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Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

Our Amendment No. 6, if I understand it, is an adaptation of paragraph 12 of Schedule 12 and the section on public meetings on page 87 of the Charities Act 2006. It suggests that a consultation be arranged annually to discuss the annual report once it has been published. Given my own history of consumer representation, I welcome the amendment because it would let the consumer public have some point of contact with the LBRO. Such an annual meeting could be a fortuitous forum for an exchange of questions and answers that will all, one hopes, contribute to the improvement of the LBRO’s performance in the year ahead. It is important that the Bill should create more opportunities for consultation, as the Minister said earlier, between regulators, consumers and all the stakeholders in this. In making the Bill, the Government seem to have forgotten that sometimes not only business but the consumer is affected by regulation; the consumers must either benefit or suffer its consequences. I am therefore hopeful that the Minister, given his earlier words, will look at the amendment sympathetically.