---

Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

My Lords, I yield to nobody in my admiration of this House; I think that it is a wonderful House. What I find completely astonishing is the attendance here tonight. Reports from two of our Select Committees have drawn to our attention the fact that unprecedented powers are being conferred on a host of local authorities and regulators; so they are. I have not yet seen any answer to what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lyell of Markyate, said in Committee. On the Labour Benches, if I exclude the Ministers, I see one Member; on the Lib-Dem Benches, there is one, and the number has sometimes risen to two; and on the Conservative Benches, there are eight. What we are being told by the noble and learned Lord is that we are faced with an extraordinary innovation that is not required at all. It is not required because we have a system of magistrates’ courts and Crown Courts that can handle genuine cases where a breach of regulation is alleged. I shall be brief because it is now late in the evening and the noble and learned Lord has said everything that needs to be said, but there are three keys points here. First, we are going to have the same body in a series of cases—many cases—acting in the roles of investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and sentencer. Secondly, we are going to have a reversal of the burden of proof because the citizen, the company or whoever is at the receiving end of one of these decrees coming out of the regulator or local authority will find that he is said to be guilty of something, and the fine or penalty has already been imposed. It will be as it is with a parking ticket where, in effect, you start one down trying to prove that it was not your car. Thirdly, there is the human rights aspect. What has happened to due process in all this? It seems to have been completely ignored. Article 6 of the convention has been totally overlooked. In effect, we are being driven by a Bill based on the views of Professor Macrory, who starts with his concept of a compliance deficit. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lyell, will recall the usual Irish joke: when somebody asked the question, ““What is a compliance deficit?””, counsel would reply—I cannot do the accent—““My Lords, on the hills of Connemara they talk of little else””. Nobody has the faintest idea what this concept is and what the evidence is that can establish it. Therefore, I add my voice to that of the noble and learned Lord and say that it is time to ask the Government to supply answers to the questions that he put in Committee and has put again today, and to rethink their whole policy in this area before Third Reading.