Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, for his intervention, because I was about to raise a similar point. It has been a long time since, as a policeman, I applied for a warrant, but we did not routinely notify the intended recipient of our visit that we were about to do it. I do not buy the argument that that would see an awful lot of documents destroyed or anything that they might have been pre-warned being removed from the premises—they would not know. I do not see why it should be different for enforcement officers and the police, who obviously are, in some cases, investigating much more serious crimes. On the use of force arguments that the noble Lord, Lord Katz, deployed, surely the point is that these powers are being extended and, yet again, we are relying on future guidelines, comments or statements that will be written into their terms of employment. I simply do not believe that that is enough. The public deserve the reassurance of having this in the Bill or, at the very least, clarified in a Dispatch Box Statement. As we bring this debate to a close—my noble friend Lady Lawlor, I think, homed in on this point—the fundamental concern that underpins all these amendments is that the Government have not yet provided a clear definition of who the enforcement officers will be, what precise powers they will hold, and what training or accountability measures will govern their conduct. The absence of clarity is not a minor oversight; it is a significant gap that leaves businesses and individuals vulnerable to potential overreach and misuse of authority. Enforcement officers will be vested with extraordinary powers of entry, inspection and seizure, but we have no clear picture of the safeguards that will be put in place to prevent abuse. These amendments are not about obstructing enforcement or denying the Government the tools that they need to tackle serious breaches of labour market law; on the contrary, we recognise the importance of robust enforcement. However, enforcement must be lawful, proportionate and accompanied by proper oversight and accountability, or it will risk losing public trust. We have sought to introduce reasonable limits on when and how enforcement—