I thank the noble Lord for that clarification; I was sure he would know the answer. I thank him for his extremely helpful contribution.
The duty will, I stress, complement existing duties and will not override or cut across regulators’ other powers of protection. The growth duty requires regulators to consider growth when carrying out their regulatory functions, so environmental and other issues that I mentioned will not be overruled by this. I should say in passing that when I saw the noble Lord’s amendment I was immensely impressed. My first instinct was to wonder whether we could add a government amendment to the amendment to add four or five additional things that people should take into account.
Those who have been regulators, such as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, would probably say that a good regulator takes into account a wide range of issues and then attempts to strike the best balance among them. We also accept that, as the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, said in moving the amendment, the issue of how much risk, if any, one is prepared to accept in regulation is one of the most difficult issues in regulatory powers. You cannot guarantee that you can ever provide a situation of nil risk, but the question of how far away from nil you are prepared to move is one of the most difficult issues.
I am not sure that I can answer absolutely all the questions that have been asked about specific agencies, but again I am very happy to discuss this further off the Floor. However, on the question of responses to the consultation, a wide variety of respondents welcomed the growth duty. Many businesses and trade associations said that the first priority of regulators should be protection and that the growth duty should be added but should not take precedence over others, and we have taken that into account. I have already remarked that over one-third said they considered that regulators already had regard to growth. Respondents cited a variety of ways in which regulators could support growth. These include co-ordinating, providing more targeted advice, being generally risk-based and proportionate, and helping businesses to achieve compliance. I also mentioned that a care to avoid duplication of regulation—particularly the sort of regulation that asks businesses for information—is one of the areas that we wish to look at. The growth duty should make a difference in precisely those areas where there is duplication and where regulators have not thought about the growth dimension, but again we are not suggesting that this is a revolution—this is a modest change of balance.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, asked whether the growth duty would have teeth. The answer is that, as with all other aspects that regulators take into account, businesses will have the chance to challenge a regulator which has not had regard to one of the dimensions of their task. They can challenge them though the regulator’s own internal mechanisms or statutory appeal mechanisms. They can, if necessary, challenge the enforcement decisions in court and, in the last resort, they can pursue judicial review if a regulator has failed to apply the duty, or applied it in a way that is clearly unreasonable. Again, we do not expect or anticipate that that would be a frequent dimension.
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I think that I have already answered the other points made by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, about how the growth duty will rank against other responsibilities for regulators and how they will balance those.
Perhaps I might turn to the CQC, as I had in my notes a number of issues on that. A review of that area came back with a number of requests and complaints about duplication. I think that we also mentioned this on Tuesday. There is widespread duplication of activities by the CQC and local authorities, and a lack of co-ordination between the CQC and the commissioners of places in homes. There is also insufficient distinction in the CQC’s handling of major and minor non-compliance issues when publicly naming non-compliant homes. There are a number of issues to explore there and, given that the CQC is still developing its practice, we recognise that this is an area where one needs to move slowly. I am told that the CQC has not opposed the duty and the Department of Health is content for the CQC to be in scope. The order which lists the functions to which the duty will apply will be subject to the affirmative procedure and will thus be debated in both Houses.
I hesitate to go through the range of issues covered by other noble Lords in particular detail. On the Disclosure and Barring Service, the Gangmasters Licensing Authority and the Legal Services Board, how far regulators will have regard to growth will depend on the circumstances in question. We all understand that different regulatory bodies have different responsibilities because of their particular concerns. Again, I stress that our aim here is to keep the burden of regulation on business productivity to a minimum and to make sure that regulation is proportionate, ensuring that interactions with businesses are necessary and proportionate, and understanding the business environment and tailoring regulatory activities accordingly. If the guidance on this is considered not clear enough, clearly we need to discuss whether the guidance itself needs a certain amount of redrafting.