---

Local Better Regulation Office (Dissolution and Transfer of Functions, Etc.) Order 2012

My Lords, I wonder whether I might intervene at this point. I am very disappointed with the order and its accompanying Explanatory Memorandum. It is very useful to have the Explanatory Memorandum, but an examination of it reveals—as my noble friend Lord Young has shown—that it makes a number of points that stress almost the opposite of the objectives and successes that the Minister has claimed for this order. For example, the Minister talked about the greater transparency, accountability and strength that will be provided. However, I am not sure that there will be greater transparency when the body is transferred inside a government department, where its work and effort will no longer be as clear as that of an NDPB. The savings that are claimed are said to be modest, which is not a very great strength for the change, while the response rate for the consultation on the order is also said to be low. The start of all this came, of course, with the very rash and widely complained- about Public Bodies Bill, with its great list of bodies that departments had to come up with in order to make a comprehensive survey across the whole field of government. It was overambitious and has been much changed since. The excellence of the present scheme, referred to by my noble friend Lord Young just now, was also referred to by several of the consultees. Indeed, in all fairness, the Minister indicated that many of the consultees praised the work of this NDPB, the LBRO, as it stands. If the work of the LBRO is transferred to the business department, this will be in accordance with what I might call a government fashion at present; something that is being done, being attempted or being at least suggested all over the board—across all sorts of departments, quite apart from the business department. Claims are being made for how valuable the change would be in terms of transparency and accountability in each case. The Government, however, are having some difficulty, as they are in this case. Take the work of the LBRO in relation to the primary authority. The whole idea, which goes back several years and started on a voluntary basis, was that where there were local authorities and major businesses—major supermarkets, for example, operating in most counties all over the country—instead of each local authority taking the responsibility for enforcing environmental or trading standards requirements, local authorities would get together and enable one particular authority to be the primary authority and take the main responsibility for any prosecutions that were needed. Before any prosecutions are made, of course, there is no doubt a lot of useful discussion that leads to changes in commercial practice. The excellence of the current way of running things has been recorded by a number of people who have taken part in the consultation. My noble friend Lord Young referred to one matter on which the memorandum itself says that there was complete disagreement across the board. In paragraph 8.3: "““The consultation gained majority support for … the proposals bar one. The … exception was the proposed membership for the Representative Steering Group””." I would be glad if the Minister could say something about that split in responses and indicate where they are in their thoughts and discussions about that steering group. As a whole, therefore, I am not at all convinced by the Explanatory Memorandum which justifies this order. It is more a matter of following, as I say, current government fashion in this field; pushing things into government departments which do not carry—and cannot carry with the outside world and with the groups that are concerned about this—the same degree of independence and trust as an independent NDPB has done, and in this case has been doing very well.