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Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [Lords]

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Prisk), who made a number of powerful points that I would have made. I want to look at a practical instance but before doing so, I should perhaps declare that I am a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and a director of a small company; I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests. In reality, if someone has a problem with a regulator, in most cases they will try to sort it out and reach a conclusion. Sometimes, the regulator is being stubborn and stupid and does not understand the business. Some of these comments refer to the Government. I do not know how they can come up with these measures—it seems that they do not understand business, particularly small businesses, at all. What would happen next if there were such a problem? The regulator would come and see me, for example, and if we could not sort it out, we would eventually go to court. Things would be unlikely to go that far, because I would work very hard to avoid that, as would the regulator. However, what will happen if the Bill goes through unamended? At the moment, regulators have four types of enforcement procedures: warning letters, statutory notices, formal cautions and prosecutions. They will be extended to include fixed monetary penalties, variable monetary penalties, enforcement undertakings, discretionary notices and stop notices. In other words, we are extending enormously the powers of regulators to interfere with businesses. A regulator will be able to come along and say, ““Mr. Bone, you are not doing this right, and we are going to fine you.”” As a small business, I would say, ““Actually, I am doing it right””. However, I would not be able to afford the time, let alone the cost involved, to appeal, get involved or argue against the regulator, so I would simply pay up. That is what will happen. Throughout the country, hundreds if not thousands of busybodies will interfere with businesses that are running properly and successfully, because they know that they can impose a fine rather than proceeding to a prosecution, which they would not dare to do because they know that they would lose.