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Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [Lords]

I will come to the hon. Gentleman's points about the impact assessment. The hon. Member for Brent, East made a series of points, some of which I am sure she will want to raise in Committee, but one or two of which I will refer to in this debate. The hon. Members for Huntingdon and for Wealden made a series of important points about the Bill, and I hope that I will be able to address some of their concerns. No doubt its passage through Committee will provide further reassurance to them. I have to say, however, that when they veered away from the specifics of the Bill, they made a series of intemperate and inaccurate comments about the current business climate. The business community will view with considerable scepticism lectures from them and other Conservative Members about the problems that it faces, when their party was responsible for two massive recessions in the 1980s and 1990s, in which business after business went to the wall, job after job was lost and many businessmen and women lost their homes and considerable amounts of money as a result. They might think that the business community has forgotten what it was like to operate under a Conservative Government—I think that they will be sadly mistaken come the next election.