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Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [HL]

My Lords, I have some considerable sympathy with the remarks of the noble and learned Lord because those of us who have been through the Committee and Report stages of the Bill, let alone Second Reading, will be aware that he is attempting an impossible task. He feels that the Macrory recommendations should not apply at all. As a noble and learned Lord, he has spent many learned hours attempting to find amendments that will fit into the Bill to try to improve it. Those of us who have listened to what he has said on a number of occasions, in Committee and on Report, are in no doubt about his views, that the system does not work. I suppose he should have produced an amendment that Parts 3 and 4 should not form part of the Bill. The substance of his amendment here cuts through to the very heart of the Government’s Bill. The Bill went through considerable pre-legislative scrutiny and considerable lobbying from all sorts of organisations before it came to your Lordships for consideration. Members of your Lordships’ House have to decide whether they support the recommendations of Professor Macrory. I understand perfectly the noble and learned Lord’s view and that, like the noble Lord, Lord Neill, he does not accept the recommendations of Professor Macrory. We on these Benches do not agree. The pass has long since been sold on whether regulators need to go the criminal or magistrates’ courts to enforce regulation. The best example I can use is the current operation of the FSA. Do the noble Lord, Lord Neill, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lyell, really suggest that the FSA, which imposes considerable sanctions and penalties on individuals, should not be allowed to do so? The philosophical thrust of their amendments is that that would be the case. We on these Benches have considerable sympathy with what the noble and learned Lord is trying to do, but it does not work. You can throw out Parts 3 and 4 of the Bill entirely, but you cannot amend them. You must accept that we are implementing the Macrory recommendations or not. Finally, I will make one point on what was said by the noble and learned Lord and the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, before it is forever implanted in Hansard. I am a member of the Delegated Powers Committee, and when the Bill first came to us we had a number of reservations which were expressed to the Government. We have considered them again. My noble friend who chairs the committee is not in his place but, as far as we are aware, all those recommendations have been implemented in the Bill. However, both the noble and learned Lord and the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, said that the Delegated Powers Committee, in its recommendations, had made these points. We did make those recommendations, but the Bill now reflects them. I cannot speak for the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, who chairs the other committee that looked at this and who produced amendments either on Report or in Grand Committee. I understand that he is also satisfied with the implementation of the recommendations. As a member of one of those committees, I thought that that ought to be on the record. However, for the reasons I have indicated, I fear that we cannot support the amendment.