the two points that I wanted to raise; I would be grateful to hear the Minister’s views on those points.