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Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

We agree that it is insufficiently clear whether enforcement action includes informal advice and guidance that officers regularly provide to businesses. If it did, that could disadvantage small and medium-sized businesses; they particularly value this informal, sometimes oral, advice and guidance, and that usually leads them to compliance. Not allowing the enforcement authority to give an informal warning might create a system that was all stick and no carrot, and might well incur hostility between the regulators and the regulated. It would also increase bureaucracy—the very opposite of the Hampton principles and the declared deregulatory intentions of the Bill.