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Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

I am grateful to all those who contributed to this debate, particularly to my noble friend Lord Cope for his support. I accept entirely the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, about the dangers of re-election, although we have reached a slightly sorry state of affairs if we think that we are appointing people who in the last year of their office will keep looking over their shoulder at the Secretary of State. I hope that we shall have rather more principled men and women than that. However, his other point about the ““getting to know”” time applies to any non-executive director on any board anywhere. Therefore, if you are appointed to, for example, GlaxoSmithKline, you will be on a three-year term. That is a big organisation to get to know and you will probably take the first year and a half to do so. Nevertheless, shorter terms of office are considered more appropriate than longer ones. I say to the Minister that I accept the SOCA precedent, although I am not sure that that body is quite the same as LBRO. However, he is slightly fooling himself—I use those words carefully—if he thinks that the Secretary of State will step in and use the powers given to him in paragraph 6(4). That would create a row and who wants a row? Let the guy or the girl serve out their time. People will not do this job under such conditions. If the maximum becomes the de facto minimum, of course the power will be there, but one should not say to somebody in the middle of their term of office, ““We’re going to take you out of this. We don’t think you’re doing a good enough job””. That is why reviews are needed every three years. I have not convinced the Minister this afternoon, but I give him notice that I will probably come back and have another crack at persuading him—