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Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 48: 48: After Clause 33, insert the following new Clause— ““Conduct of local authority functions Notwithstanding any provision of this Part, each local authority shall carry out its relevant functions in a fair and even-handed way with respect to all those carrying out regulated activities within its area.”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, this returns to the problem of the patchwork created by the legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Jones, in one of his visits to the Grand Committee, agreed that the patchwork has changed. Until this legislation, there was a patchwork effect across the branches of large organisations. Branches in different towns might be subject to different regimes from the different local authorities. Now all that is to end by statute as the agreements are put in place. The patchwork will be along the high street or within the trading estate, if noble Lords see what I mean. Different local authorities will ultimately be the primary authorities for different businesses spread around the trading estate or high street. The regulations can potentially be enforced differently. As I said earlier, much of this is going on voluntarily at the moment. The Bill would put that aspect into statutory form. But statutory form is very different from voluntary form because of the compulsion involved and because the courts may get involved in arbitrating and making decisions about how the provision works, looking back to the legislation that we are passing. My new clause would ensure that, if a number of shops in a high street were being regulated in a particular way as a result of primary agreements elsewhere, a different, more rigorous regime could not be imposed on the independents to the detriment of their trading position. Each local authority should carry out its relevant functions in an even-handed way with respect to all those carrying out the regulated activities within each area—not only those regulated through the primary authority system, but the others. I have referred to this point on a number of occasions both today and in Grand Committee. This is an attempt to place a legal constraint on the way in which local authorities exercise their functions so that, if a small business feels that it is being discriminated against on this basis, it will have the opportunity to appeal and say, ““It’s not fair. The big businesses either side of me are not being regulated as toughly as I am””. In moving this amendment, I am conscious that, from time to time, electoral pressures are very great on local authorities. For reasons that are often but not always good, there is pressure on the regulators to produce results that show that the public are being protected. The only people whom they can lean on once this is in statutory form are the independent businesses. Those are the people whom I am worried about and this new clause would prevent that from happening. I beg to move.