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Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [Lords]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time. As I noted throughout our discussions on Second Reading and in Committee, the Bill seeks to equip regulators with the right tools and duties to address the many different circumstances in which they are expected to enforce regulation in practice. In our debate this afternoon on the amendments, we debated two major issues that the Bill is intended to address: inconsistency and inflexibility in the regulatory system. The five principles of good regulation feature prominently in the Bill: consistency, transparency, targeting, proportionality and regulators’ accountability. The background to the Bill is that in 2005 Philip Hampton reported to the Government on the burdens that arise from the enforcement of regulations. His report made it clear that better regulation is a matter not purely of policy making and legislation or of making policy better in the first instance, but of ensuring the right framework for the enforcement and upholding of regulations. This requires a system that provides effective enforcement by front-line professionals and the flexible use of sanctions to deal with non-compliance in ways appropriate to each case. Introducing the Bill on Second Reading in the other place, my colleague Lord Jones of Birmingham paid tribute to the expertise that stakeholders had brought to the Bill’s development, and I echo his comments. Local authorities and their representatives, the national regulators and business all contributed to its development. The Hampton report set out a vision of a regulatory enforcement system in which honest businesses, doing their best to comply with the law, and regulators, seeking to protect the public as effectively as possible, move from a traditional adversarial relationship and work together to secure compliance with regulations intended to protect all our interests. I believe that the Bill has, for the most part, been developed in the same spirit, and we are grateful for the input of business regulators, local authorities and all who helped to guide the process. I thank the hon. Members for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Prisk), for Solihull (Lorely Burt) and other hon. Members for their contributions, courtesy and understanding in Committee. The hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford probed and pressed, with some skill and some courtesy, for which I am grateful. The debate addressed a number of important issues and offered us the chance to consider the safeguards that are rightly attached to many of the Bill’s powers. Its tone reflected the fact that before arriving here the Bill benefited from close and detailed scrutiny in the other place, where a number of amendments were made. Those included additional protections on how the local better regulation office would work in practice with local authorities, additional safeguards on the use of the alternative regulatory sanctions set out in part 3 and some refinements of part 4 in respect of how regulators would work, ensuring that there should be no unintended consequences. I am grateful for all the work put in by Members on both sides of the House. The Bill is intended to improve how regulation works in our economy, in the interests of the regulated and, most of all, of the public. It is in all our interests for us to have a system in which business can thrive and grow and for the public to be confident that the regulations that the House considers and passes are enforced properly and proportionately in practice. That is what the Bill is intended to ensure, and I commend it to the House.