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Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [Lords]

The previous group of amendments touched on the question of consistency, which is one of the Bill’s major concerns. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) intended it, but the current group of amendments touches on the Bill’s other main concern—inflexibility in the current system. In my remarks on the first group of amendments, I referred to the Hampton report. I shall now refer to the Macrory report, which was about the inflexibility of a one-club-fits-all approach to regulatory enforcement and proposed that regulators should have a greater variety of enforcement options. That proposal has been supported by many business voices, including the British Chambers of Commerce. That organisation represents the views of many small businesses in this country, and it said that variable monetary penalties should be available to regulators as part of a mixed system, as a variable line would allow the regulator to operate flexibly and proportionately. In addition, the Institute of Directors welcomed the proposition that a wider range of penalties would mean less use of criminal sanctions and less time and money spent on court procedures. The Bill’s regulatory impact assessment estimates that the savings to be made from fewer court appearances could amount to £88 million.