Baroness Twycross (Lab)

I will write to the noble Lord on that point. I hope it will give noble Lords some reassurance that Parliament would also be able to scrutinise any change, as regulations would need to be made by the affirmative procedure. We do not believe that Amendments 174A and 174B, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, would be helpful to the regulator, as we explained to the Premier League prior to introduction. The addition of a minimum six-week period would mean a total minimum of eight weeks once you include the minimum period for making representations or giving a commitment in lieu. That would mean an eight-week delay, during which the regulator would not be able to impose a financial condition, which might mean that the regulator would have no choice but to sit idly by while the issue identified at the club gets worse. That would be contrary to the regulator’s objectives and principles and is therefore not considered acceptable by the Government. Slow action has been a common feature of industry self-regulation. We will not allow it to become a feature of the independent regulator’s regime. The regulator already has a regulatory principle to proactively and constructively engage with the regulated industry, including competition organisers. This means that regulatory intervention at one of their clubs should never come as a shock to a competition organiser. Once the regulator has given notice of its intention to attach a financial discretionary licence condition, the competition organiser will have a minimum of 14 days to propose a commitment in lieu. To be clear, this is a minimum; the regulator may well decide to specify a longer period, but, equally, if the situation was sufficiently serious and urgent, the regulator should not be prevented from acting without delay. The minimum period of 14 days therefore strikes the right balance. Amendment 174B only adds further burden and confusion to the process of applying financial discretionary licence conditions. The regulator is required to follow the procedure set out in Clause 23, except in very limited circumstances. This includes urgent circumstances where the regulator considers that the issues are so significant and urgent that the condition needs to be imposed immediately. Under those circumstances, burdening the regulator with a requirement to go through the process of commitments in lieu when it has already acted under urgency and has its own regulation in place is not acceptable. This would also leave clubs in an ongoing state of uncertainty, where an existing financial licence condition might be replaced with a different competition organiser requirement. This would be unnecessarily complicated, confusing and burdensome.