My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 71 in my name. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, for their support. I acknowledge that anything I say is unlikely to carry the weight of those two authoritative Peers, so your Lordships will be pleased to hear that I will be brief.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, raised the issue of private enforcement. It is intriguing to me that the Government should choose private enforcement to police something as important as a subsidy regime. They do not use private enforcement to police their income tax regime or all manner of important economic activity, yet they have chosen this route. They have explicitly decided to eliminate the devolved authorities, councils and LEPs from the process of enforcement and have added a 28-day deadline to that private enforcement process, which makes it almost impossible for private individuals to enforce in a timely manner. One would think that enforcement was perhaps not at the forefront of the Government’s objectives when looking at the Bill, and nothing so far has convinced me that the Government are interested in enforcing.
At Second Reading, the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, let out the cri de cœur: who will enforce the Bill? The answer is clear: no one. There is an informal system of bringing to book that will ensure that very little enforcement goes on. Yet if we look somewhere else in the CMA, the Digital Markets Unit is pre-emptively calling the big techs in and dealing with issues under its orbit. It is not that the CMA cannot do it; it is that the Government have decided not to let it do it.
Both these amendments—the one in my name and the other—seek to give a role for the Competition Appeal Tribunal to pre-emptively deal with transgressions. What are the Government frightened of in this? I do not think that the Minister has so far articulated a
valid reason as to what is wrong with enforcing the Bill. If the Government think it is important to have the Bill, why not enforce it?
I used one example: the CMA’s own digital markets unit. It is clear that regulators all over are acting pre-emptively. Look at the Pensions Regulator. It can proactively go in and do things, so it is not as if we do not do it in this country. Generally, the regulator can act pre-emptively, except in this case. It is not clear to me what is behind the Government’s decision to do that. My key objective for Amendment 71 is for the Minister to very clearly articulate to the Committee why this subsidy regime should not be policed.
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