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Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 10: 10: Clause 5, page 3, line 34, at end insert””, and (d) in a way which allows or encourages economic progress.”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, spurred on by that enormous success, I return to Clause 5 and the objective relating to general functions. I can be briefer on this occasion than I was on the previous amendment. I again wish to add an additional objective. The amendment requires the LBRO to have regard to the work of local authorities, "““in a way which allows or encourages economic progress””." According to page 6 of the guidance, the Bill implements the Hampton agenda, which includes a principle that regulation should recognise that a key element of activity will be to allow, or even encourage, economic progress and to intervene only where there is a clear case for protection. Somewhere in this better regulation Bill we need to recognise the importance of entrepreneurial and economic activity to the future of this country. It is too easily overlooked. In Grand Committee, the Minister chided me: "““I am afraid we do not believe that it is necessary or desirable to include provision in the Bill requiring the LBRO to ensure that local authorities carry out their functions in a way that allows or encourages economic progress ... it is hard to believe that a local authority would do the opposite””.—[Official Report, 21/1/08; col. GC 42.]" I wish I always had his confidence. In deference to him, I shall leave aside the wilder shores that his party reached in the 1970s, which brought this country to its knees, but there is a much more prevalent, softer and insidious possibility because local authorities can be very risk-averse. The benefits from economic success, entrepreneurial activity and dynamism accrue to those involved, but when there is a failure, the fallout can rebound on the local authority. The local press can ask, ““Who allowed it? How was it permitted? Should someone not have stopped it? What was the local authority doing?””. We need to make sure that we have a better way of dealing with this, and I think that if we fail to mention in the Bill the fact that economic progress is the wellspring or activity that will enable us to do many of the things that we, whatever our political persuasion, think are desirable for this country, we are failing the better regulation agenda, and we are failing what Hampton set out as his principles. I beg to move.