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Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

You knew you had done it, but you just could not find it; I am often in that situation myself. Two expressions used by noble Lords were interesting, the first of which was the ““right to a partnership””. I have always regarded partnership as something consensual, organic and not something to which one has a right. The other expression was the phrase used by the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, at the start of his contribution, about forcing ““fairly and reasonably””. I wrote the phrase down as it was said, but perhaps Hansard will show that I misheard the noble Lord since he appears to be denying it. But that is what this clause tries to say. In any event, I think that there will be an imbalance in which the burdens lie on local authorities that are called on to become primary authorities simply because of the geographical distribution of businesses. The noble Lord said that this could be dealt with administratively, but I am not sure whether that is so. To that end, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cope of Berkeley, for his very good point that it would be difficult to deal with either administratively or legislatively. The Minister asserts that there is no need for this to be in the Bill, but the need to address the matter has been demonstrated. However, I am not sure whether we have come up with the right way of dealing with it. I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation. Since we have taken almost 20 minutes of the anticipated 30 minutes, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendments Nos. 69 to 71 not moved.] Clause 24 agreed to. Clause 25 [Advice and guidance]: