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Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Cope on both amendments. As he has extensively argued, the appellation ““Local Better Regulation Office”” is an obvious misnomer, as the office is an attempt at central, national co-ordination. What is currently regulated by local authorities will come under the jurisdiction of this new national body. Names of bodies should indicate the functions of those bodies and, while the Minister might pick at our argument for being pedantic or irrelevant, I would argue that it is important to have clarity of intention from the start. Misinterpretation can lead to mistakes and the regulatory system cannot afford to suffer mistakes—nor should it. We are rather spoilt on this Bill and in the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform by having the noble Lord, Lord Jones, as our Minister of State as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Vadera, as our Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, with the whole thing backed up by the noble Lord, Lord Bach, who is one of the most experienced members of the Government’s Front-Bench team. We are being spoilt rotten—and I am only too delighted to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Vadera, to the Bill, which she has now taken over and on which, I presume, she will be with us to the end.