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Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Bill [Lords]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention and I share his concerns. The Bill contains sanctions, which are available to the local better regulation office and the company that is being regulated. We must trust that they will be effective. The Tesco example, to which the hon. Gentleman alluded, is the position whereby an organisation, which is being regulated from elsewhere, does not comply with not only the organisation’s overall requirements but local requirements. That is why I felt that it was important to ensure that the local enforcing authority can react strongly and quickly when such circumstances arise. The primary authority must be mindful of and sensitive to the fact that local authorities serve local people, and I hope that any conflicts that arise between the primary authority and the enforcing authority can be resolved sensitively. After all, customers are customers, wherever they reside. The faster, more automatic system and the wider range of penalties that we have discussed today should make for speedier resolution of breaches of regulation. However, it is to be hoped that that does not give the green light to less scrupulous companies to disregard a regulation’s intention and delay putting their house in order by simply paying up specific statutory fines again and again. I am sure that the local enforcement authority and the lead authority will work together to ensure that that does not happen. We must safeguard those companies, which the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Prisk) mentioned, that seek to comply with regulations and work within the rules honestly. They ask only for a level playing field, which regulation at its best can offer. Reputation is a factor to which I wish the Government had seen fit to pay more regard. The option to elect for criminal proceedings would have given comfort—not as something that a company would envisage needing to do, but as a fall-back if it felt strongly that an injustice had been done.