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Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses (Amendment) Regulations 2010

My Lords, I hope that the regulations strike a sensible balance between the need to protect workers from unscrupulous practices, the need to maintain a flexible and dynamic labour market and the need to benefit business to ensure that the UK is in the best position possible to recover from a recession. A number of specific points have been raised. I am, in particular, grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young, for saying that we are building on his good work. I am glad that that is how he feels, because this truly is based on his previous work. It is nice to be able to take it forward in this way. I can understand why the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, asked his question. We shall have to do a lot more of this. There will be a lot more statutory instrument work. We will be looking to build sunset clauses into our legislation as we move further along, so that, when things have had their time, we can let them go. I hope that that is how we will proceed in the future. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord James for raising an important issue, which is of serious concern and on which he has spoken previously. The role of the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate is to ensure compliance with the conduct regulations and that those who may be vulnerable are not exploited. The inspectors would therefore be interested to receive any further information about cases such as those that he raised. If the information provided suggests in any way that these young people are being mistreated or taken advantage of, the EAS will investigate further and take appropriate action. If the activity is not regulated by the EAS, it will pass on the information and allegations to the appropriate authorities for them to consider. I hope that that will take things forward better for my noble friend. Given his great experience of such gatherings from his work in the racing industry and so on, we hope that he might talk in confidence to these organisations. Having addressed those points, I repeat my hope that we have agreed that the regulations strike a sensible balance between the need to protect workers from unscrupulous practices, the need to maintain a flexible and dynamic labour market and the need to benefit business to ensure that the UK is in the best position possible to recover from recession. For these reasons, I commend the proposals to the House. Motion agreed. Sitting suspended.