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Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

I apologise to the Committee for having 11 pages of amendments. I was so pleased with the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Razzall, because I always thought that a regulator was something you used to control a steam engine. Then I though that the regulator had a job to regulate regulations or Acts of Parliament. As the noble Lord, Lord Bach, knows, I wanted to know which Acts of Parliament and which regulations a regulator should regulate, and how and when. I then asked which ministries were responsible for the activity of which regulations, which Bills, which Acts and so forth. The Government kindly told me that they did not know. The last question that I asked the Government was: ““Under which of these Acts in the schedule would a Minister have powers of entry?”” The noble Lord, Lord West, replied: ““None””. Of course a Minister does not himself have powers of entry, but he has the ability to give powers of entry. I then took my earlier schedule, Schedule 4A in Amendment No. 109A, and did a comparison with Schedule 6 and with all the other regulations that the Government thought they had and knew. One of the reasons that I did not move my amendments was that I did not think it was fair on the Government to ask them to do something and to ask questions which they could not answer. The suggestion was therefore made that I should ask yet another—the 27th—Question for Written Answer, to ask which Acts of Parliament and which regulations give powers of entry or certain other powers to which ministry or government department. It is quite a difficult Question to table, but I am most grateful to the noble Lord. Take something like water or electricity; the electricity supply industry is not quite sure, other than ““Of...”” this or ““Of…”” that, who regulates it. When it takes powers of entry by accident, because the secretary has typed the wrong postcode or pressed the wrong key on the QWERTY keyboard, it is not sure whether it has committed an offence. That happened fairly recently. It was in the press that an electricity body sent a letter to someone saying that it would like to introduce a new box, but it sent the letter to the wrong person. It insisted that the person should have a new box because the other one was dangerous, but it sent the engineer to the wrong house. He broke in and installed a new piece of equipment for someone who was not a client. In my view, an offence was committed in that case. I have many such examples. I would like to know how these regulations work. I feel sure that the relevant regulatory authority should be imposed between the regulation and the people who have those powers. I am most grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Razzall, for raising something that I had not even thought about.