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Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am most grateful for the noble Lord’s agreement to the amendment by putting it in writing in the form of an amendment. He has taken on board not only the point that I made but also the drafting, simple as it was. In Amendment No. 39, I am concerned about a quite separate point. At present, when a primary authority lays down how a series of local authorities are to carry out their responsibilities in respect of, say, a chain of shops, the local authorities in which the shops are situated all over the country have no certainty of being told whether their authority will be controlled by the agreement made between the primary authority and the headquarters of the business concerned. When I moved a similar amendment in Committee, I was told, ““It’s all right because it will all be on a website, so they can look it up quite easily if they are thinking of going to have a look at a shop””. However, in a high street, some shops will be owned by national chains—we all know that any high street has a lot of shops owned by national chains. Others will be independent—I hope that as many as possible of them will be because I like to see independent shops in high streets—and some will be franchises. As we know from Committee, it will be extremely difficult to know whether franchises will be controlled through a primary authority or whether they will be treated as independents. Therefore, the local authority regulator will have to go through the website looking at all the shops in the high street before he sets out to see whether they are complying with the regulations. That is why I am saying that the LBRO should let the junior authorities know whether an agreement is in place. I have also provided in the amendment that they should be told when it is proposed that a primary authority will be appointed so that, if they want to, they can object to it. It is not particularly easy to tell who owns the shops in a high street. Some will be trading under names which are not the names of the companies that own them but trade names, and that will add to the complication for the local authority regulators. I do not want the regulators to be placed in the position where they go into a shop—for example, with a view to enforcing some food regulations—only to be told, ““Push off. There’s an agreement with our headquarters that you are not supposed to do this. You’re supposed to do it another way””. That would be bad for the local authority regulators. Therefore, it is important that the junior authorities, as I call them, know when such agreements are either proposed or enforced. That is the intention behind Amendment No. 39. However, I am grateful for Amendment No. 38.